My Life as a King co-creators on WiiWare challenges, ActRaiser

by JC Fletcher { May 12th 2008 at 5:00PM }

In their GDC presentation, Square Enix's Fumiaki Shiraishi and Toshihiro Tsuchida described the new direction they were taking with Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King. They discussed how they were shaking things up at their company by making a small, low-budget game with no elaborate cutscenes. Brandon Sheffield and Jeremy Parish spoke with the game's co-creators about the advantages and challenges of trying to make a Square Enix game under strict financial and storage budgets.

Shiraishi described the limitations as an inspiring factor for the game's design, and also pats SE's artists on the back: "I don't think we would've had this game design idea if we didn't have the memory restriction to begin with. Once we had the restriction, we had... all our artists are veterans, so if you tell them the size, they'll hit it right on."

Another (very) noteworthy offhand statement comes at the end, in a discussion of Square Enix's attitude toward the Virtual Console. When the similarity in theme between ActRaiser and My Life as a King came up, Shiraishi said "I'd like to make an ActRaiser sequel. That would be kind of fun." Yes. It would.

Tags: crystal-chronicles, final-fantasy, my-life-as-a-king, square-enix

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Roto13 @ May 12th 2008 5:22PM

Do they justify the ridiculous amount of money you have to spend to get the full experience?

James @ May 13th 2008 2:04PM

This is a textbook case of Market Segmentation:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html

They know that there's plenty of people who will drop 15 bucks on anything that has "Final Fantasy" in the name. They figure there's a pretty big number of people who would have paid even more, but not nearly as big as the first number, not to mention that having e.g. a 20 dollar game when all the other WiiWare games are 10 or less would stand out quite a bit. So instead of upping the price, they charge 15 bucks for "entry", then they can charge extra for those who are willing to pay more.

Of course, this is both good and bad at the same time -- read the article I linked to above if you want to understand what I mean.

MasterInsan0 @ May 12th 2008 5:55PM

An ActRaiser sequel would be amazing if they could pull it off. ActRaiser is like one of the best games for the SNES, so seeing it in this generation would make me happy in inappropriate ways.

Matthew @ May 12th 2008 5:56PM

After having played a few days already in FFCC, I'd say the experience becomes a bit stale. At first I thought the idea termed "a god game" was cool, not really experiencing the battles and just managing macro levels. However, now I feel after having spent time investing in characters telling them what to do, I'd like to be there with them and at least view what is taking place. I send someone out to do something big and I'm like I hope this goes well, meanwhile all I can do it just run around my city and chat a bit. Not being able to view the battles I feel is a drop the ball move. There is not enough excitement to drive me, but progressing the city is a bit interesting however like I said earlier it is starting to feel stale =(

SoshiKitai @ May 12th 2008 9:07PM

In the end, the lesson is:
Not all god games are for everyone.

(in fact, most god games only attract specific people)

Mikevanman Dagger @ May 13th 2008 7:55AM

I downloaded this game as soon as it became available yesterday morning. I can honestly say it's the first Wii game that I sat down to play for more then 2 hours in one shot too.

adolson @ May 13th 2008 10:57AM

HOLY SHIT. If they make an ActRaiser sequel (like the first one, the actual sequel SUCKED) then I'm all over it and I want it now! ActRaiser is my favorite game of all time - imagine my disappointment when I played ActRaiser 2 and it sucked..

James @ May 13th 2008 1:56PM

Heh, I remember renting Actraiser 2 and playing through like 3 or 4 of the side-scrolling levels. After each one I'd be like, "All right! Now I get to play the cool part with the town-building, and... hey, another platform level! Dammit!" until it dawned on me that they took out the entire fun game mechanic and left the crap. I wanted to throw the cart through the TV.