We have just posted our interview with Joe Nickolls, Producer of NHL Slapshot.
Operation Sports: "Given the Wii's stigma of a "casual" sports gaming console, what was the draw to develop what appears to be a very deep and engaging hockey game for the hardcore sports gamer on Nintendo's console?"
Joe Nickolls: "Without a doubt, the most common question I get outside of work is “when are you going to do NHL on the Wii”? There are millions of families that have Wii consoles that have wanted to play hockey, but either didn’t have a PS3 or X360. And there’s no shortage of “compilation sports” packages on the market for the Wii – so it was really a no-brainer to make a hockey game that could appeal to both the casual gamer and the hockey fan. I consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like playing games on the Wii. Grand Slam Tennis for example is a great game made even better by playing on the Wii. There are also a lot of gamers that are hard core hockey fans, but aren’t necessarily hard core gamers – so we’ve tried to make a game that appeals to everyone. We don’t expect people to stop playing NHL 11 on the next gen consoles, this is a different experience for sure, but for many gamers, the Wii is their console of choice, and we shouldn’t keep them from playing a great hockey game because they chose to go with a Wii."
Joe Nickolls: "Without a doubt, the most common question I get outside of work is “when are you going to do NHL on the Wii”? There are millions of families that have Wii consoles that have wanted to play hockey, but either didn’t have a PS3 or X360. And there’s no shortage of “compilation sports” packages on the market for the Wii – so it was really a no-brainer to make a hockey game that could appeal to both the casual gamer and the hockey fan. I consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like playing games on the Wii. Grand Slam Tennis for example is a great game made even better by playing on the Wii. There are also a lot of gamers that are hard core hockey fans, but aren’t necessarily hard core gamers – so we’ve tried to make a game that appeals to everyone. We don’t expect people to stop playing NHL 11 on the next gen consoles, this is a different experience for sure, but for many gamers, the Wii is their console of choice, and we shouldn’t keep them from playing a great hockey game because they chose to go with a Wii."
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