{"id":6430,"date":"2017-11-28T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/11\/take_a_look_at_the_awesome_nes_splatoon_we_never_got_to_play"},"modified":"2017-11-28T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T14:00:00","slug":"take-a-look-at-the-awesome-nes-splatoon-we-never-got-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/11\/28\/take-a-look-at-the-awesome-nes-splatoon-we-never-got-to-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Take A Look At The Awesome NES Splatoon We Never Got To Play"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"picture embed centered picture-900x img-900x\">\n<div class=\"img\"><a title=\"industrial.png\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/11\/take_a_look_at_the_awesome_nes_splatoon_we_never_got_to_play\/attachment\/0\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/news\/2017\/11\/take_a_look_at_the_awesome_nes_splatoon_we_never_got_to_play\/attachment\/0\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"industrial.png\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/wiiu\/splatoon\">Splatoon<\/a><\/strong> is fantastic in 3D, but what exactly would it look like in 2D? That&#8217;s what former Vitei (<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/3ds\/steel_diver\">Steel Diver<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/3ds-eshop\/tank_troopers\">Tank Troopers<\/a>)<\/strong> staffer\u00a0<span class=\"account-inline txt-ellipsis\"><a class=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NathanHeckel\">Nathan Heckel<\/a>\u00a0pondered last year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While I was at Vitei wrapping up work on Tank Troopers as a gameplay programmer, I wanted to start my own project to pitch to Nintendo for a follow-up contract,&#8221; explains\u00a0Heckel.\u00a0&#8220;As I&#8217;d been studying NES programming as a hobby for some time, I suggested the idea for a NES version of Splatoon to my former boss, Vitei CEO Giles Goddard.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Work progressed swiftly, with the prototype getting to the stage where it was possible to run, jump, shoot and transform, and &#8220;rudimentary&#8221; collision detection was implemented. Even the audio side of things began to develop. &#8220;<a class=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/marksparling\">Mark Sparling&#8217;s<\/a> MMC5 cover of &#8216;Splattack!&#8217; [which you can listen to below] plays in the background through the Famitracker driver,&#8221; says Heckel. &#8220;This all runs on real hardware using dev carts I had made from repurposed copies of <strong>Sangokushi II<\/strong> for the Famicom.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"object object-youtube\">\n<div class=\"youtube\">[embedded content] <\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Heckel also enlisted the help of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/wiiu-eshop\/pirate_pop_plus\"><strong>Pirate Pop Plus<\/strong><\/a> developer\u00a0Dadako&#8217;s Hawken King to create the visuals. The aim from the start wasn&#8217;t just to create a cool &#8220;demake&#8221; of Splatoon, but to somehow get it into the hands of players. &#8220;While actual cartridges would&#8217;ve been really cool, that was always the longest shot,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Short of that, I was hoping to have it packaged with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/splatoon_2\"><strong>Splatoon 2<\/strong><\/a> like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/wiiu-eshop\/star_fox_guard\"><strong>Star Fox Guard<\/strong><\/a> was packaged with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/wiiu\/star_fox_zero\"><strong>Star Fox Zero<\/strong><\/a>, used as a mini-game like the retro-themed diversions in Splatoon 1, sold on the Virtual Console, or included in a hypothetical 2nd version of the NES Classic Edition.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"object object-tweet\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p><span lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">what if Splatoon was a NES game? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/lei0Tuh6RB\">pic.twitter.com\/lei0Tuh6RB<\/a><\/span>\u2014 hawken (@hawkun) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hawkun\/status\/933906162696589312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 24, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Naturally, a project of this kind would need Nintendo&#8217;s official blessing, but sadly it wasn&#8217;t meant to be. Heckel thinks the project was simply the victim of bad timing. &#8220;In terms of presenting to Nintendo, I put together a set of slides outlining the progress on the demo, possible scope of the game, a development timeline, and sales avenues. I sent this to a member of the Splatoon team I was able to reach. Unfortunately, it didn&#8217;t work out. While I can&#8217;t speak for Nintendo, the pitch was sent after Splatoon 2 had been announced for the summer this year. Not having any visibility into unannounced projects, my guess had been that a sequel wouldn&#8217;t be out until the summer of 2018, and a NES version could be paired with it in some form. Instead, I caught them when they were probably very busy finishing the game.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, it might not be the end for this interesting venture, and Heckel says he&#8217;s open to continuing development &#8211; albeit with different visuals &#8211; assuming a publisher is willing to back him. &#8220;While I can&#8217;t use the Splatoon IP without a development contract with Nintendo, it&#8217;d be possible to repurpose it as a different title entirely. Continued development in full would depend on a publisher expressing interest.&#8221; If there are any publishers reading this who can help, but sure to get in touch &#8211; or, if you&#8217;re at Nintendo and you can make this happen, it&#8217;s time to <em>do the right thing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Splatoon is fantastic in 3D, but what exactly would it look like in 2D? That&#8217;s what former Vitei (Steel Diver, Tank Troopers) staffer\u00a0Nathan Heckel\u00a0pondered last year. &#8220;While I was at Vitei wrapping up work on Tank Troopers as a gameplay programmer, I wanted to start my own project to pitch to Nintendo for a follow-up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430","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=6430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}