7/12/09

Zelda Wii on Wuhu Island?

Not sure if I'm the only one who caught this or if I just missed all the news and prediction threads about it but I found this very interesting. In the newest Iwata Aks interview Miyamoto has some very interesting things to say about the island in which Wii Sports Resort (and Wii Fit for that matter) takes place on.


Miyamoto:

It’s called Wuhu Island, but the concept is more or less the same. We really polished up the island, turned it into a resort and actually made the location into a kind of character. This will then lead to a range of island series…

Iwata:

So you’ll be releasing a range of series?

Miyamoto:

You could have adventure games, role-playing games, city-building simulation games... It will be fun to see all the ideas that we can come up with, won’t it?

Iwata:

So the idea is basically to use the same island as the location and then afterwards develop games covering all sorts of genres. Shimamura-san, how did you react when you first heard about the “Island Concept"? Did you have any reservations about it?

Shimamura:

Well, I was really taken aback. In fact, I was at a loss for words! (laughs)

Iwata:

Well, that's not surprising considering you’d just heard someone suggest turning an island into a character and then licensing it out! (laughs) Having just heard the explanation, I understand the concept but under normal circumstances, I think anyone would find themselves thinking: ”What on earth is this person talking about?”

Shimamura:

Absolutely! (laughs) Using an island as the setting for a game is very common, but the idea of turning it into a franchise...

Iwata:

So how did you end up coming round to the idea?

Shimamura:

Well, I heard an explanation that really made everything fall into place. If you see a street on TV that you’ve been to before, even if it was just the once, you’ll always say: “Hey! I know that place!”

Miyamoto:

We thought it would be a fun idea to have a location that everyone knows and then have all sorts of stuff going on there. It would mean that players would already know the town like the back of their hands by the time they came to buy the next adventure game.


See that in the bolded sentences above? Aren't those all a little telling about the next adventure game (i.e. Zelda) that Nintendo is going to be making? Unless they have some brand new adventure game in the works that none of us know about it seems to me like they may be making Wuhu Island the new setting for Hyrule.

And let's not forget this very obvious addition to the Wuhu Island.


Do you think Nintendo would use Wuhu Island as the location for the new Wii Zelda or do you think they have a new adventure game in the works that will use Wuhu Island?

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