
As the release date for Nintendo's colourful multiplayer ink-em-up Splatoon draws ever closer, we're starting to get more and more insights into the rationale behind the development of the game. GamesRadar+ recently interviewed Producer Hisashi Nogami and it turns out that Rare's classic N64 FPS Perfect Dark from 2000 played a significant part in the prototyping process for the game.
Starting out with the goal of not using any of Nintendo's existing IP such as Mario or Zelda for the direction of Splatoon, the talented developers at Nintendo began looking for other sources of inspiration. Nogami notes that the idea was to create "something fun, something new, something different, not a shooter."
Thankfully inspiration wasn't far away as Nogami explains:
The development team is made up of people who play games a lot, and among them are people who play shooting games a lot, including Mr. [Yusuke] Amano, one of the game's directors, who I've heard has spent his college years playing Perfect Dark.
As game designers who play games, you can't really help observing things you like and don't like, and having those have some degree of influence on your thinking. The best way to express this is that it forms a base of thought that you bring into game development, but it doesn't directly influence the game development.
So while it is noted that Perfect Dark doesn't directly influence Splatoon's development, it is certainly a part of its DNA. It has now been 15 years since the development of Perfect Dark and many consider the FPS genre to be getting a bit stale. With every new Call of Duty game we get technical advances, but the core formula never really changes much. Like Perfect Dark all those years ago, Splatoon seeks to offer something different rather than be just another forgettable FPS in an already crowded marketplace.
From what you have seen of the colourful gameplay of Splatoon can you see any similaralities to Perfect Dark? As always let us know your thoughts with a comment below.
[source gamesradar.com]
Comments 41
Geez!! I miss Perfect Dark. Knowing what I know about from the development of the game, my chances of getting Platoon
went from 90% to 100!!!
Wow, that was a stretch... Grasping at straws for a little clickbait, it worked.
"THE FUTURE IS DARK!", read the tagline for PD.
Well, the future has turned out to be somewhat more colourful than predicted...
Shame they couldn't take more influence and add 4 player local multiplayer!!! How was this possible back in the day on an n64 but not now!!!
Already preordered the pack with the squiddy amiibo.
Release day needs to come faster!
I've never played Perfect Dark, so I can't say I do.
But I really like how Splatoon looks FUN. I mean really fun, I've never seen a shooter that I looked fun the way Splatoon does. I already pre-ordered the game with the squid Amiibo (^_^) I'm probably going to get the two other Splatoon Amiibos as well.
"Splatoon seeks to offer something different rather than be just another forgettable FPS in an already crowded marketplace."
While that's true in general, it's not true of the Wii U marketplace. In fact the opposite is true as there are hardly any FPS's on Wii U. I can't think of one actually...
For those with a PS4/X1 it doesn't matter, but anyone who only has a Wii U as a home console might be appreciative of a "normal" FPS.
I can't really think of any similarities, but that is probably because I have never played the original Perfect Dark in the first place. I've played the Perfect Dark on Xbox 360 though, and I consider it to be a pretty good game in its own right. Loved the color palette and soundtrack. Good stuff!
Except it's a third person shooter...
I can't really see the influence.
If anything it's like Team Fortress.
@arronishere It brought a lot of little things. Basically Goldeneye 2 though. I don't think I have ever had as much fun with a fps since Perfect Dark. There was even a planned mode to scan your own face into the game, but Nintendo decided against people running around shooting people they know in real life haha.
@arronishere
Perfect Dark did a lot of things. IT was one of the first games to have adaptive and learning AI, (All fully customizable in Multiplayer) Co-Op play as well as the coined "Counter-Op" play, high graphic threshold (For the N64 - Was one of the games that required a Expansion Pack to run normally, and even then you could make the take a second to load you 16 Bot deathmatch with 4 other players.) as well a ton of created gameplay modes and options with a ton of customization. It's a really good game, for its time and now - Simply because no one has tried to do as much since. Very fun game.
What and how that directly correlates to Splatoon, I do not know, but at least the devs had good taste. :s
I'm still on the fence on whether to get a Splatoon Amiibo or not...
Ah well.
Where's the 4 player split screen then?
I'm sorry but I just don't see it, not even slightly. I get more of a Garden Warfare vibe from Splatoon.
Ah Perfect Dark.....back in the stone age when Nintendo had the go-to console for FPS games. Nintendo had balls back then!
@Dpullam
Oh, yes. The game has a very carefully crafted atmosphere. Light/ shadow effects are excellent. And the soundtrack is out-friggin'-standing.
@Gobelee
I remember that. Photos were planned to be uploaded from a Game Boy Camera using a Transfer Pak.
@OriginalSpiff
Yes, Counter-Operative is a unique mode in Perfect Dark. One person playing a single-player mission as usual and another one in the role of a random enemy... I don't know if any other FPS has ever done anything similar.
My favorite level in the N64 Perfect Dark was the one where you teamed up with three other people and shot paint on a wall and then turned into a squid and swam in it.
I thought I was the only one who saw the similarities between these two games, but at least now we know it was intentional.
