I really enjoyed this interview. Backwards puzzles are something I’ve never really thought about before, from a design perspective. And the idea that being stuck is a good thing, sometimes. Adventure games aren’t about going on adventures. The internet killed adventure games.
I can’t believe (but am very happy that) Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is actually the name of a real game.
One of the big downsides to the original No More Heroes, for me at least, was the Santa Destroy open environment. I’d run into walls that weren’t there, there wasn’t actually much to do in it, I felt like Santa Destroy was just generally annoying and an after thought. Well, Suda51, in an interview with GameSetWatch, mentioned he wasn’t happy with it, either.
When we first spoke, you talked about how you wanted to make an open-world game. No More Heroes is kind of along the path to that. Are you going to take that further into the user sandbox environment with the second game?
Goichi Suda: Yeah, we’ll once again manage to do what we want to do with realizing the open world, but expect big changes for No More Heroes 2’s open world.
Hopefully that means it won’t suck so much this time around. He also talks a bit about Flower, Sun and Rain, which is coming out in U.S. on the DS and, in traditional Goichi Suda style, seems insane.