MDK 2 HD and interview
Posted by Mnich on June 30 2010 23:39:12
After more than 10 years of waiting for any news about MDK series, Interplay Entertainment Corp. and Beamdog partner announced bringing MDK2 to the Nintendo Wii™ and MDK2 HD to the PC.
To read more click the "Read More" button below.
Extended News
“It is a great pleasure to announce that we are returning to the adventures of Kurt Hectic, Dr. Hawkins and the 6-legged gun-toting robotic dog Max,” said Hervé Caen, CEO of Interplay. “MDK2 was a great title to work on and we're happy to have some of the original team working on these new versions,” seconded Trent Oster, co-Founder of Beamdog.
MDK2 for Wii™ is expected to be released during coming Winter and is planned for electronic distribution through Nintendo's WiiWare™ service. MDK2 HD will follow on the PC through the Beamdog digital distribution platform.
We have also interview with Trent Oster, the BioWare co-founder who says little about MDK2 HD.
Let's talk about MDK2 HD. First what was your involvement in the making of the original MDK2 for BioWare?
I did about a year of early technical and prototype art on the project and later, a lot of swearing when they pulled half my art team from Neverwinter Nights to help finish it. My business partner, Cam was the lead programmer and producer, essentially the heart of the project, so a lot of our work rests on his shoulders.
How did the idea come about to release MDK2 HD?
We had talked about the concept of graphically updating some of the great games we had worked on and it seemed like a solid idea. We wanted to keep the heart of the title intact, but just fix up the bits that look dated, essentially giving the game an overhaul. MDK2 was kind of a logical target and when Interplay contacted us about a Wii version we quickly signed on for the HD version as well.
We are assuming the "HD" part of the title means that this game will be getting a graphical overhaul for its release. Can you go into detail on what's being revised for this new version?
I can't really go into a lot of detail as we are still going through the various options. All I can really say is that there are a lot of new shader techniques that fit the MDK2 art style quite well.
Will there be any new content or features added to MDK2 HD?
Our main goal is to not mess with the fun. MDK2 was a fun game, and we want to ensure we don't mess with that. MDK2 was also way hard on the Dreamcast version. So hard it is the only game to ever make me break a controller. I actually snapped the Dreamcast controller, popping the VMU across the room when I was playing the Max levels, so some tuning will be in our to-do list. As for new content, Jinkies, I don't have a clear answer for that. We'll play it by ear and see what the game needs when our development nears completion.
Is this a project that you are doing in-house or are you getting some outside help?
In-house. We've been in contact with a number of ex-Bioware folks who worked on the original and a few are lending us a hand on bits, but the heavy lifting is all in-house. We have a team of people who work on the digital distribution portal and another team who are working on the game overhaul, but we're all the same company.
What's the current status of the game and when will it be released?
We're still in talks about the release date, but we don't plan on taking forever. We're motivated and focused, so we've talked about a target of 2011
You can read the whole interview here