This week gave us a good excuse to talk about Patapon. It's back! Well, in remastered-for-PS4 form, anyway. The rhythm-action title was one of my favorites on PSP. I need to get this new version.
Over on the PlayStation Blog, Sony has an interview up with producer Hiroyuki Kotani and sound designer Kemmei Adachi, as well as a free dynamic theme. The duo has some neat production insights, including how the art direction and design came to be ("I remember writing in the design doc that this would be a game for adults with good taste and an interest in art"), who dug this game ("40% of players were women"), and even a few tips for newcomers (the game can be tough!).
My favorite part has got to be this back and forth about the singing in Patapon:
Who did the singing?
Kotani: My son! (Laughs) I thought it would be fun to have children sing, but since we didn’t have the budget to hire, I asked my son to have a go. (Laughs) At the time he was about 10. We threw the little bundle of energy into the studio and asked him to sing for us!
Adachi: It was our first time doing it that way, so it was as difficult as you might expect. It was really hard to have a child maintain the energy needed. It was the summer holidays and he just wanted to play, and he got brought into the studio when he was still half asleep.
Kotani: He laid down the ya-ho-hois and woo-ha-has while listening to the backing track.
Adachi: It was all done quite spontaneously. Before working on Patapon, I’d worked on LocoRoco, which was a similar approach. My voice is actually in that game too. I got up in front of the mic and laid down some chorus and gradually added to it. Patapon ended up quite similar in terms of the method.
Kotani:. We rigged it up so my son could hear me through the mic, and I sang an improved little song based on the backing track and had him copy me. Turns out even the recording utilised call and response! (Laughs) It felt a bit like a concert.
As for that free theme, you'll just need to enter an email address and name one of the War Drums in Patapon on the blog post. Pon, Pon, Pata, Pon!
Marching to the Beat of Their Own Drum — An Interview with the Creators of Patapon [PlayStation Blog]
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