2008 GDC Reveals Wii Fit, Smash Bros, WiiWare Sessions

Author: by Staff

As part of his latest Director's Cut post, GDC 2008 executive director Jamil Moledina has revealed four new Nintendo focused sessions, including project breakdowns of Wii Fit, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and a look into the development of the Wii's interface from the main menu to WiiWare. The 'Director's Cut' section of the weblog is slated to run regularly leading up to the GDC 2008 show itself (part of CMP, as is Gamasutra), and Moledina's latest entry reads: "Hello everyone! So two very important bits of information are going out today. One is the Wednesday keynote announcement, which I'm not going to talk about here because that actually goes live later this morning. The other is a trio of Nintendo talks going live today, which we're very excited to host at GDC. While the company usually lets their products speak for themselves at most other venues, we've enjoyed a strong editorial relationship with Nintendo for a few years now. We're particularly proud that we've earned their trust in sharing real development experience and knowledge in our professional forum. Now that all eyes are on this company's successful gamble on the broader market, we are pleased to present their latest example, the development of Wii Fit, Nintendo's new balance-sensing peripheral and game. The session, Wii Fit: Creating a Brand New Interface for the Home Console (link pending), is presented by project lead Takao Sawano, and the presents the philosophical and cultural ideas as well as the practical challenges behind bringing this title to life. Another unique element that Nintendo has successfully experimented with is the development of the Wii Menu, all those channels and interactive online elements besides games that exist in the Wii interface. Takashi Aoyama, team leader for Nintendo's Network Group, gives us the inside scoop on the development of this project, in his session Planning the Wii Menu: From Pre-Launch to WiiWare (link pending). WiiWare is of course Nintendo's original downloadable game service, and Aoyama is preparing to outline the challenges they experienced in building the portal. On the subject of WiiWare games, you may also want to check out Square-Enix producer Toshiro Tsuchida's session WiiWare Project Lifecycle: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King. Finally, we are very pleased to present the first postmortem of a major 2008 title, Building Characters: The Super Smash Bros. Brawl Postmortem (link pending) by Kirby and Smash Bros. veteran developer Masahiro Sakurai. With an eye to fine-tuned balancing, Sakurai shares what worked and didn't work integrating a variety of different characters as well as online play in adapting this modern classic to the Wii. Definitely mark this featured talk on your schedule. Okay folks, that does it for today's installment. Although I should mention that GDC's early bird pricing expires tomorrow, so I'd highly recommend that you register today!" Game Developers Conference 2008 itself is scheduled for February 18th-22nd 2008 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco - more information is available at the official show website.