Factor 5 doing a new Wii game

By Robert Purchese Published 15 January, 2008

Lair developer back in Nintendo land.

Factor 5 has said it will mark its return to developing for Nintendo hardware with a fancy new Wii game.

President Julian Eggebrecht spilled the beans to IGN, revealing development was already underway.

Factor 5 made a name for itself with the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series that started on N64 back in 1998. No help from Wikipedia, promise.

Eventually it broke onto the GameCube in 2002 with Rogue Leader, and we jumped up and down and sang and danced and awarded it a meaty 9/10. Third game, Rebel Strike, not so much.

Recently Factor 5 also disappointed us with the good looking but monstrously shallow and repetitive PS3 outing Lair, the one where you ride around on dragons and kill things.

Details on its Wii plans are non-existent so far, although we know it will not re-use old technology and probably maybe theoretically squeeze lots of performance juice from the hardware.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (28) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • xNickNackx #1 4 years ago

    Lair was a fantastic game , Wii owners have a lot to be excited about now that Factor 5 have moved onto a more powerful platform.

  • BadBoyBonner #2 4 years ago

    These lads will be able to make the Wii sing graphically.

    Hope the game is great too.

  • penhalion #3 4 years ago

    er we don't want you back..

    factor Five...the bunny boiler girlfriend ou just can't get rid of!

  • OnlyMe #4 4 years ago

    Turrican 3D.

  • BadBoyBonner #5 4 years ago

    Weren't Factor 5 once said to be working on the successor to Pilot Wings?

    Could be the reason why Airplane was cut from the Wii Sport release (much to my chagrin).

  • NewbieZilla #6 4 years ago

    Hopefully it doesn't suck.

  • Dizzy #7 4 years ago

    Brave Sir Robin ran away... bravely ran away away!!!!

  • monkie_king #8 4 years ago

    Hmm, let's hope they don't insist on foisting a broken motion-based control system on us, Lair-style. Although if it is Pilotwings then motion controls could work very well.

    I've always thought a game where you fly paper planes around indoors would be neat--think along the lines of an airborne interior Katamari Damacy level. You could have to ride thermals from heaters, avoid ceiling fans and the like. Think there was something like that on the Mac in the 80s.

    Incidentally, EG gave Rogue Leader 9/10? Somewhat generous I reckon--could have been great but it was rushed and the balance was all off. Fine looking game, though, so early in the GC's life.

  • BadBoyBonner #9 4 years ago

    Not sure they are running away - they just seem to have an uncanny knack of choosing which ever console has the lowest unit sales - something I am sure they felt they would avoid by choosing to develop on PS3. Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing.

    Had to admit I looked this up as I could not remember it's name off the top of my head (well actually I had Thallion but knew it wasn't that) Thornado was the unreleased Gamecube game. It was a platform game - I only remember it as I downloaded the tune released for it that they made available.

    Thornado links

    [link url=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=16 2702
    ]http://ww w.computerandvideogames.com/art...[/link]

    "Well, back in 1999 when "Project Dolphin" was announced, Factor 5 released a sound demo running REAL TIME on GameCube hardware. This music was suposedly from the game Thornado, which I hope they will announce a continuance of, at E3."

    Link for the sound maestro Chris Huelsbeck's Thornado tune.

    http://n6 4media.ign.com/media/news/audio...
    Edited by 1 at 15/01/08 @ 13:44

  • Triggerhappytel #10 4 years ago

    Aw, I was hoping to see Turrican/Turrican 2 on PSN. Or even the long-rumoured remake.

    I'm sure they'll pull lots of polygons out of the Wii, but their last truly good game was, what, seven years ago now?! Not exactly holding my breath here.

  • Eighthours #11 4 years ago

    Bit of a u-turn, this. Here's what Factor 5 had to say to EGM only in October:

    Factor 5, currently developing Lair for the PS3, deemed the Wii a "GameCube 1.5" in reference to its relatively similar technical specifications, also describing the console's audio ability as "relatively mediocre".

  • Eldritch #12 4 years ago

    Easily the most overrated dev studio. Apart from Lionhead.

  • Dizzy #13 4 years ago

    >Bit of a u-turn, this. Here's what Factor 5 had to say to EGM only in October:

    Indeed... I guess after Liar (I know) they need some money fast and a Wii project can probably be whipped up pretty quickly based on their GC code.
    Edited by 1 at 15/01/08 @ 14:04

  • Nova5lag #14 4 years ago

    Brave Sir Robin ran away... bravely ran away away!!!!

