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Good day. After we showed you some Offscreen Videos and hopefully gave you a good impression of the Gamescom I have someone special sitting beside me.
It's Bernd Geiblinger from Bplus who is developing Bit Boy!! Arcade for the Nintendo 3DS eShop.
I used the opportunity to get him in front of the camera and ask some questions. Hello Bernd!
Hello Dennis!
Well, the first question is pretty standard: Introduce yourself to our users.
Hello, well, I'm Bernd, I develop games for the Nintendo 3DS and 'Bit Boy! ARCADE' is my fifth game
and I'm excited for its soon release. Is there anything else to say?
Nope, enough said.
What kind of games did you develop so far and which systems were they released on?
Well, for Wii, or more precisely for WiiWare, I developed 'Plättchen Twist 'n' Paint', 'Niki Rock 'n' Roll' and 'Bit Boy'.
Also a game called 'Bit Man' was released in Japan, published by Marvelous.
Alright. You are the developer and creator of Bit Boy and also of Kubi which you can see here.
We will come back to this later.
'Bit Boy' was released for WiiWare in 2009. What brought you to start this project?
Well, back then Retro games were totally in and I was really undecided in which style the game should be.
I couldn't decide. “Will it be a NES, SNES or N64 graphics?”
And so I thought why not make a time travel through the whole history of video games? And that's how 'Bit Boy' was created!
Would you please tell our Users who haven't heard of Kubi, who we can see here, what the game is about?
Well, Kubi is a pixel who becomes alive, with all of his friends of course, and then realizes that he's not real.
He doesn't like that I am the game's developer and wants to let the game go his own way.
So he doesn't like his own creator?
That's right. At the beginning the relationship between me and Kubi, that sounds kind of schizophrenic, is somewhat troublesome.
But during the game everything changes... but I don't want to reveal too much.
So we will definitely learn more in the game?
Yes, there is even more than one hour of voice output and according to this a lot of story.
It's also really interesting to find out how the game develops and what happens to Kubi.
And especially WHY everything happens. Why can Kubi hear Bernd and vice versa?
Before this video was published we released an Off Screen video with Ingame sound of 'Bit Boy !! ARCADE'
and we highly recommend to watch it to get a proper impression of the game.
Another question. During my research I found out that you like to compose music.
Did you design the music for 'Bit Boy !! ARCADE' yourself or did you get help?
There's a lot of free music on the internet and a lot of composers who provide their own music.
But I wanted the music to fit the game. That's why every level has its own fitting music.
Everything with a little bit of Chiptune but mostly orchestrally.
Most owners of 'Bit Boy' for WiiWare may be interested in the differences between 'Bit Boy' and 'Bit Boy !! ARCADE'.
It's its direct sequel and this time it's not about time travel.
Kubi wishes for a game that looks exactly like he wants to and that's why there is a graphical evolution in the game.
At the beginning there is the Flat World, without texture and little polygons
then there is the Pixel World with pixelated graphics
and everything gets better until you arrive at the Round World where everything is completely round and polished.
Light and shadows effect will be in the Dark World
And all of this wasn't in the WiiWare game?
That wasn't there at all.
It's a completely new game and the story continues where Kubi time travels back to the future after he saved his friends.
That sounds really good!
Well, aside from 'Bit Boy'... do you actually earn your money only by developing games or do you have another job?
I hope that I will earn enough money with it someday.
Right now it's not really a side job, it's more of a fulltime job, but it works with the help of my friends.
Basically, it's a project that is able to exist because of the help of my friends
even though I develop the game all by myself. They help me financing it.
That is awesome, having friends like that! I am sure it wouldn't be easy without them.
It's especially amazing because these are people who believe in me and the project.
It's a great feeling, which motivates me a lot.
Several developers have stated that it's fairly easy to publish games in the Nintendo eShop.
What are your experiences? Did Nintendo contact you?
It's often said that WiiWare was a bit complicated. What is your opinion on that?
Basically, there is a whole bunch of guidelines you have to fulfill
like that the game doesn't crash or an error message appears when it has to.
It's a lot of things to program, which take several months to do. So it's still like that, but it got way more flexible.
Nintendo tries to help the developers even more.
Whenever I have problems with programming, I can ask the support team of Nintendo and in just a few hours, I get an answer.
I am also free on deciding the price or release date of the game and I can change the price whenever I want.
With WiiWare, there were several requirements, where you had to say
“Alright, I want to release the game at that time and at that price.”
until a certain point in development, but it's way better now.
Nintendo always helped out, though. It's all getting better with the eShop.
That sounds great! The eShop is getting bigger than the WiiShop.
But well, let's talk about Plush-Kubi. Would you mind to tell us the story of his creation?
Yes, well, it was like this:
After I was already developing the game for a year, my birthday was getting closer
and a very crazy friend, my best friend, who is also here, learned how to sew
just to be able to bring Kubi into reality!
When I opened up the present, I was totally surprised!
You develop a character and you have your own opinion of how he looks like and he actually sew it!
So well, it's like the first prototyp for merchandise.
I like him, I'd buy it!
Why was Bit Boy called Bit Man in Japan? Were there any troubles with the name or what exactly was the reason?
There were no problems at all
it was just a decision based of marketing purposes that Marvelous came up with.
There are Rock man, Bomber Man and somehow, everything needs to end with „Man“.
So Marvelous said, that Bit Man would sound cooler.
I thought about it for a second and decided, that it was time to let Bit Boy grow up!
That's why it's called Bit Man in Japan.
Before we started recording, you told us, that Bit Man is more like an 1.5-Version of the game. Are there any improvements?
Oh, yes, off course! Inofficially I call it Bit Boy 1.5
because it's our first japanese game and we wanted to polish it as much as we could.
We included more level and it should be impressive. We spent a lot of time for developing it.
So you've completely improved it?
It's almost like a new game, except for the fact that some level are the same.
In which country did Bit Boy on WiiWare sell the most copies?
That's easy to answer. It was in the US, because there are the most consoles, which brings the most possible customers.
A lot of people over there know Kubi.
Awesome!
Do you have any special wishes or goals, that you want to have fulfilled soon?
Right now I only want to finish Bit Boy!! ARCADE.
It's a lot of work and I'm working on it every single day. I rarely get sleep and it does effect me negatively.
So that's my wish, I want it to be done soon, so I have some free time and can finish Bit Boy!! ARCADE myself.
Is there anything else you want to say?
Yes! I want to thank all fans who supported us in the past few years.
I always read the comments, you can't hide from me.
Not everyone knows that, but developers always read what people write about their games.
So thanks to everyone who supported us and who is still with us. Thanks to all the fans!
Bit Boy!! Arcade will probably released in october?
Probably.
Probably...!
You see, the longer it takes, the better it will be. I give all I have to release it as fast as I can
but I also want it to be as good as possible, so that's why october is my goal.
I really hope I don't have to delay it.
Alright Bernd, thank you for the interview and I wish you best luck for the future
and I also hope, that your game will be final soon!
Thanks, Dennis!
That's it for our interview and I'd say, we will see each other in a new video soon!