Image: Nintendo
Drag x Drive has received a rather beefy update earlier today, and to coincide with Patch 1.2.0’s release, Nintendo has dropped a series of Ask the Developer interviews with the lead trio.
Yoshinori Konishi (director and programming director), Hiroki Hamaue (programmer), and Takahisa Ikejiri (art director) sat down to share their experience in developing this online multiplayer title, which is controlled entirely with the Switch 2’s Mouse Mode.
In Part 1, Konishi shares that the game was inspired by “sports such as wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, wheelchair motocross, BMX and skateboarding”, particularly the former. Hamaue had previously rode a wheelchair “for a research project back when I was a student”, but for Konishi and Ikejiri, the first time they got to experience wheelchair basketball was at an experience in Osaka.
Image: Nintendo
The developers purchased both an everyday wheelchair and sports wheelchair to help with the process. But the problem was that, as Konishi says, “We were restricted to the small space inside the office and could only let loose down the hallway once everyone else had gone home for the day. (Laughs)” because the project was tightly under wraps.
Talking about the wheelchair basketball experience, Ikejiri recalls that he “wasn’t prepared for how difficult it was to shoot the ball. In wheelchair basketball, the hoop is placed at the same height as in standard basketball. But since you take the shot sitting down, my shot didn’t reach the basket at all.”
“Maneuvering a wheelchair is difficult unless you get the hang of when to apply and release force,” Hamaue adds. “You can’t just propel yourself along smoothly in a single stroke. But it cemented for me how deep the controls are”.
Images: Nintendo
As well as trying out wheelchair basketball for themselves, Konishi details the variety of reading materials the team gathered up: “From an encyclopedia of wheelchairs to videos and essays by wheelchair athletes and even manga about basketball or wheelchairs, we pulled together as much reference material as we could lay our hands on and studied it together.”
And, crucially, wheelchair basketball players also got a chance to go hands-on with Drag x Drive during development, which provided Konishi and the rest with valuable insights: “Because the players use wheelchairs in their daily lives, they were all really good at turning and moving backwards in the game. Of course, we learned a lot about the controls, but we gained even more insights watching them think about what to do on the court as they played.”
Hamaue adds that “seeing actual wheelchair basketball players get the hang of the game and its controls so quickly confirmed to us that it could work well as an intuitive control scheme.” And we’d agree; there’s nothing else quite like Drag x Drive on the market, and while its control scheme may not be for everyone, it makes for a unique experience.
Image: Nintendo
All three parts contain video clips and test footage of Drag x Drive’s development, and are worth reading especially if you’re interested in checking out the new update. Perhaps it’s time to dive back and try out Survival Tag mode as the Holidays approach…
Are you still playing Drag x Drive? What do you think of the development process? Let us know in the comments.
[This story has been edited for clarity]
[source nintendo.com]
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Alana has been with Nintendo Life since 2022, and while RPGs are her first love, Nintendo is a close second. She enjoys nothing more than overthinking battle strategies, characters, and stories. She also wishes she was a Sega air pirate.