Masaya Matsuura, the forefather of rhythm games, talks about the current state of the genre, his new kid-friendly marching band title and why he made it for the Wii.

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Known for popularizing the modern rhythm game genre with his "PaRappa The Rapper" series, Masaya Matsuura is teaming up again with artist Rodney Alan Greenblat for "Major Minor's Majestic March," a marching band-oriented Wii game. In an e-mail interview, Matsuura told us why he decided to make a marching band title, why it will attract hardcore gamers and how Wii MotionPlus just didn't work for the game.

MTV Multiplayer: Out of all the possibilities for music games, why a marching band game?

Matsuura: I truly believe that music games have boundless potential. Rhythm games can only be seen as the first island discovered in this grand sea of possibility. But the current reality is that we have to take a number of practical factors into consideration when planning a new game such as current platform characteristics and user tastes. Bearing these in mind whilst trying to devise a compelling game design can really narrow our sphere of selection for the music.

MTV Multiplayer: How did you choose the songs for this game?

Matsuura: Being as impartial as possible, I chose extremely well-known marching songs from all over the world. Also, while respecting the original songs, we also created some original unique tunes by adding daring arrangements that typify "Major Minor." There is also a Herbie Hancock song in there as well as some of my own work.

MTV Multiplayer: Are there any plans to offer additional downloadable songs (or other content)?

Matsuura-san: "Major Minor"'s audio system is way more complicated than your average rhythm game, where change and progression are predetermined. In addition, you might not be able to download a lot of songs on Wii because the amount of sound data is so big. But I'd still like to try.

MTV Multiplayer: Did you consult with any real-life marching bands while working on this game?

Matsuura: I didn't do it for this game, but I did do it when I was in elementary and junior high school!

MTV Multiplayer: Have you heard about "The Black Football College Experience"? It's an American football game for the PC that features a marching band component since it's a major part of black college football. If so, did you look at that title at all?

Matsuura: I've never heard of the title before, but I did watch a lot of Florida A&M and Grambling marching band footage when making "Major Minor." We really enjoyed these and they had quite an influence on the game.

MTV Multiplayer: What kind of audience are you going for with this game?

Matsuura: What would be ideal is for the people who played "PaRappa The Rapper" and are now parents to be able to play "Major Minor" with their kids.

MTV Multiplayer: Do you think the more "hardcore" gamers who liked "PaRappa The Rapper" will enjoy this game?

Matsuura: "PaRappa" was released about 12 or 13 years ago, and being a hardcore gamer the entire time since then must be kind of tiring, so it’s time to take a break and enjoy "Major Minor." LOL!

MTV Multiplayer: Why did you decide to make this game for the Wii?

Matsuura: A strong request from the publisher was the main drive behind the choice, but in any case whenever a new technology comes out I'm curious to give it a try.

MTV Multiplayer: Did you receive Wii MotionPlus development kits? If so, why not adapt the game to the Wii MotionPlus add-on? Was there not enough time?

Matsuura: We tried to adapt "Major Minor" to MotionPlus, but doing so didn't really make it any more fun than it already was. Maybe MotionPlus titles need to be planned as such from the beginning. The basic structure of "Major Minor" was pretty much determined before MotionPlus arrived, so there wasn't a huge advantage to adapting it to MotionPlus. And what's more, the controller would become bigger, so we gave up on the idea.

MTV Multiplayer: Do you see this game being adapted to the Wii-motion Plus controller in the future?

Matsuura: It could be.

MTV Multiplayer: "Wii Music" is a music title aimed at the casual audience, and it didn't meet initial sales expectations. Does that concern you at all for "Major Minor's Majestic March"?

Matsuura: This is just my personal opinion, but to a musician, an instrument is a serious interface tool for the creation of music. Whilst the history of the electric guitar is at best 40 years old, the violin has been around for more than 500. Over a human's lifetime, it bears the burden of that artist's musical expressions. Whether or not "Wii Music" successfully conveys these feelings is, I believe, a key issue.

MTV Multiplayer: "PaRappa The Rapper" has been credited with being ahead of its time and being the first modern rhythm game. As such, how do you feel about where music games have gone with the popularity of "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band"?

Matsuura: A long time ago, I really implored the Harmonix guys that they should be making games. I'm pretty sure that they got similar advice from elsewhere, but looking back it was definitely the right advice. The success of "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" therefore fills me with pride as if they were my own creations.

MTV Multiplayer: Are you surprised that music games are currently dominating the market?

Matsuura: Of course I was surprised by the amount of success, but at the same time, I'm also surprised that it took so long.

