NicktendoWiiU: Why I'm excited for Rodea the Sky Soldier!

Announced way back in 2010, Rodea the Sky Soldier disappeared off the radar for a number of years. Recently it was announced that it will be surfacing once again, this time as a WiiU and 3DS title! The lucky gamers in Japan will also get a special edition which incudes the original Wii release, exactly as it was all those years ago!

What excited me most about this mysterious game is the fact that it is being developed by none other than Yuji Naka himself! For those of you that don't know, Yuji Naka was head of Sonic Team for a long while, working on such prolific games as the original Sonic The Hedgehog, Phantasy Star and NiGHTS Into Dreams to name just a few of his greatest achievements. In 2006 he left Sonic Team in order to persue his own career and start up a new company, Prope.

Prope was created due to a new scheme within Sega that promoted the development of independent creators and companies. The first game Prope created was a simplistic, but fun game for the Wii simply called Let's Tap. The game had you place a Wii Remote on a box and literally tap the box in order to play the games. It's really fun and unique and definitely an interesting game worthy of a place in any wii gamers collection!

Their next proper game (not counting IOS and WiiWare titles, of which there were many) was another interesting experimental game called Ivy the Kiwi? Released for the Wii and DS in 2010.The Game involves you drawing a line of ivy using the Wii Remote or touch screen in order to guide a small bird to the exit of continually more challenging levels. The game was met by plenty of praise for its fun mechanics and excellent hand drawn graphics! Another sadly overlooked title in the Wii's library!

Apart from a few minor releases, not much was heard from Prope until the announcement of a game called Rodea the Sky Soldier in 2010. There was a short video shown off but since that announcement, it seemed like the game was set to disappear as news articles began to report that Prope was having a lot of trouble finding a publisher for the game. Actual developemnt was reportedly finished by 2012, but contact with the chosen publisher, Kadokawa games, was proving to be difficult.

Naka himself said in an interview, “We have finished developing the Wii version and we have already submitted it. That was around a year ago. But it seems like they are still considering the [details of] the 3DS version. It might be close to being finished, but we havent spoken to Kadokawa in a while, so I’m not sure. Kadokawa never said they’re not going to sell it, so I would guess they’ll release it sometime in 2013 or so. That has to get cleared up. Because of that, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to the game.”

Now, five years after the original announcement, it seems the game is finally about to be released, albiet for an all new platform, the WiiU. I have high hopes for the game and I'm sure many other share my excitement. All I can do now is hope it actually gets a release in the UK!