{"id":110822,"date":"2020-03-26T20:14:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T20:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/360195"},"modified":"2020-03-26T20:14:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T20:14:00","slug":"dont-miss-how-mario-kart-influenced-nintendos-fighting-game-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/03\/26\/dont-miss-how-mario-kart-influenced-nintendos-fighting-game-arms\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Miss: How Mario Kart influenced Nintendo’s fighting game, ARMS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThough they are different genres, Mario Kart<\/em> and ARMS<\/em> are like siblings,\u201d said Kosuke Yabuki, Game Director of Mario Kart 7<\/em> and 8<\/em> and producer of ARMS<\/em> at the 2018 Game Developers Conference.<\/p>\n

While there may appear to be few surface-level similarities between the games, Yabuki argued that lessons learned on Nintendo\u2019s long-running racing game series informed many aspects of Nintendo’s new fighting game IP.<\/p>\n

It was while chatting with a designer on his team, that Yabuki began to consider the possibility of creating a fighting game where the camera was position behind the player\u2019s character, as in Mario Kart<\/em>, rather than from the side.<\/p>\n

Fighting games typically use a side-on perspective because it makes it much easier for the player to judge the distance between combatants, he said.<\/p>\n

What if it was possible to position the camera in such a way that players could have the same sense of spacing and control from a Mario <\/em>Kart<\/em>-esque behind-the-character perspective?<\/p>\n

Yabuki\u2019s team prototyped the idea using rudimentary 3D characters whose arms extended across a boxing ring, to give a clear sense of distance and space. As in the final game, players could switch apply different weapon-like fists to their characters\u2019 hands, and bend the arm as it extended in order to chase its target.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like a shooter in a way,\u201d said Yabuki. \u201cEven at this early stage, you could have a tactical battle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVery few of the prototypes that the R&D teams design at Nintendo blossom into commercial games,\u201d Yabuki said. This is because Nintendo expressly looks for game ideas that deviate from existing game styles and fashions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf [Shigeru] Miyamoto asks me the question: \u201cWhat\u2019s different about this, and I don\u2019t have an answer, then I\u2019m finished,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

As Yabuki’s team added art and animation to the game, at first only the fist extended. They found that the action on screen was too slight and unsatisfying. When the team changed the animation so that the entire arm extended, ARMS<\/em> found its essential and defining novelty. \u201cFlicking the Joy-Con made it feel like your own arm was extending into the screen,\u201d Yabuki said.<\/p>\n

Extending arms also felt like a Nintendo-esque conceit. The team did not feel that the extendable arm function needed to be explained in the game\u2019s fiction. \u201cThe answer to the answer to the question: \u2018Why do these characters have extendable arms?\u2019 is,\u201d Yabuki joked, \u201cBecause Nintendo.\u201d  <\/p>\n

\u201cUsing a behind-the-back camera allowed us to flesh out the 3D stages, something we\u2019d been doing all along for Mario Kart,<\/em>\u201d he explained. The team put \u201ca lot of effort and thought\u201d into the characters\u2019 clothing in order to get across that this is a serious sport in the ARMS<\/em> world. \u201cWhen working on Mario Kart 8<\/em> we made a lot of fictitious brand names and logos, and we were able to use that experience in ARMS<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

ARMS<\/em> also drew inspiration from Mario Kart<\/em> in the way in which it introduced the element of luck into the competitive arena. \u201cThe luck element in Mario Kart<\/em> is huge,\u201d Yabuki said, in reference to the race-upsetting role that shells and other items present in the racing game series.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat element of luck is also present in ARMS<\/em>\u201d, specifically in the sense that players don\u2019t know precisely where the punch will go, or whether it will land dependent on the opponent\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

With such a variety of different character and arm permutations in the game, Nintendo used AI matches to ensure that no one particular combination was significantly better or worse than another. Balance has continued to be tweaked post-launch, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also spent a lot of time considering the characters\u2019 athletic bodies,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is, admittedly, a little different to Mario Kart<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In pursuing the art and technique of good game design, no experience is wasted, said Yabuki. \u201cGood game design is universal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThough they are different genres, Mario Kart and ARMS are like siblings,\u201d said Kosuke Yabuki, Game Director of Mario Kart 7 and 8 and producer of ARMS at the 2018 Game Developers Conference. While there may appear to be few surface-level similarities between the games, Yabuki argued that lessons learned on Nintendo\u2019s long-running racing game series informed many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}