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Rare Talks Viva Piņata And The Future
Posted October 18, 2007 by KevinIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Gamasutra had an interesting interview recently with Rare software engineer James Thomas and designer Justin Cook, both key figures in the Viva Piņata franchise, about being overshadowed by Gears of War, and the company’s history and future.
After the company’s founders, the Stamper brothers, left after finishing Viva Piņata, there was a lot of doubt as to the future of Rare. However, according to James and Justin, not a whole lot has changed since then, something they attribute to the fact that Mark Betteridge, the new studio director, “is a little bit younger than the Stampers and his ideas are a bit better”.
The interview covers some interesting facts about what went on behind the scenes of one of the most overlooked games of this console generation - Viva Piņata for the 360. I was especially surprised to find out that it started out as a Palm PC game back in 2002. From the interview:
In some ways, it [Viva Piņata] was one of the really early graphical showcases of the 360, because at the time it came out, there weren’t a whole lot of games that were really built just for it. A lot of them were, “Crap! Our Xbox game is not going to get supported now.”
JT: Well, it went from Palm PC to the GameCube to the Xbox and the 360. I think we decided to make the leap to the 360 because we could do such things as the paper effects. Whereas if we’d have left it on the Xbox we’d have to do a texture, now we can have the actual fur.
It was in the works for that long?
JT: It started in 2002.
JC: Yeah, four years.
With Krome handling the development of the new Viva Piņata, Rare wouldn’t say what they are working on right now. But after reading the interview, I’d be money on the fact that you will see some type of party game featuring the animals from Viva Piņata. Whether it will be developed by Rare or someone else, it sounds like Microsoft has finally found the answer to Mario and the cries of it’s marketing team for something to market toward children on the 360.
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