Similar to the Nintendo Life staff reaction

There are a good numbers of gamers in the West that love Japanese culture and look on with envy at some of the creative, and occasionally wacky, delights that are released in Nintendo's homeland. One of these we may not have expected to see was Rhythm Hunter: HarmoKnight, a rhythm game on the 3DS eShop from Pokémon developer Game Freak, that caught the eye in a Japanese Nintendo Direct earlier this summer.

The good news is that producer Junichi Masuda is keen to see a worldwide release, stating in an interview with IGN that his company is in the process of working out potential details with Nintendo to localise the title.

In terms of a North American or European release, it's definitely something we'd like to do, but we're working out the details with Nintendo now and seeing what would be the best way to get that to players.

Masuda also explained how a British member of Game Freak came up with the idea, with the project apparently running for a year and a half with a team of 25. It's a development culture that gives small projects a chance.

Within Game Freak, we've implemented a kind of new system where employees can come up with original ideas for their games. If they can find at least three co-workers to jump on the project and say they want to do it together, then they'll be able to proceed with that project.

One of the nice things about smaller projects like that is... since it's a project that you really wanted to do, you've kind of signed on to do that project. You're really interested in it. There's also very few people and a short schedule, so everyone has to work on multiple aspects that they might not normally work with. So by doing that, you really build up experience, which translates back into the Pokémon games.

In any case, it'll be interesting to try out Rhythm Hunter: HarmoKnight and see whether it lives up to its rather charming trailer footage. You can check that out again below.

Would you be interested in downloading this from the eShop?

[source uk.ign.com]