MTV Multiplayer: With the popularity of the iPhone, do you have any plans to work on an iPhone game specifically? Or any more iPod games?

Matsuura: I know a programmer who has made prototypes for the iPhone, and we sometimes collaborate a little.

MTV Multiplayer: Where do you see iPhone games going? Do you think iPhones are the future of gaming?

Matsuura: Just recently in Japan, the price of getting an iPhone when signing up as a new customer was reduced to zero yen, so if it could maintain some momentum I guess that it has a chance to establish itself as a new game platform here.

MTV Multiplayer: Will we see another "PaRappa" game anytime soon?

Matsuura: We currently do not have any specific plans to make a new one, but I cannot rule out any future possibilities.

***

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The new Nintendo add-on won't be used in the first-person shooter for the Wii as previously touted.

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Last year, former Multiplayer reporter Patrick Klepek spoke to High Voltage Software chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger about how excited the company was to utilize all of the Wii's capablities, such as the Wii MotionPlus add-on.

However, Klepek just reported over at 1UP that the feature will no longer be supported in the game. Nofsinger told 1UP via e-mail:

"We _could_ have included support for Wii MotionPlus as Nintendo provided us with early hardware and good developer support. However when we actually implemented it for the Conduit, it didn't really add anything for our primarily ranged combat. We had hoped that it would allow for better off screen IR tracking, but the device seems to lend itself more naturally for hand to hand combat where the player can calibrate in-between bouts. And that just doesn't feel like an optimal fit for how we had designed our moment to moment gameplay."

"The Conduit" will still support WiiSpeak and is slated to come out in June.

Why The Conduit Dropped Wii MotionPlus Support [1UP]

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The studio is intent on making full use of the Wii's capabilities, High Voltage COO Eric Nofsinger told me at Nintendo's fall summit in San Francisco yesterday.

"The Conduit" will support both the Wii MotionPlus accessory -- they just received development kits -- and the "Animal Crossing"-linked WiiSpeak.

"We're hooking it [MotionPlus] up," said Nofsinger. "We want to support it. Probably for this version of the game there's not going to be a whole ton of really extensive use of the Wii MotionPlus. For the sequel to the game, we definitely do want to incorporate more melee and things like that. We want to support it."

Supporting MotionPlus does come with its hazards, however.

When I spoke with the developers of "de Blob," they told me access to MotionPlus might have overcomplicated their control scheme. There might have been a tendency to introduce more simply because they could.

"I think it is something to be cognizant of," said Nofsinger. "I think one of our early mandates in design and with the control in general is we didn't want to be gimmicky. We do have a lot of Wii-specific controls with some of the weaponry, but we didn't want to be a waggle Wiimote kind of game. There's nothing in the game like that. I don't know if we had done that even if we had Wii MotionPlus and been too reliant on it."

MotionPlus will be supported when "The Conduit" arrives early next year, and Nofsinger admitted they'll be play testing how it changes the game.

"Right now it's probably too early to really say," he said. "We're pretty recent in having our hardware and actually integrating it. There may be a competitive advantage to that kind of thing. We want to make sure anything we do incorporate doesn't just break the whole experience and a lot of that just comes through a lot of testing. We play the game constantly, and in these upcoming months we'll have an army of testers working on it."

The bottom line to Nofsinger, however, is whether the base game is fun -- even a gamer doesn't have all the peripherals "The Conduit" will end up supporting.

"There may be a competitive advantage to that kind of thing [MotionPlus]"

"It would be a mistake for a developer to require too many peripherals or things like that," he said. "The game has to be fun with just the Wiimote and nunchuck. Even if you don't have connectivity online, even if you don't have WiiSpeak, even if you don't have Wii MotionPlus…if you don't have anything but your Wii and the game, it's got to be fun."

"The Conduit" does not yet have a publisher, but Nofsinger promised word on that soon. For now, what do you think of their approach to MotionPlus?

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The creators of "Cooking Mama: World Kitchen," have learned from their first "Cooking Mama" Wii game, representatives from the games' North American publisher, Majesco, told Multiplayer today. And the lesson they've learned is that shaking is preferable to pointing. The new game will have more shake-based cooking activities and fewer that involve aiming the Wii remote at the TV screen.

The "Cooking Mama" team's shift to more streamlined controls shouldn't surprise avid and sometimes-frustrated Wii players. Motion controls have been tricky for developers and gamers to handle.

The Wii remote uses different technologies for sensing motion. An accelerometer detects gestural tilt and swinging. This is good for Wii activities like bowling, tennis and shaking Super Mario into a spin. The sensors at the front of the remote and a TV-mounted sensor bar, when pointed at each other, determine just where, if at all, the remote is pointing on the TV screen it is in front of. The sensors also help determine how far the Wii remote is away from the TV at which it is pointing. This is good for aiming a gun in a first-person shooter, using a scalpel on a surgery patient in "Trauma Center" or, in theory, pulling a door open.

