28th April 2004, 1:17 PM
Using animals would not be out of character, rather it's the animals you are suggesting that would be. I liked the idea of Donkey Kong Racing but would not want to see Banjo flying slow Kazooie while DK gets to ride a super fast ostrich. To make the game balanced, however, you would need to make all of the animals about the same speed. Using planes in Banjo Pilot instead of birds or broomsticks will make it so that every character has an equal chance of winning. Certainly Grunty could whup Banjo's ass if he had to race her with little, slow Kazooie. There's nothing out of character with Banjo and co. flying planes in a race. All of the Nintendo sports and party games make very little sense in terms of plot, but it still works. Why is Bowser racing against Mario? Why is Samus fighting Link when they exist in different times and places? That aspect does not matter, as the reason is to make fun games where the last thing you thing about is story and continuity. However, they don't violate any of the characters abilities and limits. Samus jumps the same, Mario jumps the same, they all have their signature moves, and those that have never been shown fighting before (Captain Falcon) can be dealt with in any way. All of the minor tweaking here and there (mainly Kirby) are still believable. Of course all of these characters and worlds are fictional, but there has to be maintained a certain level of believability and boundaries within these fictional universes. If you establish that Mario dies or gets severely injured whenever he touches lava, you can't just have him swimming through it in another game, UNLESS you give him some sort of power-up that makes sense, like a metal skin or something.
This isn't crap I just made up, believe it or not I'm not quite that much of a dork. This is logic spewed forth from the likes of Chuck Jones, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Stan Lee. And it certainly makes a lot of sense.
This isn't crap I just made up, believe it or not I'm not quite that much of a dork. This is logic spewed forth from the likes of Chuck Jones, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Stan Lee. And it certainly makes a lot of sense.