Interview de Rafael Baptista

Puissance-Pocket : Can you tell us more about your two new games (Star Wars : New Droid Army and Rocket Power: Beach Bandits) ? And most importantly, what are the stories of the games ?

Rafael Baptista : About Star Wars: New droid army: The story in our game continues shortly after the story in Episode 2. The Jedi council receive a report from an informant on Tatooine about a strange kind of new droid that is made of a light saber resistant metal. Their informant goes missing and they send Anakin to investigate. You have to find the informant, and figure out who is making these droids and why. The adventure takes you through three planets until you find the who is behind this whole thing. Also you get a chance to settle an old score from Ep2.

The story of Rocket Power Beach Bandits is similar to the story of the Beach Bandits game on PS2. Schoohis ls is our for summer and the Rocket Power kids are planning to have lots of fun surfing at the beach... but when they get there they find that someone has stolen all the sand. A shady real estate developer, Eric Golem shows up and offers to help get the sand back. The rocket power kids have to figure out what happened to the sand and who is the mysterious Eric Golem.

Puissance-Pocket : How long did it takes for you to develop those games ?

Rafael Baptista : Both of these games took about 10 months to develop.

Puissance-Pocket : New Droid Army isn't the first game from the Star Wars franchise coming on GBA. What is new since the last Star Wars GBA game (engine, gameplay, graphics...) ?

Rafael Baptista : THQ has made 2 GBA star wars games before this ours. The first Star Wars game, "Jedi Power Battles" was mad by Hot Gen studios, and the second game, Episode 2 attack of the clones was made by David Palmer Studios. Our star wars game is entirely original and not based at all on the previous games. Our star wars game engine is extremely advanced. It is the fastest and most powerful 3d rendering engine on the GBA. We can render up to 6 characters on the screen of about 140 polygons each. We have dynamic lighting, anti-aliasing, transparency etc. Doing real time 3d allows us to have a large number of characters, and lost of extremely fluid animation. Our combat system is is really rich and interesting. You have 5 different lightsaber attacks, each of which consists of up to 3 strokes. Your Jedi has a 4 different blocks. You can deflect incoming blaster fire both using your blocks, and also when using your attacks. You have a whole bunch of force powers - push, jump, invisibility etc. There are an extremely large number of different star wars characters in our game. Our game is by far the best star wars game on GBA yet. And graphically I think it is the best looking GBA game yet.

Puissance-Pocket : What are your forthcoming projects on GBA ?

Rafael Baptista : We are working on two new GBA games, Faily Odd Parents and something else called "Tak and the Power of JuJu". We are not working on another star wars game.

Puissance-Pocket : These days, a rumor say that a new backlit GBA "2" will be released by Nintendo. It would have 2 additional buttons, a new design and a new processor. What do you think about that ? Did you hear anything from Nintendo ? (Question put before the announcement of the GBA SP)

Rafael Baptista : We have not received any information from Nintendo about a new GBA with backlit screen. All the information I have received from Nintendo indicates that they have no plans to ever make a GBA with a backlit screen. At this point it really makes no sense for Nintendo to change the specs of the GBA. That would divide their market in half just as they are gaining a decent installed base. I think the only thing that would cause Nintendo to release another handheld is if a competitor released a handheld that was more successful.

Many people are not aware of this, but Nintendo is constantly looking for ways to make the gba screen better. The screens on the newer units are higher contrast and nicer looking than the original screens. Just compare an original GBA purchased at launch with one being sold today and you will see a clear difference. Especially if you compare a US or Euro GBA with a Japanese one. The Japanese GBA get the screen improvements first.