I Gotta Believe… in Masaya Matsuura!

Nowadays it seems like it’s easy to ignore the Wii despite it being a more readily accessible console than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 combined. A lot of the games are fluff, ports, or “lifestyle” stuff and the games that are interesting are quickly drowned out by the gaudy, blaring cacophany made by all the rest. Case in point, I thought Major Minor’s Majestic March — the marching band rhythm game from PaRappa creator Masaya Matsuura — hit retail shelves sometime last year. As it turns out, he’s still working on it (it’s due out this month!) and Original Sound Version caught up with him to talk batons, balance boards, and more.

On the game specifically he confirms there will be no plastic baton peripheral for the Wii Remote and that the balance board won’t be utilized (he’s worried about it breaking after you stomp on it for 10 minutes on end, and rightly so). He also explains that though the game’s tempo is controlled by the players movements they didn’t turn to MIDI to make it interactive. Rather, each song is comprised of thousands of tiny audio files that can be “stretched” and shuffled to fit the waggling arm of whoever might be playing. This is definitely not going to be another Wii Music.

Check out the full interview for much more on Matsuura’s musical history, his work outside of games, and the geek-tacular answer to the question of “which musical instrument would you be?”.