Recently, Official Nintendo Magazine got a chance to sit down with Grasshopper, the team responsible for critical darling No More Heroes. While the interview provides a neat and tidy synopsis of No More Heroes‘ development cycle, it provides two interesting tidbits: No More Heroes was originally planned for the Xbox 360, and Travis Touchdown was dreamed up while Goichi Suda (aka Suda51) was on the toilet.
No More Heroes‘ Wiimote functionality is limited to special finishing moves during combat, a mechanic that has been roundly praised by critics. That’s well and good, but it almost never happened, as No More Heroes was almost a 360 game (incidentally, Suda’s next game may very well be on the Microsoft console). Wii owners have Marvelous Entertainment‘s Yasuhiro Wada to thank, as he’s the one that pointed out “that Nintendo Wii was the perfect platform for the game given the motion sensor capabilities of the Wii’s controller and the cut and thrust nature of the game’s combat,” Suda explains.
Interestingly, Travis Touchdown’s creation led to a silly in-game homage: “I actually came up with the initial idea for a game featuring a Knoxville-style character whilst on the toilet. I decided to use that inspiration as the save game mechanic,” says Suda.
If No More Heroes‘ save system was inspired by Suda’s excretionary habits, I can only imagine how he came up with the Harmon’s Rooms in Killer7. Something about a maid, an old man, and sporadic sex in a wheelchair …
