Ask Us Anything Nippon Marathon

Happy New Year!

Here at Onion Soup Interactive we cannot wait to share with you all of the exciting things we have planned in 2020.

But to celebrate the new year, we prompted our Discord community to ask us any question about Nippon Marathon and we would answer the heck out if it.

Nippon Marathon DLC? Nippon Marathon Online? Who is JOE?! Were these questions asked? Let's find out.

Here Come the Questions

This is the first of an ongoing series in which we promise to answer community questions straight up, so, here goes.

Will we ever see a sequel? - ares5gamer via Discord

Andy: Well there it is, the big question! I'm going to go out on a limb here and say yes. For us, it's not a question of 'if' but 'when'. I'd like to explain a little about why that is. There's one essential ingredient that must exist in a sequel and that's a fully fledged Online mode. Unfortunately this is something we just don't have the capacity to create by ourselves, maybe we could manage to do it for Steam but we feel it would be unfair to our community, we can't leave out consoles and so the real reason we haven't started work on Nippon Marathon 2 yet is that simply, we can't quite afford to bring in the help we would need to do it justice. We hope this will change soon though and if it does, it will be amazing!

What was your favorite part in making this game? - Sleeping G.O. JC via Discord

Andy: I think for me two or three things stand out, first was when we sent the game to YouTubers Stumpt, as they were playing it Jas exclaimed 'Oh my God I love this!'... that was cool.

Amy: Stumpt were the first YouTubers to actually receive a copy of Nippon Marathon to stream. Back then they played the prototype version, which looks a little different to the Nippon Marathon we know and love today.

Andy: Also, after modelling Zenbei, his colliders were a bit off, he got his head stuck in a fence and flopped around like a fish while grunting in pain and flashing his panties, that made me spit out coffee all over the monitor. So yeah, little things like that are what take you out of the focussed concentration and give you a moment to take in what you've been working on and how fun it really is!

Amy: I loved the ability to literally create a game with no boundaries. Like with Katamari Damacy, I love the moments where you're rolling around a town, a school, a garden, and you see a cow standing by a wellington boot, and you think to yourself, "can I pick this up?", Yes. Yes, you can, and that feeling is glorious. It's that feeling I wanted to encapsulate whilst making Nippon Marathon, as it's not only fun to play, it's fun to develop too.

What is Nippon Marathon? - 「Soft & Wet」JC ⚓ via Discord

Nippon Marathon is a way of life.

Will there be any additional content for nippon marathon? Or a new patch for correcting bugs? - Clem_SQL (Langrisser/Epic7) via Discord

Andy: Oh how I wish we could patch! You don't know how much I want to fix some of those awful bugs! (But not all of them, some of them are fun and part of the game). So, the short answer is no, sorry, we literally can't do that and here's why.

We received some of our dev kits very late into development, as a result we were unaware of the requirements for patching on Nintendo Switch. This meant we had to try to radically alter the structure of our game to allow for additional content to be delivered in line with their strict (and totally reasonable) methods. So, we got in a mess, then we contracted a very talented freelancer to help but ultimately the attempt fell short. The result was that we were able to patch couple of times while staying within the patch size limitations but each successive patch carries extra load from the previous ones and now any patches we make are far too big.

Why can't we patch other systems? Well, this is because our publishers and the platform holders quite rightly prefer to have patches go out across the board. I also agree with this approach, I don't think that our mistakes and inexperience should result in one version being hampered more than the others. It's a real shame, but that's where it is and we've learned a LOT from that experience.

Amy: We have learnt the hard way, and we will definitely make future games with the ability to patch.

Will they're ever be any dlc of some sort added in the game? - TunelessCandy69 via Discord

Amy: It's the same answer as above unfortunately, DLCs work in a similar way to patches, so, the simple answer is no.

How did you come up with a crazy game Like Nippon Marathon, like how do you start such genius? - KYLEZOOKI ♛ via Discord

Amy: The creation of Nippon Marathon was all Andy, when I first saw the prototype for Nippon Marathon, I think my exact words were "OMG what is this?!?!".

Andy: For me, I think I was feeling very suppressed in my day job! I used to work as a technologist for the University of Birmingham and I wanted to be creative in my job and felt constantly stifled. I'd been working on outside projects with some close friends that involved a lot of Unity development and one day I started experimenting with an idea that was a bit like Crossy Road (or Frogger) but more competitive and physics based. The more I played with this idea in my spare time the more I felt there was a real possibility of it being a real game. It was basic, but the players falling over obstacles reminded me of Takeshi's Castle (Beat Takeshi, MXC) so I started wrapping it up in a kind of Japanese Game Show theme and that's when it really started to take shape. Then, the prototype of Nippon Marathon was STOLEN!

A burglar broke into our home and stole Nippon Marathon, he didn't quite look like this but let's pretend he did.

Cliffhanger

Oh my! We've outstayed our welcome and it's time to wrap up, but there are so many questions left to answer and what about that cliffhanger huh? Luckily, we'll be publishing the second part of our first edition of Ask Us Anything real soon so keep an eye out for it!

In the meantime, do you have a question for us? Join our Discord today.

Take it easy.

- Andy & Amy