Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise Preview

VideoGamer.com: Is there anything you wanted to include in the DS game that didn't make it?

PM: Loads of things.

VideoGamer.com: Is there one thing you really wish was in there.

PM: I genuinely can't think of anything right now. One of the funny things about this project is, you always have that big list of things at the end, and if you're going to do a sequel it's always a good start. This has been an unusual project in that it went extremely smooth. I personally feel that the lads on the team absolutely nailed it.

VideoGamer.com: How do you focus test a game aimed at such a young audience?

PM: I just turned 40 and I'm the biggest kid here so I wouldn't worry about that. We have plenty of very adult kids here. We haven't had any children play, not formerly. One or two people have taken the game home and shown it to other people. You know, it's not just kids. There are a lot of people out there who haven't played a traditional video game before, and we have to attract those people. My wife doesn't play a lot of games, but she is particularly taken in by the style of this game. When she started playing it sucked her in. It's very wife friendly if I'm allowed to say that.

VideoGamer.com: Nintendo recently launched the Nintendo Channel on the Wii, which offers DS game demos. Is that something you've looked at for Viva Piñata?

PM: Our first port of call is you guys coming here today and hopefully loving the game, as we do. We are discussing other things that we might have a go at, but I can't discuss those today.

VideoGamer.com: Nintendo market the DS as something you can play as a family. There's no co-op in VP on DS. Is that something you've thought about?

PM: We thought about it. There are a lot of technical challenges in creating the product that we have done. We did have discussions about allowing some sort of co-op mode where two people can play on two machines in the same garden. There is a little bit of wireless connectivity - you can swap crates full of things between DS units - but that's all we went for.

VideoGamer.com: How much free reign has the DS team had to come up with their own thing?

PM: We did take the models from the first game. We did a lot of work on those. There are a lot of new assets in there. There's a lot of creativity in there. When you spend some time playing the game you'll see that there's actually an awful lot of new things in there. It's such a huge game it's very difficult to demonstrate. We want people to spend more time in the garden rather than outside looking at other things, which is why we put a much more direct interface in there. We wanted to increase some of the things that you can do in there. The Taff fly, rather than being just being another Piñata, is something that you can use as a tool, and then you have this chain of events that you can look after.

VideoGamer.com: There's much talk that the original Viva Piñata didn't sell all that well...

PM: There's a lot of internet talk. You know what. We don't want to discuss all of that talk that's out there. There's a lot of chatter. Even if you give someone a real fact, two or three levels of Chinese whispers can turn that one on its head. Viva Piñata sold very well. It's a very very good game that was critically acclaimed and we love it to death. And that's why we've done more of them. We're very very proud, the whole company is very proud of these games.

VideoGamer.com: Is that why you decided to bring Piñata back instead of working on a totally new IP? I think many people assumed that after the first game that would be it.

PM: People can assume what they want. We are extremely happy with Viva Piñata. It's a completely different direction for us. Rare is diversifying in the types of titles it's trying to write. We're trying to push forwards. We're trying to develop a lot of new content. This was something that is very different. We had some incredibly talented people behind some of the key ideas that created that title. We're not going to walk away from that, we love it. I absolutely love this game. I've been here 20 years and I love this game, it's one of my favourite Rare games. Yeah, I'm sitting here plugging it, but it genuinely is and I'm being straight about that.

VideoGamer.com: Are we going to see more spin-offs?

PM: I cannot discuss future projects (laughs). I cannot do that, sorry.

VideoGamer.com: How are you going to make sure the right people know about Viva Piñata on DS? You seem to have made it more approachable, but are you going to do any more?

PM: It's not that we've made it more approachable for people. We've deliberately targeted the audience that we know is there on that platform. And that's what we would do on any title that we wrote on any platform. You look at your audience and then decide if it's a good business thing to even go for that. In this case we have no hesitation with Viva Piñata because I cannot iterate enough how much we love that.

VideoGamer.com: Rare has a massive heritage. You've got lots of N64 games that are hugely popular. Are we going to see any of those ported to DS? We've had Diddy Kong Racing already. Perfect Dark on DS seems like a really good fit.

PM: Yeah, I've read those stories. But guess what, I can't really comment on future projects.

VideoGamer.com: No problem. Thanks for your time.