Nintendo gets Matsuno

In the latest issue of NGamer (A UK Nintendo Magazine) they have a feature titled: "Nintendo makes it's OWN Fantasy?".

The article reads:

"Yasumi Matsuno is a legendary developer in Japan. His games Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII have both got 40/40 scores from Famitsu. He has left Square Enix but after leaving nobody knew where he was.

He was later seen on a Wii promotion video at a Pre-Release Press event in Japan.

Well we have just heard from a trusted source where he is right now and what he's been up to since leaving Square Enix. First of all know that he is DEFINITELY working on Wii but he is much closer to Nintendo then you think.

You see since Satoru Iwata became President he has wanted Nintendo to excel more in the RPG field. He has pushed a lot of money into Fire Emblem since becoming President but he also always wanted to create a new First Party RPG owned by Nintendo that is as popular as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are in Japan.

Both Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto know Matsuno is the Director of two 40/40 scoring RPGs. Once word he left Square Enix reached Nintendo, Satoru Iwata contacted him and asked him to join Nintendo. He accepted and was allocated to Nintendo EAD Tokyo as it was closest to his current location.

At EAD Tokyo Matsuno got to play Super Mario Galaxy a lot and also got in-depth knowledge of the Wii hardware and controls from the developers there. Iwata wanted him to start planning on a new First Party RPG for Wii and allocated him a group of 4 developers to work with and get his vision presentable in some form. This process took around 8 months.

So Matsuno was at EAD Tokyo for 8 months. He joined around April 2006 and it was near the end of his stay there that his face was shown on the Wii promotion video at a Pre-Release Press event in Japan.

Here is what he said on the video:

"The Wii controller makes total sense when you think about FPS-like games, but my question was, will the controls fit other existing games? However, when I first tried Mario Galaxy, I realized that the controller fit the game almost scarily well. It allows you to intuitively feel the game and its atmosphere."
'Graphics (these days) have evolved, and there are many games claiming that this generates a more realistic atmosphere. However, there are very few games that have a control interface that lives up to this atmosphere. With the Wii controller you can actually feel like you're touching or living in this atmosphere."

Notice how he has played Super Mario Galaxy and has magically got the Nintendo mentality of Gameplay over Graphics even though Vagrant Story and FFXII pushed their respective consoles to the limits? Someone has been employed.

Matsuno showed his RPG for Wii and naturally it was impressive. Iwata wanted it to be fully realised in a game but they had no team to make it. Therefore Iwata started to look outside Nintendo for help.

They needed a development team that had experience with RPGs, and could produce graphics on par with the best in the genre such as Square Enix. Iwata then recalled Monolith working on Wii and that most of the Xenogears and Chrono Cross team were at that studio.

This is where Matsuno would make their First Party RPG. Matsuno returned to EAD Tokyo continuing the planning of the RPG while preparing for a development team to come available.

Iwata then eventually bought Monolith from Namco Bandai and Matsuno has already settled in the studio and has his own development team currently in the early stages of making our First Party Final Fantasy killer.

He has united with people that have made classics like Chrono Cross and Xenogears. Monolith is focusing on Disaster: Day of Crisis, a Survival game on Wii, but once complete Matsuno's RPG will take over completely and hopefully become a big RPG series in Japan.

Monolith to Nintendo now are what Square were to Nintendo back in the SNES era.

If true (which it probably is since we've already seen him in that Wii developers video), Nintendo really got lucky. Expect some great RPGs this time around. Like the last sentence of the article says, Monolith really could end up being the new Square. And that means Nintendo might actually have a good amount of good RPGs for the first time since SNES.

This is excellent news. GC lacked RPGs, but it looks like the Wii might prove to be a very different system in that aspect.

This is great news. I can't wait to hear more news of our first Monolith RPG.

IN-****ING-SANE!!

I was pissed that he left Square-Enix, but the fact that he went to Nintendo and is working with Monolithsoft... HOLY ****. FINAL FANTASY TACTICS MEETS XENOGEARS. ORGY! ORGY I SAY!

Monolith has become the only part of Nintendo that has interested me anymore, and to see what they can do is going to be amazing.

Hu-and-za.

This is exelent news. More RPGs for Nintendo.

Great news. I already thought that Monolith would have helped Nintendo reached new heights and grounds; but now that Yasumi is working for them, I feel that he's going to help achieve that goal quicker and with even a more higher success rate. As Mr. Wonderful, Monolith is the only thing that even sparks my interest with Nintendo anymore.

Here's to hoping they finally get some good RPG's out there; and maybe even perhaps some prequels/sequels to the original Xenogears (which actually, to me, was one of the greatest RPG's of all time). Although, that's kind of hoping for a little too much.

