I had the pleasure of playing Fez at PAX East, the upcoming perspective-bending 2D exploration platformer for XBLA. I also had the opportunity to chat with Mr. Phil Fish, the game’s co-creator. While talking about the ideas that went into building Fez, Mr. Fish kept dropping references to classic Nintendo titles. His plan was to infuse Fez with the non-linear exploration of the original Zelda, the subtle atmosphere-building environmental details of Super Metroid, and a touch of Ocarina of Time‘s highly populated, emotionally evocative world, amongst other things.
You’d think that with all those classic Nintendo influences, the game might have some chance of coming to a Nintendo console someday. As for now, that’s not looking too likely, unless “F*ck off” secretly means “All aboard!”
Hit the jump for Mr. Fish’s full statements on Fez‘s potential release on PC, PSN, WiiWare and the 3DS.
Regarding Fez on other direct download services, Mr. Fish had this to say:
Right now we’re only concentrating on XBLA, which makes the most sense for us at the time. PC and PSN would also make a lot of sense, but in my opinion, WiiWare just wouldn’t be worth our time and effort. It’s a dismal system that I don’t want to deal with neither as a customer, nor a developer. No demos? Fuck off.
Before you fellow WiiWare fans fly into a rage in the comments, keep in mind that Mr. Fish is fully aware that Nintendo has started utilizing time-sensitive demos for some games. Still, depending on who you are and what your game is, that could still mean “no demo” for you. A lot of WiiWare devs aren’t graced with a demo, or see their demo dropped from the service less than a month later.
Things aren’t looking quite as bleak for the 3DS in general, but still not great for Fez in particular:
As for the 3DS, well, that would just have to be a completely different game. If I’m going to make a game that uses stereoscopic graphics, it’s gonna be built from the ground up for that. Oh wait! I already did that. http://polytroncorporation.com/games/ super-hypercube wink-wink nudge-nudge.
