Is Capcom making Kid Icarus, anything for Wii?
Aside from the always dominant first-party titles, we N hardware fans are often looking excitedly forward to third party offerings. It’s been a while since exclusives really mattered to me. I think it was Capcom who broke me of that when I was waiting and waiting for Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube and it was announced for PS2. My first thought was that Nintendo must be upset about losing that exclusive, and then I was concerned it would ONLY come to PS2. Fortunately, it still came to the Cube as planned, somewhat before the PS2 port launched.
Capcom didn’t do as well as some on Nintendo’s home console last generation. Some being, let’s say, Sega, who did very well with their Sonic the Hedgehog and Monkey Ball titles in particular. Capcom spent a lot of energy working with Nintendo last time around, producing Resident Evil remakes and originals, all of which were excellent, worthwhile games that didn’t get nearly the sales numbers they deserved. Hell, even I bought all of them used. So far, all Wii’s got announced by Capcom is Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, which is a composite remake of parts of all four Resident Evil games, redone in RE4 style. I can’t think of a single other Capcom game on Wii, unless you count Street Fighter II (SNES) on Virtual Console. Keiji Inafune, Mega Man’s creator, has said he’s working on something but he won’t talk about it yet. Perhaps a Mega Man game.
No, Capcom can’t have enjoyed their commitment to the Gamecube much at all, and perhaps Dead Phoenix is the best illustration of what that means.
Dead Phoenix, if you don’t recall, was a game that reminded me a lot of Space Harrier, except with up to date graphics and instead of a dude with a jet-pack, you’re a dude with big feathery wings.
Looks nice, right? Well, it’s canned, but many have been thinking it might adapt into a nice new 3D “Kid Icarus” title (though I hope they’d ditch the ‘kid’ part and make Metroid Prime-scale changes to the world). All that points at that is the thought that hey, it’s a guy with wings. Additionally, the surprise appearance of relatively low-profile Nintendo character Pit (that’s the dude with the wings) in Super Smash Bros Brawl in a more rough-and-tumble appearance… such as it is… makes one think Nintendo has plans for him. Also, Miyamoto “joked” in an interview not too long ago that he’d be making a new Kid Icarus game, sort of.
Would Capcom build a game for Nintendo’s console using one of their properties? Well, Capcom’s Flagship studio co-built several of the handheld Zelda games with Nintendo, including the most recent one, Minish Cap. But Nintendo’s doing Phantom Hourglass without Capcom. Not sure what to make of that. Perhaps Nintendo and Capcom are on the outs. Maybe not.
I would like to see a great developer like Capcom take the Icarus franchise and turn it into something modern and exciting, perhaps even an RPG. I don’t think it would work well as a FPS type game, but I think we all thought that of Metroid, and we were wrong there. And hey, both Metroid and Kid Icarus were made by Gunpei Yokoi, came out on the same day back in the eighties, and ran on the same engine. The leaps here get smaller and smaller.
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Subnet6
