Up close and personal

Nintendo Life: Pearl Harbor: Red Sun Rising is Legendo's second WiiWare release and it's another PC conversion. Did Three Musketeers perform as well as hoped and were lessons learned from the first game that made translating the second one easier?

Bjorn: What we learned from The Three Musketeers is that the audience on WiiWare is a quite different from your average Wii consumer, and that we clearly need to provide a more fluid experience to satisfy them. So with that in mind, conversion is a dirty word for me and I would like to think of Pearl Harbor as a dedicated Wii adaptation that is making better use of the unique features offered by the Wii, while also providing our audience with more options and choice. Having that said, I think that the Musketeers still holds the record on WiiWare in terms of how much content it packs in 40 MB including voices and all, so Pearl Harbor has actually been a little more merciful to us in that regard.

I'm on the leader!

Nintendo Life: We understand there's been a name change as well -- can you tell us a little about that?

Bjorn: Of course! The encompassing name for all three games is Pearl Harbor Trilogy and the exact name for the first one is Pearl Harbor: Red Sun Rising. We listened to our fans who suggested to us that we should drop the episode 1-2-3 descriptors, and since each title will be an individual experience we thought that would be simpler.

Nintendo Life: The leaked development footage of the game in action [youtube:6-a83NpwDe0] is really impressive. How have you managed to bring this cinematic fighter sim to WiiWare?

Bjorn: Those are kind words indeed! The leaked footage is from an early build of the game – rest assured that the current version is looking miles better; especially the water surface has been tweaked so that it looks more realistic. The original 3D engine was thrown out and replaced with new technology created by a team of specialist Wii programmers that does nothing but eat, sleep and breathe Wii system-architecture -- so all that experience combined has made it possible to enhance the visual look of the game, all spiced up with some Joe Kubert inspired comic book imagery that doesn’t take too much space, allowing us quite a lot of freedom within the confines of the 40 MB WiiWare limit.

That's gotta hurt...

Nintendo Life: Tell us a bit about the game. Is it all from the Japanese perspective? Are there different game modes, options, etc?

Bjorn: Actually we managed to stuff the 40 MB at our disposal with a fair amount of content. You can play as American or Japanese, so it’s from both perspectives -- there will be two campaigns with 8 missions in each, including well-known battles such Wake Island, Midway and of course Pearl Harbor. There will be multiple control options, all heavily gyro-based. Players can use the Wii Remote horizontally; tilting it sideways and forward etc to control the plane or attach the Nunchuk and use that to control the angle and speed of the plane etc. There’s also a Dogfight mode where you can test-fly the most prolific fighters from the early years of the war such as the P-40 Warhawk, the F4F Wildcat and the A6M2 Zero.

Nintendo Life: How long is the main campaign?

Bjorn: There are two full campaigns, each spans eight missions from the early years of the Pacific War, so there will be several hours of play. We are still balancing the missions so right now it’s somewhere between 5 and 10 hours of campaign play.

Nintendo Life: When can we expect to see Pearl Harbor: Red Sun Rising available for download, and which territory is going to get it first?

Bjorn: It’s coming out in America first. I can’t confirm a specific date, but it think it will land on WiiWare in February or March 2010 if all goes well.

Nintendo Life: Has a Japanese release date been set yet?

Bjorn: Not yet, but we are discussing the title with several Japanese publishers so hopefully we can make that happen in the future.

Nintendo Life: In our previous interview it was mentioned that there was a 3rd title in production -- anything you can let us know about that?

Bjorn: Yes, that’s right -- we do have a third title in production in a different genre, however it is still rather early, so please allow me to get back on that in the near future.

Nintendo Life: Finally, are there any parting words for our readers?

Bjorn: I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, hope you all get lots of nice presents be it disc-based Wii titles, stacks of Wii Point cards or nifty little retro collections of SNES cartridges!