1UP: So, you’re aiming for an end of year (December) release for Rygar, but it might get bumped back to Q1 ‘08. What would cause a delay if there was one?

Keisuke Kikuchi: The PS2 version of Rygar had a lot of complicated features, customization, different things that made it very difficult to bring it to the Wii, so that’s pushing our schedule back. It’s taking a little longer than anticipated. Plus, we’re recreating the Wii control scheme for the Diskarmor control, but the more time we put into it the better it gets, so we’re just trying to find a happy medium in optimizing the controls.

And as far as new features, the placement of the new enemies and such are completely finished. From this point forward, more time will be spent matching the graphical quality to the Wii, and that’s going to take some time.

1UP: How do you mean ‘matching’ the graphics? Are you enhancing them so they’re better than the PS2, or does the Wii do something with a color palette that makes things look richer?

KK: I mean basically to make the graphics look better specifically on the Wii.

1UP: Does Rygar support the Wii’s 16:9 widescreen configuration?

KK: No, it retains the original dimension of the PS2 game.

1UP: OK, so my first major question for you is why are you basing this on a five year-old PS2 game? It seems like you’re going through so much trouble to create a new control scheme that lets you whip the Diskarmor using the Wii Remote, you redesigned the character, and you’re creating new enemies and bosses, and you’re redoing a lot of the graphics. It seems like if you were going to go through this much trouble then you might as well have made a whole new game.

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