Shirts!

[harveyjames]

So Cave Story is finally out for the Nintendo Wii - you are probably all playing through it right now! I guess some of you with long memories might be wondering what happened to the t-shirts I was supposed to be doing with Attract Mode. Ha! Well, the truth is Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya who created Cave Story didn't like any of them, and turned them all

Comments

[crysalim]

ya know, there's a lot of word about how nicalis was during the development process... i can't say i'm happy about it either - but i totally understand why it was like that, having at least a little insight into how games are created

[harveyjames]

That's good feedback. You're probably onto something, since Pixel liked the more abstracted designs the most.

What's the word about how Nicalis were during development? I haven't heard anything (which is 90% of the problem with dealing with them ( LOL )).

[bpmomega]

I personally haven't heard anything about Nicalis, but what I know from my own experience with game development is that it's stressful. The more you focus on non-involved things, the less focus you have on the game itself. Whether you work under a publisher or by yourself, it isn't an easy task.

Yeah, it was kinda rough of them to kinda ignore you guys like they did... but hey, they were trying to get this game out ASAP (after being hit by delay after delay after delay). Not to mention, they had other projects to work on, as well (Night Game and La Mulana).
I suppose it's funny that even with how long it took to get it released, there are still issues with this port (big thing being Outer Wall glitches). Well, sounds like they're planning on doing a title update, so that's good.

[crysalim]

i'm just referring to the same thing you talked about, the lack of public interaction. at the start of the project they were much more vocal, i think that helped get the port off the ground, and then it got very quiet when it was time to grind out all the art and music (crunch time i guess :)

what i'm really hoping for now though is that they see enough good feedback to motivate them during the european version port so that they do a great patch for the us version too. i really want to hear the new music as it was intended.

[the_cowch]

This is a nice theory, but with the state the game was actually in when they put it out, I don't think they really had all that much focus on the game, either...

[visudo]

Oh-ho-ho, SNAP!

[harveyjames]

Yeah, I don't understand it either, since they seemingly had a whole extra year to work on it! Then again, They were working on Night Game and La Mulana at the same time (I think)

[visudo]

Software development itself is something of a black art. Video game development is a truly herculean undertaking; you really need a lot of factors to be just perfectly in line with each other to ship a quality game on time. Finding that sweet spot between "one guy hacking in his spare time" and "giant risk-averse company with enough money to throw at any problem" is extremely rare.

[a_grilled_fish]

I agree -- the shirts are very good in their own way, but I don't personally like them and I think I can see why Pixel didn't either. They don't really fit the Cave Story aesthetic. Yet, I can tell a lot of work went into these shirts, and it really sucks to have it go to waste. It's a shame the lines of communication were not more open, so you could have found out what Pixel liked and changed the design sooner.

I think little things like this point to the reasons why Pixel was hesitant to port Cave Story in the first place. When you start working with a company, it's hard to maintain communication with everybody involved, even though communication is key to maintaining artistic control and coming up with a successful port.

[crysalim]

yeah, you know - that's pretty true, considering that Pixel made the entire game solo, he probably did that so that he could get around the troubles of having to sync communication.

i mean, when it goes right, you can have a team do some really amazing things, but there's also that allure that if you learn and do everything yourself, you can see your own vision to 100% completion.

sometimes i keep forgetting that one guy made the -entire- game, coded his own synth music, and rendered his own gfx.. even if he wanted to instruct a team about how to improve it, there's just so much there to cover!

but w/o getting off topic too much, i do agree with you about the shirts. i feel bad that the designs couldn't have been tweaked more thru the process, because i really would have loved to buy one :)