We Love Golf Interview

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Eurogamer: Although you haven't used the Wiimote as though it's a golf club, the control system is still based on remote movements. Did you ever think about using a different system, like having the option of button-based controls?

Takahashi brothers: In the beginning, we really weren't sure if we were going to be able to make a golf game that came up to our standards using the remote control. However, we felt that we'd done most of what we wanted to do with a traditional button control scheme. If you look at the Mario Golf games, we're really happy with how that works as a traditionally controlled golf game - so we wanted to do something new. We were looking for the next challenge. We wanted to see if we could make a golf game using just the remote, and still make it very precise and very intuitive - something that felt good and had really good control. Obviously that's something that's very difficult to do on the Wii, and not just for golf games, but we wanted to do it.

We think that we've ended up with a control scheme that's very new, very fun and very high quality. Honestly, we feel that We Love Golf is the best golf game that we've made so far. That owes a lot to this control scheme.

Eurogamer: Camelot is known for two very different types of game - RPGs and golf, which are unusual bedfellows. Do you have different teams at work, or is there just one team that sometimes gets tired of making epic RPGs and decides to make a nice golf game instead?

Chun-Li shows Rob how it's done.

Takahashi brothers: We've got just one team making our games. We are definitely a company formed of game creators who love RPGs - that's undeniable. So the first golf game that we actually did - Everybody's Golf - that was an idea that we came up with as huge golf fans, and to be honest, there were not that many people in the company who really got behind the idea! We didn't get a lot of help right out of the gates. At that time, we did split up our team and come up with two different design documents. But in the end, we really felt like splitting the team up meant that both projects didn't feel like enough. They both felt a bit lacking.

Basically, we got rid of one of the ideas, and moved everyone onto one RPG. But since we'd designed that game for a smaller team, we had some people left over. In trying to find something for those extra guys to do - something that was a very Camelot kind of game - that ended up being Everybody's Golf. Of course, it sold well over two million copies in Japan - so it naturally became the main project! The other project sort of fell by the wayside. That was a time when the volume of content in games changed - the bar was being raised higher and higher, year after year. Even though we had these extra staff that we thought could make a little golf game, it ended up becoming a full-on project for us.

Eurogamer: It's been a while since you made an RPG - do you still like the genre, and will you be returning to it in the future?

Takahashi brothers: Camelot is an RPG maker. We don't think that we'll ever quit making RPGs.

Eurogamer: So that's Golden Sun DS, yeah?

Takahashi brothers: It would be great, wouldn't it! [Laughing] We want to play that game too, just as much as you. We love Golden Sun! We are working on a lot of different things - a lot of different design documents and so on, including some different RPG ideas. Don't worry, we're thinking about RPG stuff! We've got all these ideas, many many different things we're thinking about - but of course, we still have just one team, so we'll see what happens.