After the brilliant response to their Excitebike 64 game, exclusive second-party developers Left Field Studios recently sat down with unknown video game journalist Matt Cassamassina and disussed their past, future, and overall relationship with Nintendo. Interestingly both Left Field and newly announced second party developer Silicon Knights both believe that Nintendo will have no trouble in competing with or topping Sony's super console.

IGN64: Now that Excitebike is out, what are you going to be working on next? Another N64 game perhaps?

Michael: No, we're probably going to be working exclusively on Dolphin stuff. Which is all I can say I'm afraid. But we'll probably be sticking with sports. We've done, as you know, Kobe 1 and 2, and Excitebike, so we'll stick with sports and concentrate on what we know.

IGN64: Hopefully a Dolphin version of Excitebike.

Michael: It'd be interesting to see what we could do actually. You know, just with the extra processing power we could put a ton more bikes on-screen and you'd really get a feeling of working through the pack. It could be cool.

IGN64: What do you think of the E3 show? Are you impressed with the PS2 and Dreamcast stuff?>/B>

Michael: Well, PlayStation2 -- there really doesn't look to be that much stuff that's all that good. I mean, even looking at Gran Turismo, it looked better than the PlayStation version, but not that much better. I think the Dreamcast had a fairly strong showing. I think they've got the sheer volume of games there. They seem to have some pretty strong stuff.

IGN64: Bearing what you've seen of PS2 so far in mind, what do you think of Dolphin's chances when it comes to market?

Michael: I think they'll do well. You'll be surprised. Certainly the Dolphin will be able to compete with PlayStation2, if not top it. It might seem like Sony will have a big lead because it has a ton of games out there that will help move the hardware, but if they do, I've not seen them here today.

From what I hear from a lot of developers as well, it is quite a hard machine to develop for -- really, really hard. Sony's not done a very good job of making it easier and I think that's a mistake. If you have to put a 10-man team on just getting a 3D engine up and running, that's going to be tough for them to do.