The PSP has become home for a few smash-hit puzzle games. From the snazzy visuals to the rocking tunes, Mercury Meltdown has managed to establish itself as a sound base for PSP gaming. Now, Ignition Banbury is developing a remixed editon of Mercury Meltdown for the PS2. Ed Bradley, from Ignition Banbury, answered some of our questions regarding Mercury Meltdown Remix for the PS2.
VG Core: 200 levels will definitely keep gamers busy for ages. I think after coming up with 20 levels I would be stumped on new ideas. How did you manage to come up with over 200 levels for this game?
EB: We have 8 level builders so they only had to come up with 25 each! Plus we have so many different obstacles and enemies to play around with that inspiration is not a problem. I'd say we actually created over 300 levels or variations of levels for Mercury Meltdown and those that made it into the game are the best of those.
VG Core:What prompted for wanting to bring Mercury Meltdown to the PS2?
EB: We've always been a multi-platform developer so doing the original Mercury game as PSP-only was something of an anomaly for us. Our in-house tools and libraries support PS2 so it was a fairly easy process to produce the extra version of the game. And anyway, why not? The PS2 is a great machine and a huge market!
VG Core: What are some of the advantages you will have now that the game is coming to the PS2?
EB: The PSP and PS2 are quite similar in their capabilities so it's not really a matter of one having advantages over the other. That said, it's great to see the game on a big TV screen for the first time and we're hearing lots of comments about the relative ease-of-use of the PS2 controller compared to the PSP's analog nub.
VG Core: Will any of the core mechanics of the gameplay be changed in any way, or is the game mostly being optimized for console play?
EB: I think Mercury works equally well on a hand-held and a standard console. However there are a few more restrictions and considerations you have to work within when developing for a hand-held which makes it easier to take the game to a platform where those restrictions don't exist. What I'm trying to say is it's probably easier to take a game from a hand-held to a console than the other way round :)
VG Core:Previous iterations of Mercury Meltdown were known for their difficulty. Will the same level of difficulty remain intact for MM Remix?
EB: What we've done for MM is to try and lower the difficulty for the early stages but retain the challenge at the very high end. We have some crazy fans out there who love the insanely challenging levels and we wanted to keep them satisfied. But we definitely tried hard to address the justified criticisms of the first title for being too punishing.
VG Core: Will the party-mode games be returning for this game?
EB: They certainly will!
VG Core: The last game in the series featured a multiplayer mode. Will there be any on-line modes for the PS2 version?
EB: Unfortunately we weren't able to incorporate online play in the PS2 version for the same reasons the PSP version only supports ad-hoc play and not infrastructure mode.
VG Core: Thanks Ed, for answering our questions.
You can check out more info for Mercury Meltdown Remix at the homepage by clicking here. And be sure to stay tuned in for more info and news with VGcore.com for all the latest and upcoming games.
