Takashi Tezuka E3 Interview

[Smoke]

PGC: We saw at the press conference that when everyone was playing tennis, they had Mr. Iwata's face and everyone else's face put on the characters. Are there any thoughts of putting in a system were players can draw their own faces?

TT: Yeah, that's going to be a part of [Wii Sports] and it's going to have hardware functionality, that you will be able to use some set images and match them up together to create faces. You can also do some editing of your own to create stuff that's closer to yourself and your friends. These will remain in the hardware system so that you can use them throughout the Wii Sports titles and maybe with other software titles, too. We'll just see how that works….so we'll have a character-creating piece of software, I guess.

Full Interview

[A Black Falcon]

Cool!

[Dark Jaguar]

Does the average person even have the drawing skills needed to make something that looks any better than a :) though?

[lazyfatbum]

damn I knew it, it had to be more than just for comedic effect at the press con. :D

combine Tony Hawk's create-a-skater and a face morpher that works similar to Mario 64's strechy face mini game and I think we'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect. imagine a rolodex-styled feature index, pick the eyes you want, the nose you want, etc. And if they dont have your specific eyes you can probably morph them beyond the sets presented as well as download new sets.

This is even better than Perfect dark's ill-fated face mapping and i just knew it was going to resurface again. Of course, the same problems present themselves, the ability to put the president in a shooter, your teacher as a target, etc. And of course the resurrection of Asshole Face/Dickhead is a distinct possibility. Having it in the HARDWARE (on the desktop similar to DS) means that every developer is going to take advantage of this. yunno it's going to be in Animal Crossing and the first FPS to use the feature will be an instant million seller.

Awesome, awesome news.

[Dark Jaguar]

In the firmware you mean? Yeah that would be nice, as would periodic updates repairing any bugs and adding new features which you get online.

Would Nintendo do something like that? We shall see.

I can say this, so what if someone draws the face of some school kid and shoots them/humiliates them in a tennis match? I say just rip off Sony's eyetoy (fair is fair :D) and go to that level. Then we have both options, which is great for people like me who CAN. NOT. DRAW.

[lazyfatbum]

it wont be actual drawing, like i said it's probably just a create-a-skater with more face options so you can actually make yourself look like... yourself. they could even have a set of animations as well.

But yeah, he said it would be in the hardware which makes sense, that way your character is always loaded instead of having to re-make it with each game, pop in a new game and poof there you are. But dont worry about artistic skill, it's going to be made with 7 year old girls and the elderly in mind :D

yunno, I dunno if Nintendo is going to do it, but if Animal Crossing 3 allowed for lots of people at once in a town, or even online-only towns, it would basically be a virtual world chat room with everyone's avatars running around. That would be a dream come true.