I have just had the BIGGEST joygasim ever!

the Wii needs An RPG most definatly

the Wii needs An RPG most definatly

hells yeah! I have never played an RPG on a gamecube, wii, nintendo64 in my whole LIFE! why? because nintendo sucks and will not make RPGS for anything other than handhelds so it seems. Thats why I have been playstation faithful for the past 5 years. Anyway, I am an RPG junkie, So this is another reason for me to pick up wii and not a 360 for blue dragon.

Originally Posted by zeldask8r0990

hells yeah! I have never played an RPG on a gamecube, wii, nintendo64 in my whole LIFE! why? because nintendo sucks and will not make RPGS for anything other than handhelds so it seems. Thats why I have been playstation faithful for the past 5 years. Anyway, I am an RPG junkie, So this is another reason for me to pick up wii and not a 360 for blue dragon.

X-box has the best RPG's, blue dragon looks awesome, but paper mario was an rpg for the N64 and GC (better than FF in my opinion)

Originally Posted by lavmiester

X-box has the best RPG's, blue dragon looks awesome, but paper mario was an rpg for the N64 and GC (better than FF in my opinion)

Xbox? If we're talking about Western Style RPG's, then Xbox has them but in the case of JRPG's Sony has had that genre tightly in it's fist for quite a while now. I also heard that Blue Dragon didn't do all that well, it was said to be just another cookie cutter RPG. Oh well, it looked like it had a lot of potential.

Anyways, the news is awesome, Nintendo has been really weak with RPG's ever since the SNES died out. The N64 had a great RPG title and Gamecube had a couple of RPG's under its belt as well but it's nothing compared to how things used to be. I don't expect this one guy to bring an onslaught of RPG's to the Wii but hopefully we'll see a new franchise introduced that'll be good enough to stay for a long time. Atleast longer than Golden Sun, Camelot is apparantly working on a new Golf title for the Wii. There's always a chance that Golden Sun could stay a handheld RPG while the console gets something else. Monolith is a talented company and Matsuno has an impressive past as well, I'm sure whatever they pump out will fulfill the needs of all JRPG players who own a Wii.

Blue dragon runs like a classic rpg with new graphics thats all , its still a great game

This is good news. VERY good news.
I will put more emphasis,
this is VERY VERY VERY good news.

*poops pants*

.....

.....

......


Oh. My. God. PLEASE tell me this is true! Please! Do you have a source for this, Slime?

It's good that Nintendo recognizes the importance of RPGs, that genre still remains to be a goldmine in Japan and has a pretty hefty following here in America. When you consider that Nintendo consoles have lacked them for the last few years, and that Wii doesn't appear to be loaded with them, a killer-ap to come from Nintendo themselves would go over extremley well with the fans.

Let's see something different than the normal turn-based jazz and we could have a winner here.

Let's see something different than the normal turn-based jazz and we could have a winner here.

NO! LEAVE IT TURNED BASED! I hate what they did with final fantasy 12! curse them! turn based forever! the only slightly cool non turnbased RPG I ever did play was...(well techinicly lunar knights is and RPG, but what I was going to say was) ....oh crap...whats it called now....galaxy pirates? lost galaxy? treasure galaxy? Dammit! I forgot what its called, but you know what I'm talking about! that cool space pirate game were you have random encounters but the fighting is in real time, But theres still hp, ap, mp, And special attacks, and the same thing but real time, That game was okay, but western and traditional RPG's are still good. If nintendo doesnt stop cranking em out, I will seriously consider boycotting wii. CRANK EM NINTENDO!

Rogue Galaxy is the game you're thinking of, and it's exactly what this new title should be because turn-based RPGs are quickly becoming one of the most stale branches of video games.

Originally Posted by zeldask8r0990

NO! LEAVE IT TURNED BASED! I hate what they did with final fantasy 12! curse them! turn based forever! the only slightly cool non turnbased RPG I ever did play was...(well techinicly lunar knights is and RPG, but what I was going to say was) ....oh crap...whats it called now....galaxy pirates? lost galaxy? treasure galaxy? Dammit! I forgot what its called, but you know what I'm talking about! that cool space pirate game were you have random encounters but the fighting is in real time, But theres still hp, ap, mp, And special attacks, and the same thing but real time, That game was okay, but western and traditional RPG's are still good. If nintendo doesnt stop cranking em out, I will seriously consider boycotting wii. CRANK EM NINTENDO!

Oh yeah, let's screw uniqueness, go with generic turn-based battles!

Oh, and yes, this is good news. Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII are some of the two best RPGs I've ever played, I'm looking forward to this.