Nintendo Europe recently posted a translation of Japanese magazine Nintendo Only’s interview with Eiji Anouma, Director of the Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
Nintendo Online Magazine: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is controlled with the DS stylus. But wouldn’t it be easier to keep using the + Control Pad?
Eiji Aonuma: “If you haven’t played Phantom Hourglass, you may have the impression that the game has been forcibly adapted just to suit the stylus and Touch Screen controls of the DS. Well, even among the development team there were those who thought the same thing at first, and of course there was a period during development when we re-examined the control method.“I am fully aware of how well the +Control Pad worked with previous Zelda games, and there were times we thought that it might be easier to control the game using the +Control Pad. It did cross our minds that perhaps we should give up on the stylus control idea altogether.“The process of making controls exclusively using the stylus and Touch Screen came about during development, once we felt confident that this method of control wouldn’t present any problems.â€â€œThe important thing to stress is that we came to feel that the stylus held more possibilities than the conventional control method - that it was inspiring all sorts of exciting gameplay ideas.
“While the player controls Link with the stylus, they can touch various objects on the Touch Screen and Link will react in a range of different ways. Basically, this method of control feels great to use. It removes the need to consider separately which way to move and then what sort of action to perform.
“We felt liberated from the slightly stilted convention that you had to first move up to any object in question and then press a button to make something happen. And the really interesting thing is that, as we worked on this system, it became a source of inspiration for all sorts of new ideas.
“For instance, when we were considering how best to control the boomerang, opinions would emerge quite naturally such as ‘The player should be able to choose the path it follow when it flies…’, or ‘It would be great if it followed the line you draw on the screen!’
“I feel that while developing this game, we developed as a team as well. It’s not as if from the start we had all known that the game could be totally controlled by the stylus. But in the end, precisely because the stylus was used for manipulating items and solving puzzles, we were able to pack the game with all manner of interesting things.
“I think that even if you are harbouring some doubts about stylus control for Zelda, once you have a go you will soon see how well it works.â€
(Much more of the interview after the jump!)
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is an awesome game but never got the green light to be localized. Having it come to the Japanese VC is one step closer to having it on the American VC, a step Nintendo will hopefully take very soon.
your monsters by playing minigames with the remote and nunchuck. You’re required to do well at the games because if you mess them up your monster will have worse abilities.
