Nintendo Interview | Nitrobike Similar to Excitebike 64?

When Ubisoft recently announced that Nitrobike would be coming to Nintendo's Wii as an exclusive title people were moderately interested. When they heard it would be worked on by the team that did the superb Excitebike 64, though, interest went through the roof! Now that team has been interviewed about the project. Below are a few choice quotes:

IGN: Left Field Productions is responsible for the amazing Excite Bike 64. How much of the original team is working on Nitrobike?

James Higgins, CEO of Left Field Productions: Excitebike 64 had a very small development team. Nintendo actually loaned us one of their game gurus to help with the track designs and gameplay. Later on he left Nintendo and joined us full-time, and he helped us create our award-winning MTX Mototrax. He is now our Lead Designer on Nitrobike, and he is making sure that we live up to the high expectations that Excitebike 64 fans have for our new game.

IGN: Is the title developed from the ground up for Wii, or are there other builds underway?

JH: Nitrobike from concept to completion has always been a Wii game. We wanted to make a great racing game for the Wii as soon as we got our hands on the Wiimote. There are no other builds underway at the moment, but the LFP Engine supports PS3, X360, PS2, PSP and PC so, in theory, we could bring it to the other platforms but we'd have to do a serious controller overhaul.

IGN: How many players can race against each other online?

JH: We're promising great six player action. We're still hoping we can support more and continue to test with ten. We feel the most important thing is to ensure that the players racing online have the best experience possible.

IGN: Excitebike 64 had some great content-extending mini-games, like soccer and mountain climb. Are there any plans to incorporate similar features for Nitrobike?

JH: Soccer was a lot of fun and its inclusion was inspired by the number of Brits who worked on Excite Bike 64. With Nitrobike our core team has expanded to include many more Americans - actually the Brits are outnumbered significantly now - which in turn has influenced the content. We don't want to give it away just yet, but there's definitely a great American past-time waiting to be unlocked.

IGN: Will there be online leaderboards using WiiConnect24 or Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection?

JH: We're not using the leaderboards provided by Nintendo, however, you CAN see the number of races your friends have completed and their number of first place wins in your friends roster.

Be sure to check out the full interview here.

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