Near the beginning of E3 on Thursday, me and Alex went to the Nintendo booth to play Zelda, Unfortunately, the lines for the game are 90 minutes long!! Luckily, Metroid other M was not as bad. Alex played that for awhile, so I headed over to play Donkey Kong Country Returns. A game opened up and I grabbed a Wiimote and Nunchuck. Another gentleman picked up the second controller. It was Takashi Iizuka. The head of Sonic Team whom I just interviewed days before. Though I doubt he recognized me now. I didn’t gush or talk Sonic with him. I just played the game with him.
The game starts in DK and Diddy Kongs house. You shake the Wiimote and Nunchuck like crazy to bust open the house and make your way down. Iizuka was Donkey Kong. I was Diddy. We made our way down the jungle area stomping on bird enemies when I found a cool new maneuver where Diddy can hop up on Donkey Kong and become one fighting team together. When Iizuka jumped, I could use Diddy’s hover rockets to slow DK’s decent making it easier to land. Also, shaking the Wiimote lets Diddy shoot bannas from his bananna gun while still riding on top of DK. “Oh, you’re on me?” Said Iizuka. “Ummm…yea.” I said as I figured out how to get off of him before it got to be a little bit awkward.
At one point, Iizuka’s DK died and I had to help smash him out of a barrel. Another trademark from the older games. The backgrounds are beautiful and ended up being totally interactive. Both me and Iizuka stupidly pass by a stomping area and jump off a cliff to the left. He almost did it again, but I realized our mistake. “This way.” I tell Iizuka and he follows me to a gold area you need to stomp on to bring up a new area up in the background. You do this by constantly shaking the Wiimote and Nunchuck to smash the ground. Then, we both took a barrel and got shot over into the background to fight some more enemies. Soon after, we reached the end, and I told him “Thank you.”
The game was great and a lot of fun. I can’t wait to play more of it this holiday season. Still though, I wonder if Iizuka will get any ideas from this for his next Sonic game? A Sonic/Tails co-op adventure perhaps?
LOL “your on me”
I wish E3 wasn’t like 28 hours away from me. I would have loved to been there. I’m extremely jealous that you got to meet Takashi let alone play a whole different game with him. I probably wouldn’t have been so cool in that situation. Props to you and it sounds like it was a blast!
You use the nun-chuck? Dang I was hoping I would have another game to use my wii-mote cases from New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Oh well, glad to know it is co-op. They should add Dixie and Kiddie Kong, so it can be 4 players like NSMBW.
Ahahah brilliant XD
You can held the Wii- mote sideways in the final version.
I would dearly love to see a Sonic/Tails co-op adventure. It’s about time Sega really focused on the “unbreakable bond” as Sonic Advance 3 described it.
It’s not too surprising since E3 is an event for people in the industry to see how other companies are coming along, also for public announcements online, etc. For instance you and I for journalistic purposes may have ran into each other and never realized it, but lucky you for co-op with Takashi. I have to admit for also being new to E3 thanks to another site seeing some of the people you admire casually on the floor can be a bit fan overwhelming at first but you adjust to it and of course put on your best behavior.
oooooooooooh……i must get a next-gen console as soon as possible i still have my PS2 and it sucks cuz there are merely new games coming in it why dont they make some of the wii games in ps2 i mean the PS2 is nearly as compatible as the Wii if not equal and there are all these good games coming im so angry i need a PS3(to play some games) or a Wii(to play DKCR,SMG,SMG2,NSMBWii,S4E1,KirbyEY,LOZSS etc) uggggggggh
A Sonic/Tails co-op game… hmm…
Possible gameplay plot for Sonic 4: Episode 2, maybe… 😀
@TheHumbleFellow
I agree completely. They are the two best characters, after all.
@ Joe Higashi
How in the world is Sonic Colors gameplay anything like Galaxy’s? In fact, what I’ve read of the story sounds quite different as well. Most Sonic fans always seem to make baseless opinions off of games that don’t even exist yet. It’s a fact of life… one that I don’t find amusing…
@Edge
Who knows? Mario has went into space twice only recently and it’s like Sonic hasn’t been there before. lol The only thing that’s truly alike about the two games (Mario Galaxy and Sonic Colours) is the fact that they both take place in space. lol
@ Monty
That’s about all I can find in common too. By the way. Mario has actually been in space 4 times if you count Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door and Super Mario Land. What’s funny about the later is that in Mario Land, Mario went into space using a red airplane!
@ Joe Higashi
Before I go on topic, I must say that you misspelled coincidence. THESURUS STRIKES AGAIN!
I must say that, really, we don’t know how long the concept of Sonic 4 has been going through SEGA, we do know that it was more than one year so, really, if Sonic 4 is a rip-off of anything, it’s Megaman 9. I still don’t see how Colors is anything like Super Mario Galaxy. SMG has you running on planetoids. I just see one big level in Colors. The stage design is completely different. The concept of space travel is similar, but seriously, saying that Sonic is copying off of Mario is like saying that Mario is the only game character that has done space travel. Excuse me but Sonic Adventure 2 was released a long time before Super Mario Galaxy, and believe me, Mad Space used the concept of running along planets long before Mario Galaxy was announced or in development. Super Mario 128 may have shown sphere walking in a 3D game, but Mario Galaxy didn’t start development until after Sonic Adventure 2 was released.
Every single company in the world follows money. It’s not just SEGA. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Capcom, Hudson, NIS, SNK, all game companies do it. So, exactly how many games has Sonic the Hedgehog copied off of Mario. I’m dying to hear the answer.
But Sonic went to space in Sonic Adventure 2 so MARIO RIPPED OFF SONIC OMGWTFLOLOLBBQ!
…
Yeah, I just want a fun game and space is good at giving us fun games so what the hey. xD
@Edge
Yeah, like how Sony and Microsoft are now trying to profit in motion controls because of the Wii’s obvious success with them.
You got to play the next Donkey Kong Country game with a member of Sonic Team?! You. Are. So. LUCKY!!!
Seriously, after Sonic games, Donkey Kong Country was my most favorite video game as a kid. DKCR is also the E3 title I’m looking forward to the most (after all the Sonic games, of course). 🙂
Oh yeah: Sonic/Tails co-op game, FTEW!
@ Streak
When did I say that Mario copied off of Sonic? I just said that Rouge did a lot of the things that Mario did in galaxy before galaxy. I adore Super Mario Galaxy, and really, if Nintendo came out and said that Mario Galaxy was a rip-off of Mad Space, I could care less, I don’t let that kind of stuff ruin my fun. I love something because I love it, I try to look past it’s flaws and enjoy the good parts of the game. Which is why Sonic 06 is my favorite video game. So yeah, I didn’t say that, I just said that Sonic Colors can’t be a rip-off if SEGA has done something similar before, that and the gameplay is nothing like Galaxy.
@ Monty
Kinect is nothing like the Wii, it’s more or less a copy of the eyetoy. And Move has been in development since the PS1 so it’s not a rip-off either. In fact, they had a motion controller that looked just like Move as the original concept for the PS2 but they didn’t produce it because they were afraid that they would lose money, so now Sony is taking the concept and moving forward since they found out that it would have been a wise investment.
A Sonic and Tails co-op game would be awesome!