Noby Noby Boy's Keita Takahashi Interview

Page 1 of 3. Page 2

Keita Takahashi's PSN game Noby Noby Boy is updated today, gaining offline multiplayer support for four players, as well as improved sound and music and a few other novel features. We jumped at the opportunity to have another chat with the eccentric creator about the game we think is an absurdist masterpiece, even if it is just us. Below, Takahashi details the multiplayer, the unique linguistic flatulence features of the update, the iPhone version he revealed in his amazing GDC presentation, and more.

Eurogamer: Hello. Tell us all about the new update for Noby Noby Boy. What's in the multiplayer mode, and how does it work?

Keita Takahashi: Even though it is offline, there is now a multiplayer mode, up to four players. When a new controller is plugged and detected, a new BOY appears on the map. Unfortunately, there is no battle or any co-op mode available. If you want to play like this, please create your own rules. I am confident that everybody will be able to do this!

Besides that, the ranking now displays the first five best players up to the 100th best player, and the musics are now all implemented.

There are also a lot of practical things that have been updated, other very small details that players shouldn't really care about. But I would like players to check this out by themselves.

Eurogamer: Will the update be free, or will we need to pay for it?

Video in higher quality on EGTV

Keita Takahashi: It's free.

Eurogamer: Watching the multiplayer mode at the talk, it seemed like it was possible for two players to control opposite ends of the same BOY. How will this work?

Keita Takahashi: In the single-player mode, you can eat people or animals, BOY can even eat other BOYs.

For example: two players are playing, each of them controlling one BOY. Each BOY gets cut in half, the BOY of player one can eat the bottom part of the BOY of player two and become a mix of both BOYs.

If the head of the BOY of player one and the bottom part of the BOY of player two are combined, the BOY of player one can eat the BOY of player two, poop it out, etc... This kind of combination play becomes necessary. When talking about combination, I know that people are going to ask: what is this all about?

The truth is, I just want to confuse players. If the heads and bottom parts of four players are all mixed together, nobody will understand which on is which one, and things will become almost impossible to understand.

It's a lot of fun!

Eurogamer: Are there any other unusual ways that players can interact with each other?

Keita Takahashi: When BOY eats something and poops it out of his bottom, you can hear the name of the things that he pooped out. That is a new feature that we implemented, and that we call Fart BOY.

For example, when BOY poops out a dog, you can hear "dog" or "inu" [note from the translator: inu means dog in Japanese]. The name of the things BOY pops out is told in English or Japanese in a random way.

That way people will also learn Japanese!

Furthermore, some letters are spread all over the levels. These are hiragana (one of the types of characters used in Japanese), and some are from the Roman alphabet. For example, if you eat the syllables "a" "i" "ra" "bu" "yu" "u" in hiragana, you can almost hear "I love you". You can then then record it as a video and upload it on YouTube, which I think can be funny. It has absolutely no link with growing or with GIRL, but I think that this kind of information is interesting.

To Page 2