    When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled!
    Edited by 1 at 15/01/08 @ 14:05

  • Cloudane #15 4 years ago

    Call me Mr. Boring but I wouldn't mind if Factor 5 made a Star Wars game for the Wii similar to Rogue Leader back in 2001.

  • Tomnd #16 4 years ago

    I think these guys are very much into the technical side of their games than the game play side. The wrote the sound system that was used in the Gamecube hardware and went ahead and sacrificed lair to be able to play it with remote play (as far as i can see).

  • wizbob #17 4 years ago

    Rogue Leader was absolutely fantastic, the last good Star Wars licenced game for me (I haven't played KOTOR). The sequel would also be pretty good if you could skip the on-foot sequences. I'm not surprised they made a mess of the dragonfighting in Lair, they seem to have the driv3r touch for extra-vehicular activity. Oh, and 'a-ha!' in a Nelson voice.

  • Dizzy #18 4 years ago

    "Funny how the usual fanboys here are taking this as F5 running away from PS3, rather than running towards what is undoubtedly the big success story platform-wise this generation"

    People wouldn't have minded if F5 didn't make such a big point of how amazing the POWA of the Cell/Bluray/Memory Stick/Whatever was going to make their games and how last gen the Wii was. I guess they came back to Nintendo with tail between their legs?

  • BadBoyBonner #19 4 years ago

    "It's essentially GameCube 1.5, which is fine because all the motion-control stuff they're doing is pretty radical.

    That's precisely why the 360 wasn't exciting to me, because it didn't have the jump there, even though it had everything else."

    Is what he actually said.

  • Killerbee #20 4 years ago

    Rogue Leader was great (apart from that ludicrously difficult last level), so I suppose this could be good news. Then again, we don't know what they're going to be doing yet so... wait and see.

  • peterfll #21 4 years ago

    Interesting: Rogue Leader was a real "WOW" game on the GC but to my mind it was never a 9/10 game, and certainly not on reflection. Some of the play mechanics were broken then, and wouldn't be tolerated so much now. Personally- at the time - I did love it though.

    I don't call out F5's need to earn some money and "come back tail between legs" to Nintendo, but I will knock them for their credibility in terms of making very public statements about the quality of games being specific to one platform because it suits their current project. This applies to far too many "experts" in this field.

  • monkie_king #22 4 years ago

    Hmm ... Thornado was surely a spritual successor to Turrican, judging by the wind-based atmospheric phenomena derived names. Wonder if they might be resurrecting that.

    According to the IGN thing, it's definitely not Pilotwings, anyway.

  • peasoup #23 4 years ago

    Meh Turrican...the poor mans metroid ;)

  • Royal Fool #24 4 years ago

    I just don't understand why they didn't leave the window open for the Wii, perhaps doing one initial project to gauge the market for this "new-fangled motion-controlled doohickery". They could even have churned out a launch game like they did with the GC.

  • mcwildcard #25 4 years ago

    Well they did so well with the basic sixaxis controller, I'm sure they'll work wonders with the far more intricate Wiimote.

    I'm being sarcastic btw.

  • mr_bigglesworth #26 4 years ago

    > Hmm ... Thornado was surely a spritual successor to Turrican, judging by the wind-based atmospheric phenomena derived names. Wonder if they might be resurrecting that.

    And it was called Thornado because the first demo version of Turrican was called Hurrican.

    My 2c: The only good Turricans developed by F5 are Turrican I and II for the Amiga. However those were only ports of the C64 versions that were developed by Manfred Trenz and no original work by F5. All original Turricans done by F5 (SNES...) are pretty crap. Another example is Katakis, Manfred Trenz's C64 version is a master piece. F5 went off and did something original with it for the Amiga and guess what... So don't bother unless they get Manfred Trenz on board.

    Edited by 2 at 15/01/08 @ 17:00

  • smelly #27 4 years ago

    Who cares if it's 1, 1.5, or 2?

    As long as it has fun games?

    Personally i see the 360 as 1.5, as there will innevetably be the 2.0 in a short period of time... announced by christmas no doubt - with motion sensing controls...

  • BadBoyBonner #28 4 years ago

    Here is a link to a fans page of something I never knew existed.

    Turrican 3D circa 1999 - worked on by original creator Manfred Trenz

    http://ww w.mt-fanpage.de/en/programms/tu...

  • gamerbunny #29 4 years ago

    So has Sony dumped them after the crap-taticular Lair?

    /confused