Last Flight dev on what it means to be ‘hardcore’

Wii owners with that itch to swing their Wii Remotes to slice up bloodthirsty vampires on an aircraft will have their chance soon. Developer Bloober Team tells us the first episode of its WiiWare title, Last Flight, should be available by year’s end.

Consumed with the very idea in-flight vampire slaying ourselves, we caught up with Bloober Team’s Marcin Kawa who explained its decision to go with an episodic digital download release versus traditional retail.

“We wouldn’t be able to go retail without a publisher,” he explains, “and that means compromise. We wanted to make Last Flight our way.”

“Our way,” according to the developer is a game where “each of [the] four episodes looks and feels like a great boxed product.” This commitment to quality and refusal to compromise its vision, Kawa says, is the reason Bloober Team decided to work on the digital WiiWare platform. But with that decision came “certain limitations,” which led to having to split the game up into four downloadable episodes.

“As I said many times before, our goal is to make the game as affordable as possible,” he insists. “It’s not about being greedy.”

Kawa won’t comment on the details of each episode — length, content, etc. — but would say that “each episode is a complete game that ends in a certain way.” Accordingly, it sounds like the goal is to keep players satisfied with the bite-sized bits of Last Flight‘s hacking and slashing. Either way, the group of people Last Flight appeals to — the so called “hardcore gamers” — should have something to look forward to. But Kawa doesn’t necessarily believe it’s simply a matter of some Wii owners craving “hardcore” gaming experiences.

“What I believe is that there are people who want to play good games,” he says.

Of course Kawa is familiar with the “hardcore” classics. He grew up playing them, citing games like Double Dragon, Golden Axe, and the space simulator, Elite. While he says he enjoys games like Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy VII, that doesn’t proclude him from enjoying the occasional game of Bejeweled. But his girlfriend, on the other hand, “wouldn’t play Last Flight, like never.”

“That’s what makes this game hardcore,” he explains. “It was designed to appeal to gamers who are after that “old-school” experience, who enjoy games like they used to be.”

For more info on Last Flight, check out our preview, or pick up the next issue of Official Nintendo Magazine (UK) for even more details.