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In his latest video in the ‘Game Concepts’ series, Masahiro Sakurai once again goes back to Kid Icarus: Uprising. This time, the legendary game designer breaks down the game’s “unique” control scheme and explains the difficulties that the team had in developing the title.
Part on-rails shooter, part third-person shooter, Uprising has a slightly unusual control scheme that even Sakurai notes “takes some getting used to” — moving Pit with the Circle Pad and using the touchscreen to change the camera angle and aim attacks wasn’t the easiest to grasp, we’ll admit. Over the years, we wondered why a title such as this didn’t make the most of Nintendo’s Circle Pad Pro — the 3DS accessory that connected to the handheld to add an extra circle pad and shoulder buttons — to implement true twin-stick controls, but it turns out that there was a very simple answer: space.
Yes, Sakurai also wanted to use Nintendo’s hottest accessory for a dual-analogue experience, but he notes that the device “increased the processor load by about 5%,” which made compatibility impossible since Uprising was already “pushing the hardware to its limits”.
The Circle Pad Pro could be used with the game, mapping Pit’s movements to the right Circle Pad and freeing up your left hand for touchscreen inputs, but the two pads could not be used together due to this increase in load commands. Strangely, the game does give the option to aim using the 3DS’ four face buttons, but clearly throwing in commands from the Circle Pad Pro would have just been too much to handle.
Now, you might be thinking, we haven’t seen a Kid Icarus game in a while and the Switch offers dual analogue controls, as you rub your chin and hope for another Direct. Don’t worry, Sakurai has clearly thought the same thing. He rounds out the video by noting that “I’d love to play on a bigger screen with smoother graphics,” however, “creating a follow-up seems difficult” without a dedicated team to work on it. Back to dreaming it is…
Are you still hoping for a late-life Kid Icarus appearance on Switch? Fly down to the comments and let us know.