Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I don’t go to 1up much anymore, but every once in a while I poke my head in over there and they’ve got a feature or interview that really tickles my fancy. This time, it’s an interview with Treasure’s president, Masato Maegawa.

Treasure is somewhat of a rarity in game development: a very small developer with a long streak of cult favorite games, stretching from Gunstar Heroes on Sega Genesis (which appeared on Wii’s Virtual Console last month) up to a current shooter in development for 360.

The interview dropped a few pieces of choice info I was happy to hear about. Read on.

I knew that a 360 shooter was in development for a while. This interview confirms my guess at the linked post that it will be 3D models operating on a 2D architecture, which is good news all around. Always feels good to be right.

The interview makes it clear that developing for 360 is hard because of its sheer power in comparison to last generation’s architecture, and that development on PS3 is all but out of the question. It’s an interesting perspective that seems to be the reverse of many western developers, who say things like, “no, we won’t develop on the Wii because only the PS3 is powerful enough for our game which is going to pwn you.”

He also says they’d like to develop for Xbox Live Arcade, but they don’t know what they would do there, aside from four other Treasure games from the Genesis that will likely end up on both Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade. Sin and Punishment is mentioned as a game that Nintendo has said will be on Virtual Console, but probably not for a while.

Most interesting to me is the following:

1UP: How about Nintendo? Treasure has traditionally been very supportive of Nintendo platforms, so we’re wondering if you have plans for the Wii.

MM: We love the Wii and want to work on it in the future, but right now we’ve got our hands full with the 360 and DS. It’s just a matter of freeing up people in order to create a team to work on it. But absolutely, in the future, we’ll make a Wii game. We’ve already been in discussions with Nintendo about it. We’re just brainstorming right now, but I am already certain we’ll be able to do something really unique with it.

Hands full with the 360… and DS? What’s Treasure doing on the DS? Both Bleach games are out already in Japan, right? Something more than Bleach 2′s localization going on at Treasure for DS might be nice.

Have a look at Treasure’s list of games right here.