It's no surprise to hear that Wii developers are currently re-considering just how many different kinds of motions ... they want to ask of their players.

For all the praise Wii controls have received from mainstream gamers, some first-round Wii developers appeared to struggle to find a balance between asking players to commit specific, sometimes complex motions and getting the Wii to recognize those moves.

At E3 in July, Nintendo appeared to acknowledge room for improvement in the Wii remote's ability to accurately detect motion by introducing Wii Motion Plus. The improved motion-sensing of that Wii Remote add-on allowed for accurate sword-swinging and Frisbee-throwing and possibly diminishes the need for commands that would require the sensor-bar add-on. The add-on, however, won't be arriving until spring 2009.

Given all that, it's no surprise to hear that Wii developers are currently re-considering just how many different kinds of motions, using both types of Wii remote motion sensors, they want to ask of their players. At today's "Cooking Mama: World Kitchen" demo, the variety of inputs may still have been there: there was chopping of food and tilting of pans; flipping of burgers and shaking to run after a dog that was racing away with the ingredients (that last action is part of the new "Happy Accident" moments that occur when one's cooking goes awry). What there didn't seem to be, however, was an overly complex array of motions that might confuse the gamer and the console alike. Most motions involved shaking or twirling the remote. Nothing too fancy, and not much pointing.

As the second-generation of Wii games hits store shelves, the real promise and limits of motion control ... should become increasingly evident

Controls aside, the most noticeable difference with the new "Cooking Mama" game is that it's all in 3D, as opposed to the 2D-based graphics taken from the quasi-DS-port of the first Wii title. The visual improvement is clearly a step up, a sign that the team -- so dedicated to their franchise that they've changed their studio name from Office Create to Cooking Mama, Ltd -- is committed to putting work into the latest "Cooking Mama" effort.

Will the "Cooking Mama" developers' new philosophy regarding Wii controls pan out?

Whatever lessons they've learned from their first try on the Wii will be evident when the Wii sequel ships this holiday.

As the second-generation of Wii games hits store shelves, the real promise and limits of motion control -- so often just wildly swung at during Nintendo console's launch -- should become increasingly evident.

MotionPlus finally will allow for 1:1 motion control, a criticism leveled at the Wiimote since its release.

Nick Hagger, the producer of Wii's "de Blob," however, told me MotionPlus could lead to unneeded complexity to motion controls.

"I think if we had the MotionPlus to start out with, maybe the control scheme would have worked out a little bit differently," said Hagger in a phone interview late last week. "I think the temptation with having Wii MotionPlus would have been to push it more in a gestural control scheme. While it's definitely intellectually stimulating from a development perspective to play with those ideas -- and I think it does appeal to a set of gamers out there -- I think the majority of people that play on the Wii want something very simple that they can just immediately get their heads around."

Do you agree with his assessment of most Wii players, readers?

"de Blob" arrives on store shelves today.

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It wasn't long ago that MTV Multiplayer checked out GoLive2's "Stix."

Essentially, they're Wiimote clones designed for use on the PC. The basic model is compatible with 2D flash games, the more expensive one works in 3D.

The basic model showed up at my desk not too long ago. The "Stix" doesn't work on my Mac, but thankfully, my girlfriend has a PC-based laptop.

If you want to buy your own "Stix," check out the GoLive2 store. For high-resolution shots of the game store, keep reading.

(Video will not be accessible for users logging in from Canada or parts of Europe)

Today, Ubisoft answered their call; but LucaArts won't comment.

Last week, Nintendo executive vice president of sales and marketing Cammie Dunaway had told Gamelife that she hoped upcoming Wiimote-centric titles like "Samba De Amigo" and "Star Wars Clone Wars" would have "rapid second versions" in order to "take advantage of the Wii MotionPlus capabilities."

MTV Multiplayer reached out to LucasArts who had no comment on whether they'd be adapting a second version of "Clone Wars," which is slated for November, to use the MotionPlus add-on. We've also put in a request to Sega regarding "Samba De Amigo" and will update you as soon as we hear back.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft executive director Alain Corre revealed to gamesindustry.biz that the company will be making the controls for "Red Steel 2" adapt to the new MotionPlus add-on.

This announcement marks "Red Steel 2," which has been in development for "many months," as the first third-party title to use the MotionPlus add-on since the device was unveiled at E3 earlier this month.

