Now in glorious HD

When you get your brand spanking new Wii U home on launch day and dive into the eShop, you’ll find a sidescrolling puzzle-platformer called Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition; it's a game 3DS owners will be more than familiar with seeing as it's an enhanced port of the 3DS eShop title, Mighty Switch Force!.

According to WayForward, the game’s developers, the Wii U version of the game will be more than just a simple port and will offer gamers a much greater challenge — something that drew criticism for the original game. Speaking to Polygon, Austin Ivansmith — the game’s director — explained the team’s reasoning behind the simplicity of the 3DS version, saying it made the game easy enough to be completed by the studio’s owner Voldi Way, who admits to being “horrible at video games”.

With the original 3DS version we wanted anyone and everyone to be able to complete [all of] the incidents. We spent days going over the final stage alone, and cut a decent number of block arrangements and spikes to make the game easier. As a level designer, it was hard to 'kill my darlings' the first time around.

This inevitably made the game quite easy to complete, something WayForward decided to rectify with Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition on Wii U. The new version has the same 21 levels the 3DS version had, only this time each one will have an alternative ‘Hyper’ mode which will be much more challenging for the player to traverse.

If you're going to be a completionist and beat every single level that's in this game, you're going to be a very talented Switch Force player. I no longer have to run this game past our owner; if he can't beat the level, I feel like I've done my job.

WayForward has developed a plethora of games for Nintendo ever since it positioned itself as a ‘developer for hire’ in 1997, with such titles as A Boy and his Blob on Wii and the upcoming 3DS game Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!, and Ivansmith was quick to mention the great relationship the studio has built over the years with the Japanese video game giant.

We really like Nintendo — there's just something about our vibe and the games we make that just gels with the Nintendo fanbase and the community.

WayForward continues to grow at an astonishing rate, so much so that their ‘indie’ label has all but worn off now. The studio may still be relatively small in size but its games often continue to be just as immersive as those made by much larger developers.

I don't think many people think of us as an 'indie' developer, because we do so much work for hire. We put everything we have into our games, and we make games that we think rival really big productions for the consoles they're on. They end up being very ambitious, and not art house, smaller projects that you might see out of Thatgamecompany or other places.

On top of all this, Ivansmith even teased us all by declaring that the studio will soon be announcing some "exciting" new projects that might take a few people by surprise in their direction. So, what do you think of the upcoming Mighty Switch Force: Hyper Drive Edition? Are you looking forward to showing off your platforming talents and beating every single level in this new version? Let us know your thoughts.

[source polygon.com]