Golf Story has proven to be one of the Switch's big indie hits of 2017, but incredibly we could have experienced the game a lot sooner, had fate not intervened.
Sidebar Games' Andrew Newey - who constitutes 50 percent of the game's development team - has been speaking to Red Bull Games about the creation of the game, and reveals that it was originally supposed to come out on the Wii U, and on a much smaller scale:
We're two people in Queensland, Australia. We worked on some smaller games on and off for about eight years, and eventually decided to try and make a console game, so we signed up to become Wii U developers near the end of the Wii U. It was just a small game at first, since we wanted to get something out before the Wii U ended, but it kind of got out of hand, with too many ideas. We managed to move it over to Switch thanks to Nintendo being interested in it.
Unsurprisingly, Newey admits that Nintendo's past titles were a big influence on Golf Story:
Mario Golf was a favourite of mine. I like pretty much all kind of golf games so there are some ideas from other things, too. For example, the Tidy Park golf course is based on some old NES golf games that play horizontally. There's a lot of that kind of stuff that probably only seems cool to me. I also got a lot of good quotes for the punks and old people from my time on golf courses and watching golf.
Newey also explains why the Switch was chosen as the target platform:
We thought the game would play best on a plane so that was the main inspiration. We were also personally excited about the Switch so it was our main choice to release on, and we thought it would be fun to do some stuff with the HD rumble.
Nintendo were a big help too, he reveals:
Being a new and unknown game, we thought we would be left to do most of it on our own, but they were actually very involved and helped us out a lot with releasing it.
Finally, Newey states that Golf Story is likely to remain a Switch exclusive for the foreseeable future, and that the studio's next game will totally unrelated:
We want to make something different for our next game. We haven't thought much about ports, we're mainly focused on a new game and finishing the Japanese version of Golf Story.
Are you still enjoying this epic sports RPG? Let us know with a comment.
[source redbull.com]
Comments 22
Sliggy - insert Wii U port comment here. Super, super game.
Ah lawd...please don't let the Slig-ster catch wind of this.
...at any rate, I'm personally glad it made it over to the Switch. Rarely has a golf game caught my eye.
This game is utterly awesome, do you a favor and pick it up!
I'm glad they made the shift to the Switch. It's a really awesome game but I never would have played it if it had have been on the Wii U instead. Great fit for a handheld.
@Lalivero @Krull He's surprisingly been rather sparse for almost the last week. In fact several of the more "dramatic" characters on here have been somewhat absent recently.
Either half term holidays have dragged them away from their computers or the mods have been a little busy.
Enjoyed this game so much, I'm hoping the video capture feature will be linked to this soon. Gotta show off those skill shots!
Really glad they didn't bring the game out on Wii U. The Wii U is dead, move on.
Good on them for holding off, not only so they could expand the game to be what it is, but more importantly so that they could release it on a platform where it would sell better than used urinal cakes. The Wii U was a death trap for third party development, and even moreso now.
I hope people now realise how good the Mario Golf RPGs are which Golf Story took heavy inspiration from. I hope they fix the bugs so that it can be on the same quality level as Nintendo's own series.
Really a wonderful game indeed. It has a slightly sluggish start (with equally sluggish music), and I wish the end-game gave you more reason to go back and enjoy the games courses over and over again, but it's still brilliant.
One the richest, most satisfying, and uniquely funny eShop games I've ever had the pleasure of playing.
What with Snipperclips and Starview Valley developed by similarly small teams, it gives me hope that games like this can still thrive without the need for astronomical development budgets.
The Switch's big gimmick is that you can take 'console' games 'on the go', but Golf Story has impressed upon me the importance of the system receiving games what feel deliberately intimate and 'portable', which (if you want) can be played on the big screen.
Golf Story is excellent: it's fun, funny, and surprisingly deep. I hope to see more from these guys.
Love this game. Fun use of HD rumble too.
Golf story is great
If this was released on the Wii U I most likely would've never experienced it. Glad it came to the Switch where you can literally play it anywhere. I wouldn't mind a Golf Story 2 in the future though so let hope whatever they make is just as good story wise.
So glad this came out on Switch. I quite like it, and between the several other games I am playing, I am also still trying to finish this one. The Switch is taking over my life, loving having all these games!
I have a Wii U, but much unlike the Switch, if something wasn't a huge name, I missed it because the Wii U OS and eshop are/were so slow! But with the Switch I hop on almost every day just to see if anything new has popped up, and something usually has! It only takes about a minute or two to hop on and look.
Also Nintendo Life helped convince me Golf Story was worth it, with all the positive talk it got.
Fantastic game, but incredibly buggy. Still fantastic, nonetheless.
@Krull I miss his comments...
I might pick up Golf Story someday... But for now I have too much on my wishlist already.
I'm kind of glad as the game wouldn't have had much hope on the Wii U, at least if it sells well we can hope for a sequel on Switch.
It's great that this came on the Switch - the portability is great for playing this! Looking forward to their next project.
Anybody has news on the patch the devs promised? I know the already submitted it to Nintendo, but I don't know if it has been approved already.
@Krull @-DG What happened to him? Did he get banned?
@ReshiramZekrom No clue. People attacked him every time he posted here, so I wouldn't be surprised if he left on his own.
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