Bandai Namco has been quick to jump on-board with Nintendo's Wii, and it has now announced that Space Station Tycoon will launch on the system later this year. IGN Wii has broken the story that a new outing in the Tycoon simulation game series is heading to Nintendo's new generation system, the Wii, courtesy of development team Wahoo Studios. People may be familiar with the name 'Wahoo Studios' due to its work under the Indie-label of Ninjabee for its Xbox Live Arcade release Outpost Kaloki X. Ninjabee is for their own creations, whilst Wahoo Studios is the moniker the team adopts when doing traditional contract work such as for this new Wii game.
Space Station Tycoon does indeed have a lot of similarities with its predecessor, but is not a port of that game in any way. Gamers will be able to use the Wii controller alone to manage inter-galactic space stations, having to keep a close eye on garnering more income to keep everything running smoothly, whilst the proceedings are tied together with a plot full of humour and strong wit. In addition, there will be a co-operative mode and the developers are looking closely at incorporating the WiiConnect24 feature into the final product, if possible.
Below are some excerpts from a chat IGN had with Jeremy Throckmorton of Wahoo:
IGN Wii: What content changes/additions have been made to Space Station Tycoon versus Outpost Kaloki X?Jeremy Throckmorton: Space Station Tycoon is not a port of Outpost Kaloki X in any way. It is a full-featured Wii title developed for Namco Bandai Games, so none of the content is from Outpost Kaloki X. I know that sounds like a disclaimer, but we really want to make that as clear as possible.
IGN Wii: Does the title utilise the nunchuk attachment in any fashion?Jeremy Throckmorton: We wanted to make the game extremely accessible, even to the non-gamer, and part of this goal led to us making the entire game playable with only the remote. Since we figured that everyone has at least one nunchuck though, we added some optional control to the nunchuck for players who want it.
Other details that have been revealed include players being able to construct their own stations, rather than merely having to work with ones assigned to them at the beginning of a level, plus "Stations are built out of what we call islands, and there are all sorts of options for players on how to hook up and customize the islands. We have a ton of different environments in the game, and the environments can have very direct gameplay effects. For example, a nova sun can eat away at parts of your station that are exposed to it. Building a station inside a hollowed out asteroid severely limits the area you have to expand your station. Trying to manage a station on the uvula of a giant whale that swallowed you? That presents challenges of its own too. We're quite sure no one is ready for the type of scenarios Shawn will be facing. When you have characters like ours, you need to have a world that works for them."
It all sounds very intriguing and following the success of Zoo Tycoon on the DS you have to hope other developers will start to test the water on both Nintendo platforms with this particular genre.
Expect more details in the near future here on Cubed3...