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N-Philes: Are they connected quests?Tomm: That I don't know either. They might be placed in the same world? It's based on a cell phone game––so it's not like a port, but it's based on––so one quest might be like a redone version of that, I don't know. But like I said, it's really open, lots of different enemies, big bosses that cover both screens, the spell system's cool, attacking is kinda cool, and um... there's one other thing I was about to say but it's gone now. Hey, a shield! Um... oh, there's enemy cutscenes! And they're actually voiced, and the look good, they're not choppy or anything. They're like actual hand-drawn animation. We've actually done it and recorded and right before E3 I saw it and it's really good quality.
N-Philes: One other thing I wanted to ask: Nintendo has their "three pillars": the Game Boy Advance, the DS, and now Wii is replacing the GameCube. Now the DS can do a lot more than the Game Boy Advance, but obviously there's still a market for Game Boy Advance games––a lot of people still have the system already––so is Atlus committed to supporting it as long as it's "alive"?
Tomm: I think right now we're looking at Yggdra Union as our last big project. It's the highest quality of the other [Game Boy Advance games] we've got, and it was originally supposed to come out this spring, but we it pushed it back so it would be at the end of our GBA lineup, to sort of go out with a bang. I mean, if we came across a really cool GBA game, we'd do it, but as far as right now we're probably going to leave off here and make the move on to the DS. I'm always on the lookout, so if there was something on Game Boy Advance I just had to have, hopefully we would do it.
N-Philes: OK, and similar to the Game Boy leap to DS, are you done with GameCube?
Tomm: Yeah. For some reason our, well, we didn't get very good GameCube games to do, but they didn't do well. Because they weren't that great.
N-Philes: A lot of N-Philers seem to like Cubivore!
Tomm Yeah it's a cool concept, but it didn't sell. At all. So we're not doing any more GameCube but we're on the Wii, and we're trying to go forward with that.
N-Philes: So are you excited about Wii being so easy for developers?
Tomm: Yeah, it's really affordable too, so I think on the Japanese end we're going to get a lot more games because of that.
N-Philes: Is that going to make it easier for you to locate and publish games or is it going to make it less necessary for these smaller companies to get a publisher like Atlus to bring their games out?
Tomm: Probably a little of Column A, a little of Column B, but hopefully it'll make it easier for us to get them. I mean right now we're looking at the GameCube in Japan, and it's all on PS2. Because that's where all the money is at, but I think when it's cheaper we're going to see a shift over there, where all the Japanese games are on the Wii and fewer on the PS3 because it's so expensive to develop for. So over here we're going to get a lot more Nintendo games to choose from.
N-Philes: Oh that's fantastic.
And we'll leave it off on that note, because all that happened afterwards was that I brought up Snowboard Kids DS, Tomm made a sour face, suggested we tell all our Japanese friends to get Trauma Center to secure a third game in the series (Triple Bypass, we laughed heartily), and he informed us that he had another interview and that it was time for us to leave. But by then we'd chatted for nearly three hours so we really should have seen it coming. My only regret was not grabbing a sandwich on the way out. They looked delicious.
Many thanks to Tomm Hulett, who provided us with a very informative and entertaining interview; he is certainly a stand-up guy. And of course a thank you to Atlus for the interview invitation and hospitality.
