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Pearl Harbor Interview with Dan Muir

by Jon Lindemann - January 20, 2010, 9:02 pm EST

Legendo's Dan Muir sits down to discuss his team's upcoming WiiWare title, Pearl Harbor: Red Sun Rising.


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Legendo Entertainment is somewhat new to the WiiWare scene, with their first release being last July's action-platformer The Three Musketeers: One For All! Their upcoming WiiWare title, Pearl Harbor: Red Sun Rising, goes in an entirely different direction as a World War II-themed aerial combat game.

Legendo recently took it upon themselves to reach out to our forum readers, so we figured the least we could do is interview them to try to figure out why they'd do something so crazy. Legendo's Dan Muir took the time out of his busy schedule to discuss Red Sun Rising, WiiWare as a service, and the Wii as a platform.

Nintendo World Report (NWR): Dan, tell us about the Legendo team and company.

Dan Muir (DM): Legendo is head-quartered in Sweden but mostly employ staff from elsewhere in the world, overall publishing and production activities are handled from Sweden and the UK. I guess you could call us a "commercial indie". We create digital download computer and video games based on myths, legends, classic novels and historical events, hence the Legendo moniker. At the moment we’re focusing our efforts on Nintendo’s WiiWare service.

NWR: Right. On our forums you mentioned that your team is spread out across UK, Sweden, Slovakia... what's the story behind that?

DM: We don’t let geographical barriers get in the way of working with the best talent, so that’s why we’ve set up a rather unique operation. We collaborate on the actual development of the game with an exceptional team of Wii talent based out of Slovakia, whereas our offices in Sweden and the UK handles most of the marketing and publishing activities.

NWR: What's the basic concept and premise of Pearl Harbor: Red Sun Rising?

DM: Pearl Harbor Trilogy is a series of three air-combat action games set in the Pacific in which players pilot World War II-era planes in various American and Japanese missions. The first game, Red Sun Rising, spans the first years of the Pacific War 1941-1942 and will include some of the well-known battles from that time such as Battle of Midway, Wake Island and Battle of the Coral Sea. The gameplay is rather arcade-style in nature, focusing on dogfights with lots of enemy aircraft on the screen at once, there are also plenty of bombing and torpedo missions.

Contact!

NWR: You mention that Red Sun Rising is part of a trilogy. Games are sometimes announced as a trilogy to set expectations for the story's scope; in this case, does it have more to do with WiiWare storage limits?

DM: It’s a bit of both really. The WiiWare storage limit is obviously one of the reasons, there’s only so much content you can cram into 40 megs. Having that said, we also thought that offering three games in separate would allow us to implement some extra polish for each title and also to potentially add more features in the second and third games based on the reception of the first one, while keeping the price for each title fairly attractive.

NWR: Why set your game around the Pearl Harbor attack in particular? It was one of the most tragic and one-sided military incidents in American history.

DM: The game is set in the Pacific War with missions ranging from Wake Island to the Battle of Midway, so it has a lot more to offer than the Pearl Harbor mission. Having that said, the Pearl Harbor attack was an important historical event for the entire world since it more or less forced the US into World War II, so I think it deserves more recognition – outside the US, there’s not a lot of familiarity with the subject. Our ambition is to make a proper game worthy of the bearing the Pearl Harbor title, something I feel past Pearl Harbor titles have failed.

NWR: Building on that, here's an interesting fact: only 29 Japanese aircraft were shot down during the Pearl Harbor attack. Do you consider this game to be your chance at revising history, a la Inglourious Basterds?

DM: If you fly as an American pilot, you will be able to down a lot more than 29 Japanese aircraft in the Pearl Harbor mission, having that said the game does not allow you to change the outcome of specific battles or the war itself.

NWR: In your opinion, what makes Pearl Harbor unique? There are plenty of war games on the market.

DM: Pearl Harbor Trilogy will be a series of three accessible arcade shooters that anyone can hop into, get straight to it with some serious dog fighting action but without the need for a complex tutorial system. It’s designed from the ground up to be a fun, fast-paced and accessible [game] with some serious undertones as its missions and aircraft are portrayed as accurately as possible from a historical perspective. We’ve created a lot of stylish comic-book imagery to present the game and story and so on, so it also feels quite different than other games in this genre – the game really has its own soul.

