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Old 07-08-07, 14:26   #1
MUN33B
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Default Viva Pinata DS and Sqeuel News...

From Gamespot (a bit old but none-the-less interesting):



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During this year's E3 Media & Business Summit, Microsoft revealed it would be not only porting its casual-friendly Xbox 360 game Viva Piņata to PCs, but also developing a brand-new iteration in the series for its flagship console, titled Viva Piņata: Party Animals.

It now appears that Rare's vibrantly colored pinatas have been breeding like bunnies, as during Kids' Day at Comic-Con International: San Diego on Sunday, Microsoft announced it is readying a Nintendo DS version of Viva Piņata.

Aside from it being a port of the Xbox 360 game, details on the project are slim. However, a Rare employee posting under the username "Errrm" stated on an official Viva Piņata forum that the game would employ an angular viewpoint: "I believe it is a isometric view, rather than a 3d view. I am guessing this is something to do with the graphics power of the DS."

Though Microsoft acquired the UK-based studio from Nintendo in 2002, Rare has released a fairly steady stream of games for the Japanese giant's handheld in recent years. In addition to several Donkey Kong Country installments on the Game Boy Advance, Rare most recently brought its signature pint-sized gorilla to the DS in 2006 with Diddy Kong Racing DS.

[UPDATE] Rare has sent along updated information on Viva Piņata DS. Not only will the game include all the trappings of the Xbox 360 version, but it will also feature a greater variety of tools and tool actions, an updated journal and encyclopedia, and a wider variety of papier-mache critters. The DS version will also include new game modes including sandbox, where players have "full and easy access" to the piņatas, and episodes, which ties in to the game's spin-off TV series.

Rare also revealed that Viva Pinata DS will take advantage of several of the DS's unique capabilities. Players will able to interact with their pinatas using touch-screen controls, and pinatas can be exchanged via the DS's Wi-Fi capabilities.
And Viva Pinata Sequel News:

Quote:
Australian dev house Krome Studios has plenty on its plate at the moment, with major upcoming titles including Hellboy: The Science of Evil for next-generation consoles, The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night for the Wii and PSP, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the PlayStation 2 and PSP. This year's E3 also unveiled another title for the independent studio down under--the latest in the Viva Piņata franchise, Viva Piņata: Party Animals, which takes the candy-filled critters into full party-game territory. Krome, which has been working on the title for close to a year, takes over from the developer of the first game in the series, Rare. We spoke to Krome CEO Robert Walsh this week about developing one of the first party games for the 360, the challenges in taking over an existing franchise, and more.

GameSpot AU: Did your Brisbane studios have to work closely with Rare on developing Viva Piņata: Party Animals?

Robert Walsh: Microsoft approached us, so the stuff from Rare is mostly just reference from an art perspective. All the design and those elements were done between us and Microsoft. I'm pretty sure Rare had the signing and approvals, but it was just to make sure that we visually matched the style of the original game.

GS AU: So Krome built everything in Party Animals from scratch?

RW: Yes. We have our own in-house tech, so we built it all ourselves. They're fairly different games [the original Viva Piņata and Party Animals]--it's not like everything just goes straight across.

GS AU: So how many different minigames are you planning to pack into the title?

RW: There will be about 40 to 50. It depends--sometimes we'll come up with new versions of games that we'll throw in at the last minute--we're still in that refinement process as we come to the finish line.

GS AU: So how did your team come up with the ideas for the minigames?

RW: Pretty much our design team sat down with the Microsoft guys--we locked ourselves away in a room and we looked at a lot of the other party games just for references. But the cool thing about Party Animals is that the IP is fairly unique, so we started looking at really cool things to do with piņatas. Obviously, a fundamental thing with piņatas is breaking them open and getting candies out of them. We looked at that as a reward system. It's a creative process: You put something on screen and you play it. If you like it, you keep going, but if it doesn't turn up being fun, then you move onto the next one.

GS AU: The demo you showed at E3 had a long racing level as one of the games. How much of the final Party Animals will involve races?

RW: Originally the racing game wasn't a big focus, but when we got it on screen and when we started playing with it, it turned out to be a hell of a lot of fun. So we expanded it a little more--there's always a cool thing about racing against friends, regardless of what the game concept is. Probably 40 percent of the game is the animals racing, and 60 percent is the actual minigames. But the racing isn't really a minigame--it's more a mechanism to get you to the next set of minigames.

GS AU: Is there a storyline at all?

RW: We tried to follow some of the arcs from the television series. It's hard to have a huge storyline around just party games, but that's what we tried to incorporate--the social aspect between the animals, and in this case, the players, as well as exploration to broaden the universe of Piņata Island.

GS AU: What age group are you pitching this at? Young gamers or families?

RW: This is definitely a family-type game. It appeals down to a younger audience, but at the same token, I can sit down and I have a blast playing it. It's a broad title for sure.

GS AU: Krome's had experience in taking over game franchises before, such as with The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning. What are the main challenges in taking an existing franchise and making a new game out of it?

RW: One is being true to the original fiction of the franchise. You don't want to go so far or so different that you've broken away from what the essence of the franchise was. But at the same time, you need to come up with something that's fresh and invigorating. The challenge is finding a balance between the two--reinforcing all the best elements of the franchise and then giving it a new twist which breathes new life to it.

GS AU: Krome looks to have quite a lot going on at the moment. How busy a time is it for you now?

RW: We're pretty busy at the moment. We have about 300 people right now and we're pretty much flat chat. If you look at our lineup this year, it's pretty strong--we have Hellboy on next generation, Spyro which has been a really long franchise, a first-party Microsoft title, and Star Wars. It's not a bad portfolio for an independent studio.

GS AU: Are there any other titles that you're working on that you could mention?

RW: I wish I could. There's two more we've started on that will be pretty awesome as well, but they haven't been announced yet. One will be announced pretty soon, and the other will be early next year. But they're all for next-gen consoles.

GS AU: So will Krome be focusing exclusively on next-gen titles now?

RW: Not totally. I think there's still some balance to be played out in the marketplace--we're still waiting for the install base. So while we're not targeting current-gen stuff, if there is a title that we're working on for another console, then it makes sense for us to do a current gen one. We have all the technology, we've been doing it for a long time now--so if it makes sense we'll look at it. But we're not actively doing any more current-gen games.

GS AU: Robert Walsh, thanks for your time.
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Old 07-08-07, 15:01   #2
interstellardave
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I'm looking forward to the DS version... but I wish they would release the new pinatas and such on XBox Live too. Not sure about Party Animals; I'd love a proper sequel--same as the first but bigger, better and badder!
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Old 07-08-07, 15:16   #3
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Cool! A sequel!
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