"You can't help but notice things you like and don't like"--does anyone else think of Call of Duty here?
I really hope Splatoon proves to be a hit for Nintendo, if only critically.
Goldeneye had paintball mode, mystery solved!
Perfect Dark did it have voice chat? No? Oh well they got that right at least.
@TwilightAngel The XBLA port does have voice chat.
Sucks that rareware was bought by Microsoft. Wouldent perfect dark just be great for the n64 virtual console!
@simonthomas6
Yeah. How Nintendo ever let Rare get away from them is the biggest head-scratcher of all time. They helped Nintendo make the N64 a success when there was VERY LITTLE help, or hope, at the time. Imagine if Nintendo had managed to buy them. We could have had new Banjo-Kazooie games on Gamecube & Wii/Wii-U and they could have developed the new Donkey Kong Country games while Retro was busy with Metroid and whatever else. Not to mention all the VC games we are missing out on: Wizards&Warriors, Battletoads, RC Pro-Am, Cobra Triangle, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, Blast Corp, Perfect Dark.... It's sad.
PAINTBALL MODE. YES.
Add local multiplayer to this game!!!! Add team voice chat and or party chat to this game!!!! I promise the results won't be as disappointing as its about to be! You know Nintendo should just get with the times as allow you to voice party chat at anytime with anyone and avoid creators cutting games short! This is soo sad If they don't fix it!
Does this mean we're getting an x-ray paintball sniper rifle that allows me to shoot squids through walls?
Perfect Dark is an amazing game, so I guess I will have to definitely get Splatoon on release.
@ULTRA-64 more players requires more processing.
@SamirMalik well, of course they do. What's your point man?
and conker too..... I wish that masterpiece was put on the n64 VC also.
That laptop gun, though.
God I played Perfect Dark to death on the N64. A few years ago me and a few friends got it out to play some death matches, I still had my character saved on my controller pak. After a couple matches my one friend wanted to make his own character. He accidentally deleted my character because someone else was fiddling with their controller. I died a little bit inside after that happened.
There's a lot more similarities than people think. Prefect Dark innovated with each gun having a secondary function (which Splatoon is doing), I don't recall any FPS doing that before it came out. The guns in Goldeneye were so bland compared to PD. I see some inspiration from it put into Splatoon with the turret, reminded me of the laptop gun. I think Nintendo may have tried to make this a FPS but because of the ink-swim mechanic they decided to do it all in 3rd person.
So it comes full circle huh?
Hope they release a demo
@arronishere Nothing really, it was just fun at the time.
Just because one the devs played Perfect Dark in the past, it doesn't make that game a direct or indirect source of inspiration/influence for Splatoon. Sure, having played Perfect Dark contributed to Yusuke Amanos gaming experience which in turn may have contributed to his developing experience.
But maybe the development of Splatoon also was influenced by the way that Yusuke Amano's parents raised him or when and where he was born. Also Splatoon is influenced by the simple fact that Yusuke Amano is alive. Both make more sense to me than Amano having played Perfect Dark.
But If you wanted to make such a ridiculous analogy like with Perfect Dark, you could also say that the real world we live in influenced/inspired Splatoon because Splatoon also has three dimensions. Or that Splatoon was inspired by FIFA, because both games are in colour. Or that Splatoon was inspired by the movie Platoon because hey, they share the same characters in their name!
It's just absurd.
Shame on you, Nintendo Life, for choosing such a lurid and shady article title. Those are the methods tabloids (and unreliable sports news sites) usually use. I would've expected more from NL.
@rdrunner1178 From what I remember, most of the key members of Rare left to form their own companies. That's probably why they didn't keep the studio.
@CrazyMetroid
I just hate it when papers or websites publish such non-news as news. And I really find it silly to call Perfect Dark an influence for Splatoon without any real foundation for that. You can expect almost every game designer to have played some videogames in the past. That's no news.
@Ernest_The_Crab
Although that's true (luckily, otherwise there wouldn't be a spiritual successor to Banjo & Kazooie in the making), Rare still exists as a studio owned by Microsoft...
It was 420 day... Maybe he was still stoned?
Perfect dark was epic but i still loved 007 Goldeneye over that game for some reason. In Perfect Dark id play my brother back in the day pick teams and we'd both pick which bots we'd like in turns to accompany our squads i like the different personalities they gave the bots was interesting indeed. Play that best out of 3 then go play some mario party mario kart 64 or smash bros 64. In Goldeneye we'd play license to kill alot too fun times i miss those days indeed.
@rdrunner1178 Man, it is a real shame they let Rare slip away. For both companies. That virtual console list you bring up makes me drool. Would love Jet Force Gemini, Goldeneye, or Perfect Dark to get the same treatment Ocarina and Majoras got for the 3DS. A guy can dream I guess.
Absolutely not a FPS fan, but this game looks like a lot of fun. If Nintendo does the online component properly, I'll scoop this up right away.
@arronishere the AI mostly, you have to see it as a game from 2000, see what other games were doing up to that point
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