Kensuke Tanabe message

This article is written from the Real Life point of view

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Kensuke Tanabe message is a short video recorded by Kensuke Tanabe, which was aired during the Nintendo Direct of March 3, 2016. It was later uploaded as a separate video to the Australian and Japanese Nintendo YouTube channels.

Tanabe recorded this message to explain Metroid Prime: Federation Force, in an attempt to pacify fan backlash towards the game after its reveal at E3 2015. He speaks Japanese in the video, with English subtitles on the Australian version, and a narrator speaking over him during the Direct. Tanabe's speech is interspersed with gameplay clips.

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In the video, Tanabe reveals that Federation Force began development in 2009, as he desired to create a multiplayer-focused Metroid Prime game on a handheld system, and explore battles between the Space Pirates and Galactic Federation. Collaborating with Next Level Games, Tanabe experimented with the Nintendo DSi, but felt that it could not bring the performance they were hoping for. They restarted development using the much more powerful Nintendo 3DS after it was unveiled. Tanabe decided that the Federation-focused game would make more sense with the Federation Force as the protagonists rather than Samus, and also desired to implement RPG-like classes with the in-game AUX ammo. Tanabe ends the video saying that he will explain the game's art style, Blast Ball and the AUX ammo further at another time, and promises fans that Federation Force belongs in the Metroid Prime universe.

The video can be viewed with English subtitles here: [1] and with none here: [2]

Transcription

Below is a transcription of the English narration from the March 2016 Nintendo Direct. The subtitles on the Australian version are slightly different.

“	Hello everyone, I'm Kensuke Tanabe. [bow] I started from the GameCube version, so it's been about fifteen years since I first became a producer of the Metroid Prime series. Today I want to introduce you to the newest installment in the Metroid Prime series, Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Being a new title in a series we deeply love, as a development team, we approached it with great passion and effort. Development on this game started in 2009. At that time, we started with the idea of developing a new online multiplayer-focused Metroid Prime title for a handheld system. Early experiments began in collaboration with our reliable partners at Next Level Games, who I had worked with on Mario Strikers for GameCube, and on Punch-Out!! for Wii. We kicked off official development with them, but at that point, we were working on the Nintendo DSi, and with the DSi, it became clear that we wouldn't be able to achieve the type of performance that fans would expect. When we saw the New Nintendo 3DS a few years later, for one thing, we knew that the Nintendo 3DS would address our performance issues, and we were also excited about the expanded control options provided by the C-stick. At that point, we decided to restart the project. We wanted to use this new game to tell the story of the battle between the Galactic Federation and the Space Pirates. I had always imagined battles between these two within the universe, but we had never really explored that in the previous games. I've been wanting to do it for over ten years, so I was ready and excited to try it. But, given the focus on the Galactic Federation and Space Pirate battle, while Samus would appear in the story, it meant that she couldn't be the main player character this time. So, using the Galactic Federation soldiers as the main characters was the natural course of action for this game. Another theme we wanted to add to the game system was the idea, like an RPG, of players having the ability to choose their own distinct roles in the game, like a healer, a warrior, a mage, and so on. You receive certain types of sub-weapons from the Federation in each mission, and players must divide them among themselves based on a weight limit before taking them on a mission. So, for example, if you carry a lot of Repair Capsules, then that player becomes a sort of healer in the game, and if you take on all the Missiles, then you become a warrior. I would love to explain more about that aspect today, about the character's art style, or why we created Blast Ball, and so on, but let's save that for another time. What I can say for sure is that Metroid Prime: Federation Force is a game that absolutely belongs in the Metroid universe. That, I promise. Please take a look at this video.	„
—Kensuke Tanabe