Joe Humfrey: It’s difficult, you need a long time…
Gary Richards: You kind of need a few months away, because you’ve got that close to it that you can’t judge it.
Joe Humfrey: Yeah, after six months I really enjoyed playing it, so, fingers crossed…
SPOnG: That’s good! How long were you working on this one?
Gary Richards: Eight months.
Joe Humfrey: So, we were kind of prototyping in January last year. We didn’t really ramp up fully, to full production, until February, then we finished in October.
SPOnG: How do you feel the DS as a platform fits with Viva Piñata?
Joe Humfrey: I think it’s inherently well suited to the DS.
SPOnG: Personally, to me it seems like a better fit on the DS than it was on the 360…
Gary Richards: (Grins) We can’t comment on that.
SPOnG: (Grins) Fair enough. How did a Microsoft property come to be on the DS in the first place?
Gary Richards: It’s the same reason that you can find VP on the PC and VP the TV show. It’s just about the franchise more than what platform it’s on.
Joe Humfrey: Yeah. Television is a platform, PC is a platform, DS is a platform, and it’s all about reaching the broadest possible audience.
SPOnG: But, TV and PC aren’t competitors…
Joe Humfrey: Microsoft doesn’t see the DS as a conflicting platform at all.
Gary Richards: (Grins). I’m not saying.
SPOnG: (Gets hit on the arm by a present PR person. Grins) What?! I have to ask these things! …So, you’ve left out the romance mini games for the DS. Can you talk a little about why?
Gary Richards: We sat down with VP at the start of this project, and we looked at all the different elements in the game. We planned on putting the romance mini games in, but it just didn’t feel right on the touch screen. It didn’t really make the game work. We had a look at a couple of different ideas and eventually came to the conclusion that we don’t actually need these. The game is huge as it is. So, they got (taken out) and never really had to be put back in again.
Joe Humfrey: We just all of a sudden thought, ‘why do we need them?’ It’s a challenge enough to get the piñatas in the state they need to romance, and then a romance mini game on top of that – we felt we didn’t really need it.
Gary Richards: We tweaked a lot of other things. There’s tonnes of differences. Slight rule changes from the 360 version…
Joe Humfrey: Just to make it suit the casual market.
Gary Richards: And it’s a game on the move, as well. Obviously it’s a handheld game.