NWR: You mentioned the comic-book imagery. Will the game also feature the comic-book art from your website, perhaps during story scenes? We really like it.

DM: Thanks! We wanted to make sure the presentation and framing of the game felt unique. As is the norm for most Legendo titles, including our recent offering on WiiWare The Three Musketeers, there will be quite a few comic book cut-scenes to set the mood! The artwork was inspired by classic comic book artists such as Joe Kubert.

NWR: Can you play as both sides in the conflict?

DM: Yes, the game includes two campaigns, one for each nation. This lets players fly missions as either nation, be it as an American or a Japanese pilot, getting into the cockpits of American P40 Warhawks and Japanese Zeros to name a few.

Bomber up close and personal

NWR: What amount of content can players expect from the game?

DM: Right now there are two campaigns with eight missions in each with around 10 flyable aircraft.

NWR: In what ways does Red Sun Rising make use of the Wii's unique controllers?

DM: It’s really designed with motion controls in mind which work great for any aerial combat game. Having that said, we have added support for the Classic Controller as well for those who prefer the dual stick approach.

NWR: Did you consider supporting Wii MotionPlus for more accurate tilt-control of the planes?

DM: We did consider adding MotionPlus at one point, however that would have required a lot more development time in terms of balancing and so on, for example the extra sensitivity offered by MotionPlus would have made the targeting system a bit too easy, which in turn would have required us to make two different versions of the same game. We sail a tight ship here, and thus we do not have a lot of financial resources available so we must really cherry-pick what features to include.

NWR: What inspired the team to create a World War II-themed game for WiiWare?

DM: First of all, we thought that flight games on Wii work really well in general, aerial controls match up nicely with the Wii Remote and so on. Moreover, like with our previous WiiWare title The Three Musketeers, our ambition with Pearl Harbor Trilogy is to create a game that is closer in terms of scope and content to a retail game than a bite-sized online offering. We firmly believe this can and should be done and that the 40 MB limit on WiiWare games is not a good enough reason for us not to try.

NWR: What lessons did you draw from Three Musketeers that affected Pearl Harbor?

DM: We learned not [to] underestimate the WiiWare audience, they are not as casual as you’d think, rather the opposite actually. Also that how to best implement usage of motion controls in a Wii game is not always clear.

NWR: What was your impetus for coming to our forums and reaching out directly to fans, taking questions, and answering them?

DM: It’s a simple answer really, but rather long-winded. I feel that communicating with your audience is on par importance wise, as getting reviews in publications and websites. You can learn so much from your customers and the best way to do that is to go to the heart of any major website, the forum!

NWR: Well, our forumites definitely appreciate it! On that note, what makes marketing and outreach for a WiiWare game a challenge? Nintendo seems to only get back to developers with release dates at the last minute.

DM: I think the biggest hurdle for us is that many websites and magazines do not pay attention to the WiiWare service at all, I believe that is what makes it most difficult for us to reach out with a very limited marketing budget. Liaising with Nintendo regarding the release date etc has not been a problem at all for us so far.

Now obviously reviews are wonderful but to liaise directly with your audience, hear what they didn’t particularly like about your previous title, hear what they’d like included in the next and so on makes for invaluable information and of course, it’s a fantastic way to gauge overall interest.

Flying low near some ships

NWR: One of our readers asked if you had drawn any inspiration from The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces, but how about Star Fox?

DM: None at all. We played a lot of Afterburner (SEGA) and 1942 (Capcom).

NWR: You've been mostly a PC developer over the years. What made you decide to make the switch over to Wii?

DM: Working on console platforms has many advantages over PC, for one it is relatively free from piracy and also it reduces the cost and time needed to carry out quality assurance. I still love the PC, but being able to concentrate on a single piece of hardware without having to worry about compatibility issues etc is worth a lot to me.

NWR: What hurdles did the team face when creating a game like Pearl Harbor?

DM: There are some limitations with regards to space and graphical power on the Wii, so it took us some time to get the water effect up to par and also we had to figure out how to include as many missions and aircraft as possible while not exceeding 40 MB in size. Other than that, development has been pretty smooth so far.

Thanks to Dan and the team at Legendo for the great interview!

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