Gamers Daily News: Mare, Raigan, hi.

Metanet Software: Hey, how are you?

GDN: What games era did you both grow up in and what were your favourite games from that time?

MS: We both grew up in what would be the NES/SNES era, but neither of us had those systems! Luckily we had friends with them ;)

We remember some great Mac games from that time, such as Lode Runner, Dark Castle, Stunt Copter and Glider. On PC there was Sopwith, Commander Keen and later on, Doom. SMB3, and Zelda/Mario on SNES are definite high-points. Mare played a lot of Sonic too.

In university we spent a lot of time revisiting games from that era to find ones we had missed. This is how we first got turned on to freeware games. Kirby (NES), Shadowrun, Earthbound and Chronotrigger are games we missed when they were released, but really enjoyed finding.

GDN: Can you tell us the story of how Metanet was created back in 2001?

MS: We were both in Computer Science at the University of Toronto, and got really bored with creating lame software and boring applications. So we decided to form a team and pour our programming, art, design and sound skills into something much more interesting: video games!

GDN: The original N has been on the go since 2005. Did you think that 3 years on the game would still be as popular now, maybe even more so, as it was back then?

MS: It’s actually been even longer -- since May 2004! We definitely didn’t know that N would be so popular.

In hindsight, the longevity is easier to understand because it grew very slowly, mostly from word-of-mouth; when we were in the IGF (Independent Games Festival) in early 2005, most of the people that visited our booth hadn’t heard of our game. Now in 2008, more people seem to have heard of N. Without marketing, it takes a few years for word to get out there!

GDN: You say that you were inspired by games such as Soldat (a brutal, yet addictive multiplayer shooter), Super Bubble Blob (single screen puzzle fest) and a few others, which after playing I can see why. Have any of the people that made the games that inspired you got in touch to comment on your own work?

MS: We actually used some sounds from Soldat (for the ragdoll and the chaingun) in N, so we had already chatted with Micheal Marcinkowski (who made Soldat) over email; he’s a really interesting and inspirational person.

Chris Street, who made Zone Runner, also got in touch with us -- it’s really great to talk with the people behind games you like. They always have interesting insights into their creations!

GDN: What was the inspiration behind N+’s image, and who came up with it

MS: Jeff Agala (who worked on Atomic Betty) came up with the "next-gen" ninja graphic; the UI was designed by Rod Tasaka of Surface Collective.

We have a lot of graphic design books; we just looked through them and collected some examples which we thought were inspiring or a good indication of what we liked. Luckily we had great art/design people working on N+; Kees Rijnen also worked on the graphics, as a technical artist.

GDN: How difficult was it to do the ragdoll physics for N+?

MS: We’re not sure! In N, we implemented the system described by Thomas Jakobsen in his article "Advanced Character Physics", it’s quite simple and works well. We think Nick followed it fairly closely, but you’d have to ask him :)

GDN: whose idea was it for the ninja to do the fancy celebrations at the end of each level?

MS: We can’t remember! Probably one of us was just fooling around and made a funny animation, and then we figured out how we could add it into the game.

We also have a number of friends who specialize in ridiculous dances, and that likely contributed to the range -- unfortunately there are some that you just need 3d to really convey.

GDN: Just what does the N stand for? (this answer was kept in to show that even the best of us can look, well, a bit silly - Ed.)

MS: N is the way of the ninja, of course! It’s very clearly explained in the "Story" section of the game ;p

GDN: Where do you see N and N+ in another 3 years from now?

MS: We intend to make at least one more update to N, and at some point we might possibly make a sequel.

Still, we have so many other ideas, and we’ve spent so much time working on N-related games, that we definitely are looking forward to a break from tiny ninjas for a while! ;)

GDN: Have you had any user levels sent in, either through the PC or Xbox Live, that you’ve just sat and thought "that’s just not possible..."?

MS: A huge number of maps on NUMA (the N User Map Archive, http://numa.notdot.net/) are too hard for us to beat.. and we’re pretty good!

Some people must just be naturally god-like at platformers.

GDN: There are handheld versions of N+ coming soon, but would you ever create one for the Wii, utilising the unique control system?

MS: Our XBLA contract prevents us from releasing N on PSN/Wii for at least two years, so no -- but even if we could, we wouldn’t be interested in using the Wii remote for N. It’s just not a good fit (except for the level editor of course -- that would be great).

We’ve got some Wii-centric ideas which we’ll hopefully have time to try in the next couple years; now that WiiWare has been announced we’re definitely much more interested in the Wii as a platform for our games.

GDN: Your next project is simply known as Robotology. Can you elaborate on this new idea or is it still too early to say?

MS: It’s too early to say for sure what the final game will be like, since we mostly just experiment with things until we hit upon something we really like. For instance, N started as a stealth-platformer where you would sneak slowly around each level, so a lot of things can change during development!

The biggest inspiration for Robotology is Umihara Kawase (a Super Nintendo/Famicom game in origin, which may be coming to PSP soon); it’s a platformer where the player has a grappling hookand rope, which is used to move around the level.

The other main idea we’re working on is a more interactive environment, where everything is physically-simulated -- even the enemies! So far we’ve managed to get a pair of legs to walk, but they’re not so good at balancing yet ;)

GDN: What games are you two looking forward to this year?

MS: We can’t wait to try Braid on XBLA, although we’re anticipating that once it’s out, no one will buy any other game on XBLA, ever! Actually, it could be much worse -- no one will do anything but play Braid. It could be the fall of our civilization! ;)

We really can’t wait until we can afford a PS3 so that we can try Everyday Shooter and the PixelJunk series. Echochrome also looks amazing. Also, Mother 3 - hopefully some day it will be available in English, either officially or not. We’re so there.

GDN: Are there any other games from the freeware market you would like to see make the leap to places like the DS, PSP or the 360/PS3 online communities?

MS: Yes, tons! There are so many great freeware games that we’d love to be able to play on handheld systems: Kenta Cho’s games, Cave Story, DoomRL, Lyle in Cube Sector, Art of Theft... and probably about a billion more. Freeware games are usually so interesting.

GDN: Finally, is there anything you would like to say to fans of the N series that may be reading this?

MS: Thanks so much for your support!

There’s something important that we think you deserve to know, which is that the DS/PSP versions of N+ are much less faithful to the original than the XBLA version is, which is spot on. They may still be decent platformers, and certainly reference the gameplay and graphics of N, but they’re just not the same as N or N+ XBLA.  We hope you’re not disappointed! We tried our best to get them working well, but in the end we unfortunately didn’t have enough control over the project, which was run in a different (we think less fun) direction.

GDN: Guys, thank you very much.

MS: Thank you.

Hopefully, this will only be the beginning for GDN and its alliance with the hard working people of the freeware/shareware domain. Keep your eyes glued to us for more bedroom coding than you could shake a program sheet at.