Starlink: Battle for Atlas is finally out on the Nintendo Switch and it is most likely the Nintendo Switch version you’ll be purchasing as it includes Star Fox. And it’s obviously isn’t present in the other versions of the game.
In a recent interview Ubisoft stated that they began the collaboration well before it was officially approved by Nintendo. Obviously it got given the go ahead and should hopefully prove to be a success sales-wise but Matthew Rose shows us how it came into play;
Matthew Rose (Producer of Starlink)
So we always thought maybe, maybe they’ll be interested. Maybe this is something we can do” and so we started right away, because we were like “we’re so excited by even them having this conversation with us, even though they hadn’t confirmed anything.
And so we started working. We started drawing concepts, we made a 3D-printed Arwing that had their proper connectors and toys in it so that you could take it apart and everything.”
So we just started working, but we were a little cautious. We didn’t want to dedicate all of our resources to it, and then we got the invitation. To “hey, do you guys want to come to Kyoto?” And it was like a week before… we to go, we had the meeting. They were like “We’ve got a slot, it’s in a week.” It’s on. And we were like “woah, woah, woah, woah, okay.” Fortunately, we had started work before we were really… confirmed anything. So we scrambled to put together this pitch and pull everything together and, for instance, we had this 3D-printed Arwing, but we didn’t have time to paint it properly – to like “pro paint” it. Because, you know, if you’ve gotta do it, you gotta do it right – especially for Nintendo.
And so, but 3D-printed plastic it was like beige. It looked kind of ugly, so we spray painted it this kind of really neutral grey colour. It was a nice finish though. It was this nice, you can imagine, you know, it was almost like you’d see an untextured 3D model in a game, and so we spray painted it grey and brought it over, and had the concept art of the pilots and things, and so we went to present and it was just this crazy surprise to have the whole Star Fox team there that we weren’t expecting at all and Mr. Miyamoto. And uh… yeah… pretty amazing.
It is just a joy to see how Ubisoft feels when they get to play with the Nintendo IPs isn’t it? I can not stress enough how much I would love to see them keep this up on both ends (Nintendo and Ubisoft). Because let’s be frank about it; they are creating wonderful games. Just look at how happy the Star Fox team looks!!
