We recently reported on Nintendo of Japan's Nintendo Games Seminar and commented on what a great opportunity it looked like for young Japanese developers who wanted to make a name for themselves.
Every year selected teams of college students are given classes on game development by Nintendo. Under this expert tutoring students will design and build their own game. The results from last year's program are now available for free on the Wii U eShop in Japan.
The four titles are known as Poppo Hunter, Center Heroes, Shima Nagame (Island Viewing) and Sentou Danchi (Battle Ground Estate). All these titles appear to be very distinct and demonstrate great creativity and imagination from the young Japanese minds — as well as showing the Wii U's various control methods effectively.
Hop on over to Kotaku to find out more details about these games and view videos for all four titles.
Nintendo is continuing to take applications for next year's Nintendo Games Seminar until 29th of June 2014. The only catch is that you have to be a college student in the Tokyo and Kansai region, so that probably rules roughly 99.9 percent of our readership out of the running.
What do you think of the idea of Nintendo Games Seminar? Is this something you think NoA and NoE should offer in the West? Would you like these four games to come to the US and Euro Wii U eShop?
[source kotaku.com]
Comments 15
I'd love to see more of this sort of thing. I think it was through a similar event that Portal got discovered by Valve. It's great that we're seeing so many indie games make it in a big way, but I imagine there's still a ton of very creative people out there who just don't get noticed.
I would love to play these games. They should make it available in their original Japanese forms.
This would be a good idea over here.
Now I'm even more certain that I'm moving to Japan.
I really like the tower defence one!
One of my friends is enlisting in this years Hope I get to see him featured a year from now!
Sucks that these will probably always be exclusive to the Japanese eShop. I want to play the pigeon-feeding game, Nintendo.
Any chance those nifty lookin games will hop on over to the west?
This is an interesting way to implement a free games program. Builds exposure and notoriety for young, prospective developers while challenging them to think about creativity and viability more so than marketability. For consumers, it offers a unique novelty while exposing them to fresh perspectives and ideas. The added benefit is that it doesn't degrade the value of the current indie game catalog on the Wii U.
If an established and talented developer as Platinum praises the guidance they get from Nintendo, imagine how these students would feel.
@AJWolfTill I hope your friend makes the cut if he really deserves it!
I smell some games in the future O_O
You want to create games for the Nintendo platforms, look at Wario's DIY, both for Wii and the DS.
While I'd love to play them. I doubt anything like this would make it out of Japan. Translating them wouldn't be worth it in the long run, and translating them would mean they'd have to charge for them. Chances are they wouldn't even sell well in the end. I'd advise no one get there hopes up.
"Last year’s four games available for free on the Japanese Wii U eShop"
Lucky Japanese.
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