E3 2014: Star Fox for Wii U and two other new Miyamoto projects leaked

Time Magazine has just leaked three brand new Shiguru Miyamoto projects early just a couple of hours before Nintendo’s Digital Event.

The interview with Miyamoto covers a brand new Star Fox for Wii U which is ‘at least a year away’ and Project Giant Robot and Project Guard are still considered experimental at this point. All of the games use the GamePad in new and exciting ways.

The new Star Fox game doesn’t yet have a title but has been under development since the Wii days. Miyamoto told Time that “We originally began working with Star Fox back on Wii, and we had a small group of people experimenting with it for many years, maybe about six years, but we didn’t find an idea that really brought that together for the Wii”.

However Miyamoto wasn’t done with the game “So instead we moved experimentation to the Wii U using some of the same assets. It’s been maybe 6 to 10 months that we’ve been experimenting with it”.

This new version of Star Fox, gratefully is still a spaceship based shooter. However now you’ll use the GamePad’s motion controls to aim and the fire the Arwing. The analog sticks are now used for turning, controlling speed and pulling over moves. The Arwing can still also morph into the tank (Landmaster) and is just as powerful as before.

There’s a new vehicle the Arwing can transform into now and one that shows off the game’s new controls. It’s a Helicopter, well sort of. One player controls the helicopter itself and the other controls a robot that can “drop from a tether to roll around a limited area, either snatching up booty or blasting enemies”.

[pullquote_right]If I was to describe the Star Fox series up until now as being sort of a movie series, I guess I’d describe this new approach as something that’s more like a TV series for Star Fox[/pullquote_right]Miyamoto told Time that he believes that the control scheme is not only novel, but with further practice will be indispensable. Star Fox might not end up being a huge release either instead Miyamoto says that “I’m thinking is that with this Star Fox we may take a different approach, so that rather than one big title we have multiple releases that are connected through different missions”. Sounds like episodic content? Well that’s what Miyamoto says too “If I was to describe the Star Fox series up until now as being sort of a movie series, I guess I’d describe this new approach as something that’s more like a TV series for Star Fox”.

So what about Project Giant Robot and Project Guard? As the names suggest these titles are more experiments at this point and will form into final games later. Project Giant Robot puts you in direct control giant robot and again like Star Fox you use the GamePad to control all parts of the this robot. Changing the angle of the GamePad shifts the robots’ torso left or right, up and down. The analog sticks control the robot’s arms allowing you to punch or grab objects in the world. The TIME magazine article describes it as a ‘game of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots’. The GamePad screen will show you the first person view of the robot and the TV screen offers a third person view.

Project Guard again uses the GamePad in a completely different way than ever before. The GamePad in this game is a mini-map of a fortress filled with laser firing security cameras. You tap the screen to move around the complex cameras and keep intruding robots from storming the fortress. It sounds like tower defense, but with a all new GamePad twist.

[pullquote_right]Project Guard was one that we actually began experimenting on back in the Nintendo 64 era[/pullquote_right]According to Miyamoto Project Guard is something he’s always wanted to do since the Nintendo 64 days. “Project Guard was one that we actually began experimenting on back in the Nintendo 64 era, around the time that we were doing things with the original Luigi’s Mansion” he told TIME.

“But on the N64, we didn’t have enough processing power to bring the game to life. So we set it aside, and then we came back to it on Wii U, and particularly with the Wii U GamePad, it made the interface much more intuitive”

The rest of the interview can be found on TIME Magazine’s website we guess, soon. Can’t wait to see it running during the Media Event.