Nintendo is famed the world over for ushering in a new age of gaming with motion and touch screen controls. And making absolutely incredible video games for over 25 years, of course. But alongside introducing huge changes in how we all play games in recent years, the company's attitude toward how its games are made has changed too.
Nintendo has started to reach outside the confines of its own corridors and find external game makers that share its values - that of making ground-breaking, high quality videogames that everyone can play.
Among these chosen few is CiNG, an adventure gaming specialist based in Fukuoka, Japan that you may have come across from its previous releases Hotel Dusk and Another Code on DS. As one of Nintendo's favoured studios, it now works extremely closely with the geniuses at Nintendo HQ to create new adventure games and make the genre its own.
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Before CiNG's first Wii game, Another Code R: A Journey Into Lost Memories, was released in the UK (it came out on Friday), we flew out to the land of the rising sun to interview the team behind the game (pictured here with Another Code star Ashley) and find out why they love storytelling, puzzles and point 'n click gaming...
Memory is a fitting theme for a point and click adventure - only older readers will be able to recall the golden age of games like The Secret Of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones And The Fate of Atlantis, Broken Sword, Sam & Max and Grim Fandango back in the mid '90s. Back then, titles like these gave PC owners a wealth of compelling adventures to embark upon. But as Nintendo and other console formats leapfrogged PC gaming in popularity and joypads became the de facto control method, point and click adventures became yesterday's news.
Then Nintendo shook everything up with the DS and Wii. Many changes have taken place across the gaming landscape since these two consoles arrived on the scene, but one you may not have noticed is a revival in point and click adventures.
Broken Sword recently returned on both Wii and DS, Sam & Max have starred in a new compilation of adventures on Wii, and even Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis is coming back, albeit as an unlockable bonus within the new Staff Of Kings whipcracker.
The company taking this adventure genre revival by the scruff of the neck is CiNG. It's the studio responsible for acclaimed DS adventures Another Code and Hotel Dusk, and now it has developed Another Code R for the Wii. The original was received with modest fanfare by gamers in the UK, but it made a huge impact in its native Japan, says CiNG vice president Rika Suzuki. "One thing that I am particularly proud of is that if you go into a games shop in Japan now there is an adventure corner, and that's something that we feel we've contributed to coming back," she told ONM. "It's a nice feeling. We feel that with our games you don't need the special skills required to play other games. There is no gender or age classification, it's just you and the story."
Telling Stories Such is her passion for the genre, Suzuki believes that these kinds of games are becoming an art form of their own. "Another interesting thing in Japan currently is that with the re-birth of adventure games, people who have talent in other areas - artists, writers and novelists, for example - are finding that they want to get involved in making games too. The adventure game is the perfect way of getting into telling interactive stories. This is the platform for someone who can write well and tell a story."
But point and click is a genre that has been around for years. Besides the move to solving puzzles with the touch screen or motion controls, not much has changed. But this is no bad thing, says Suzuki.
"We always have to consider something new and fresh, but we have found that people enjoy solving the gameplay puzzles. It is satisfying and draws you into the story. We have refined the gameplay and think that a new departure would be a new type of mystery to be solved. That would be an innovation."
For CiNG, storytelling is paramount. And there are clear themes to the Another Code series so far - mystery and memory. Suzuki explains: "I read a lot of novels and watch a lot of films. I prefer stories that are emotionally moving. One thing that is reflected in my work is the idea of memories as a device for moving the story along. One of the things I try to acknowledge is the difference between a recollection and a memory.
"Another Code is set over the course of one day, and it's a very special day. It's the same for everyone. When you wake up in the morning, you could have an extraordinary day which will be memorable for the rest of your life. It's that mystery in life that I find very interesting to use in a story.
"On a personal level, during the course of making the game I lost my father. He had alzheimer's disease, so memory for him became very significant. When he was very young he lived in Shanghai, and because of the disease he became able to draw very detailed maps of the area, which he couldn't before. That stimulated me to think a lot more about memory."
But does such a strong focus on dialogue and storytelling suit Western tastes? Suzuki believes that the cultural divide between East and West is less pronounced than it used to be. "In Japan we feel that the gap is closing. There used to be a certain expression in Japan for Western games, and they were not popular. That's not true anymore. Japanese kids see more Hollywood films than they do Japanese films. And we've seen Western children adopt Japanese anime. Anyone across the world born after the NES or SNES came out, or who is a teenager now, has much more in common than when I was 17."
But alongside the narrative, it wouldn't be an Another Code game without some ingenious puzzles integrated into the experience. According to the team, Another Code R is the result of more than two years of hard work, and the most difficult part of that was coming up with intelligent puzzles that are challenging - but not too challenging.
CiNG's Taisuke Kanasaki describes the whole process: "When we started the game we had daily meetings and it was really fun coming up with different ideas. We found that we would have wonderful ideas, but actually getting that to fit into the gameplay so that it didn't interrupt the player was a source of frustration. So the idea was only to use the puzzles that fit into the game well. We also found that it was very different to working on the DS as there is a finite amount of memory to work with on that console. With the Wii we have so much more volume to work with. The story is much bigger and we can really go to town on the puzzles."
Shunichi Nakagaki, CiNG's scripting and game balance specialist, was tasked with making the game's difficulty curve just right. "Right until the very last few days of development there were puzzles in the early part of the game that we considered were a bit too tricky. We moved them to nearer the end when players are more used to what they can do with the controller.
"There is one puzzle where something is floating in the water and you have to throw a ring in the water to retrieve it. We could do it easily, because we knew what to do. But we got someone else at Nintendo to try it and they tried it 100 times and they couldn't do it. From the gamer's point of view five or six tries is okay because you feel like you've improved before you solve it. Too few and it's too easy, and there's no feeling that you've overcome a challenge. Hopefully we have balanced it just right!"
So with the backing of Nintendo and several critically-acclaimed titles under its belt, CiNG is certainly one to watch for the future. But they're keeping what's next for the company a closely guarded secret, adds Suzuki. "We are involved in a number of projects at the moment associated with Nintendo. Nothing that we can talk about right now, but watch this space. "With Another Code R we feel that we have reached the first stage of our relationship with Nintendo, and now we want to build from here to get to the next level."
