David Braben, founder of Frontier Developments and the man famous for brining the world such legendary videogames as Elite and Virus, recently gave us the honour of taking part in an exclusive interview. In it, he chats about Frontier's recent WiiWare release LostWinds and also gives a little insight into the production of the game, the prospect of a sequel and what he thinks of the other WiiWare titles that are competing for your Wii points.
So without any further ado, here's the interview in full:
WiiWare World: How did the concept for LostWinds come about?
David Braben: We have a forum within Frontier called 'Game of the Week' where anyone can put forward game ideas. This causes a great deal of debate, criticism and argument, with many improvements, problems being raised and solved - we have likened the process to dangling a leg of lamb into a piranha-filled stream: the water boils for a while, but then whatever is left must be pretty tough.
Alex S. from Link-Cable writes: "The official end of the WiiWare service may not be until early 2019 but we wanted to give everybody as much of a chance as possible to remember all of the great games that Nintendo’s first every download service brought us. Last week we counted down the first 10 games in our look at the Top 20 WiiWare games ever made, and if you haven’t had the chance yet you can check out those picks right here but now we switch our focus over to the very best that WiiWare has to offer so if you still have a Wii (or a Wii U) kicking around make sure to download these games before they are lost forever."
Alex S. from Link-Cable writes: "As I continue my quest to complete my backlog (last week I was in the trenches of World War II) I find myself returning to a console that is near and dear to my heart, the Wii, and it’s virtual games service WiiWare. And by back I mean way back as I decided to finally give a go at the WiiWare launch title LostWinds a go. "
Triverse writes, "Not very many returning games on the list this week which means there is nearly a full new set of games to peruse. iOS gamers enjoy the perks of getting games, that once cost money, for free while Android users are limited to still having to pay something for sales (we will have a fresh list tomorrow for both iOS and Android). For now, enjoy these great titles on your iOS device as we head into the Christmas season."
I agree w/ the way he addressed the criticism that the game can be completed in 3 hrs. There are a lot of secrets to be found and searching for these extends the play time greatly. Plus like he mentioned, there are numerous titles out there retailing for $60 that can be completed in 4-7 hrs.
This game is great. Excellent art style, storyline (the storyline is based around Japanese mythology much like Okami), sound effects, and most importantly it is fun. $10 well-spent for me.