Readers, which Wii games, if any, would you like to see re-vamped with the new MotionPlus controls?

[UPDATE 7/30: A Sega spokesperson told us by e-mail on Wednesday that it is too early to comment on how the company will integrate the Wii MotionPlus Controller.]

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None of [the developers] said they had any advance notice about the peripheral, and we were told that they were as surprised as everyone else when Nintendo revealed its existence on stage. That lack of prior notice means that, aside from Nintendo’s own roster of games, users won’t likely see any support for the device for at least six to nine months.

Those responses don't quite align with what Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told me during my interview with him at E3 last week, during which we had the following exchange...

Multiplayer: The motion-plus accessory -- you talked about not talking about things too far out in advance, but this is not coming out until the spring. So what was the idea about why you talked about this at E3?

Fils-Aime: The reason we talked about it now is because we want third-party support. We want to see other games that take advantage of this accessory. And for developers they really need that now, so SDKs are going out into the marketplace. They'll have the capability to build that into their spring games. That's why we need to announce that now.

Multiplayer: And are those development kits out now? Or are they about to go out?

Fils-Aime: They're about to go out.

Multiplayer: But third parties were learning about it when we learned about it.

Fils-Aime: They learned about it a little earlier.

Multiplayer: Do you feel that eventually leads the way toward a refined Wii remote that incorporates all that technology into itself?

Fiils-Aime: It could. It certainly could. We recognize that the adapter initially is not the most elegant way to have that, but it's the best way given that we have so many millions of remotes out in the marketplace.

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The bottom line from Reggie appears to be that some developers may have known it was coming. But the fact that development kits are just going out now makes Game Informer's timeline for when third-party games will include the feature seem pretty close to the mark.

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This is how the device is described at Nintendo.com:

Nintendo's upcoming Wii MotionPlus accessory for the revolutionary Wii Remote controller again redefines game control, by more quickly and accurately reflecting motions in a 3-D space. The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion. Every slight movement players make with their wrist or arm is rendered identically in real time on the screen, providing a true 1:1 response in their game play. The Wii MotionPlus accessory reconfirms Nintendo’s commitment to making games intuitive and accessible for everyone. Nintendo will reveal more details about the Wii MotionPlus accessory and other topics Tuesday morning at its E3 media briefing.

You know, it's almost like Nintendo expected there to be another motion-controller announcement today that they wanted to spoil. Oh, and what game do you bet this Wii add-on comes with? A "Zelda" with more accurate sword-swinging? A music game with more accurate baton-waving?

And did Nintendo just splinter its userbase?

We'll find out at the Nintendo E3 briefing tomorrow morning.

Nintendo's innovation has rippled through the industry, sending engineers back to the drawing board. Both Microsoft and Sony are said to be working on motion controllers.

GoLive2is taking a different approach with their motion controller, dubbed Stix. It doesn't attach to a pre-exciting console; it attaches to the PC already in your home. They want to develop a completely free web portal full of motion-compatible games.

They just might be on the right track.

The influences of the Wiimote are apparent on the Stix design. The location of the battery hatch, placement of the trigger button and the front-loaded sensor are nearly note-for-note riffs on Nintendo's design. What's different are the face buttons; none are actual buttons. It's all a touch screen. Buttons mapped onto this touch screen -- up, down, left, right, A, X and O.

There will be two Stix controllers at launch, the 200 ($39.99) and the 400 ($49.99) models. The 200 is designed for 2D gaming, while the 400 will support fully 3D games, too. For example, while it sounds unwieldy, we were told you could load "World of Warcraft" and map 16 buttons across the two controllers.

The real potential in the Stix controller isn't in the controller's mapping onto complex 3D action games like "Crysis," though, but to add intuitive motion controls to the breadth of freely available 2D and 3D games already the web. GoLive2 will launch a free, ad-supported web portal. Technically, the site is already live, but the controllers won't arrive until August.

In addition to the games that GoLive2 gets onto the web portal, users will be free to map motion controls to any game available on the web. Those controller configurations will be submitted to GoLive2's moderators, who test the profiles and collect the best ones. The configurations will be added to the portal's search engine. GoLive2 claims their search engine will be updated constantly with new, user-discovered games and controller profiles.

Though users have done extraordinary things playing around with Nintendo's Wiimote already, the hardware wasn't designed for that kind of manipulation -- GoLive2's is. The company wants to encourage homebrew communities to embrace their motion controller. Whether the technology is as nuanced as the Wiimote's remains to be seen; the two games we played were touchy, but we didn't have much time with them.

The potential is certainly there; we're excited to see where it goes.

Stix 200 and 400 models will be sold at Target, Costco and Amazon.com in August.