Interview: Contact, the RPG that brings 8-player online to DS

25 July 2006

Leave A Comment

Posted by:Ferry

Suda 51 describes Contact as an action RPG based around the search for pieces of a crystal, but that’s the simple explanation! On the surface, it’s about an alien professor who crash-lands on Earth. The crash also sucks in Terry, a young man who is recruited by the professor to help him find the crystal pieces of his spacecraft’s power source. The player controls Terry and has to explore a series of islands, gaining experience and improving his skills as he progresses.

Terry has a lot of statistics that affect his performance. All of these are updated in real time, so Terry will develop according to how the player uses him. There’s also a magic system based around a book of stickers. The player peels these stickers off the book and then places directly onto the game world in order to get certain things to happen. The interview below explains the 8-player online Wi-Fi mode and much more about this quirky Japanese game that Atlus is bringing to the US on September 12.

Can you give us a brief introduction to Contact, and to yourselves?

Ogura-san: Contact is an adventure game that involves the player and the character in the game in a long journey and huge adventure. That is the main theme of Contact. It’s using the dual screens so that events are happening on both screens but independently of each other. With the two screens you are more involved in the game – we are using them in a new way that wasn’t used before. It’s going to a big, huge impact for the world (laughs).

Suda-san: I am the main manager on the Contact project, supervising everything from the beginning to the end. In Contact there is a character called YanYan, a kind of cat-dog; it was my idea to put this character in the game. My main focus was about YanYan. That’s pretty much everything I did in Contact (laughs).

The main director for Contact is Akira Ueda, the director of Shining Soul and Shining Soul II. I really trust him and think I can count on him. There were never any problems when he was supervising Shining Soul I and II.

What attracted you to the DS hardware and how have you taken advantage of its unique features?

Ogura-san: Contact was first in development on the Game Boy Advance, but during development the Nintendo DS was released so we just changed from GBA to DS. One of the main features of the Nintendo DS was the wi-fi connection and we wanted to use this feature for Contact.

Which system feature excited you the most in the transition from GBA to DS?

Ogura-san: Using the mic, I really liked that feature.

Suda-san: It wasn’t really about the specs or new features of the DS like with Brain Training or Nintendogs. More people were carrying a Nintendo DS with them so for me it was an opportunity to make a game for more people. One of the most interesting parts of the Nintendo DS wasn’t just a new feature or anything, but that the DS was touching more people.

What’s the philosophy behind Contact, and what makes it unique from other games in the RPG genre?

Ogura-san: One of the main differences from other adventure games is what you can see on the top and bottom screens; the graphics are really different. The director, Mr Ueda, is a graphic designer and he wanted to have really nice graphics compared to the other adventure games on the DS. That’s why you can see the graphics are really good in the game.

Suda-san: Mr. Akira Ueda was actually working for Square Enix before, he was in charge of Super Mario RPG, all the graphics and visuals. I think that he’s one of the best graphic designers in the world.

You’ve mentioned a couple of DS games already like Brain Training and Nintendogs. Which DS games inspired you when developing Contact?

Suda-san: For Contact we didn’t really use any other titles for inspiration. When we were working on it we were really focusing everything and had to work really hard to get it done so we didn’t have time to play or find ideas from other games. That’s why for us Contact is a really original game made from scratch from the beginning. We didn’t really need inspiration from any other games.

You also touched on the wi-fi features of Contact. Could you tell us a bit about them?

Ogura-san: One of the main wi-fi features is that you can group up to eight players in the same game and play together with your friends. When you are connected to the wi-fi there are new characters that might appear and new events that will happen. The more that you connect to the internet the more characters and events you will have to play with.

The cute and friendly world of Contact is a drastic departure from Killer 7. Why move to Contact after Killer 7?

Suda-san: In this case the main director is Mr. Akira Ueda. I would’ve made something more crazy (laughs) but I’ve really enjoyed working on this title. Even though I make very crazy games I’m just a normal person, but on the opposite Akira Ueda is a crazy guy (laughs).

Ogura-san: It’s true! (laughs)

The only footage I could find for Contact was this Japanese commercial for the game:


Read the rest of the interview at C&VG.