We’ll be working on a review of Jupiter and Mars: Definitive Edition, so I reached out to Tigertron to talk a bit about the game and its development. Come check it out!
PS4Blog: Good morning! Thank you for taking the time to join us. Could you please tell our readers a bit about yourself and your work?
Hi, my name is James Mielke. Before forming Tigertron with my partner Sam, I was the Editor-in-Chief at Electronic Gaming Monthly and the now-defunct 1UP.com, and then a producer at Q Entertainment in Tokyo. I also founded the Kyoto-based gaming convention called BitSummit, at the similarly named but completely different studio Q-Games. But Q Entertainment is where I first came up with the idea for Jupiter & Mars.
PS4B: On that note, Jupiter and Mars: Definitive Edition is now available on Nintendo Switch. How would you describe the game to someone who’s new to it?
It’s an underwater, oceanic exploration game with some big set pieces. I personally call it a Dolphinvania because of how progression and access to certain areas are tied to obtaining various power-ups and abilities. You play as Jupiter and Mars – Jupiter is how you scan and analyze your environments using echolocation, and Mars is basically your action button, as he interacts with objects and battles aquatic ‘enemies.’
PS4B: How long did it take to develop Jupiter and Mars: Definitive Edition for its Nintendo Switch release? How has the game changed and evolved when comparing it to the original PlayStation VR experience?
It took us quite a while. The original game came out in 2019, on Earth Day coincidentally, so it’s been… 7 years since then? We did release the game on Meta Quest in the interim, but a lot of things had to fall into place for us to finally bring it over to the Nintendo Switch.
For the Nintendo Switch version of the game, we actually removed some UI elements that were originally designed to help guide the player but weren’t implemented well and created confusion instead. So we worked on improving player navigation, and we made the default camera view third-person instead of first-person. You’d be surprised at the number of people who, in the original version, thought they were actually controlling Mars off to the side, and didn’t realize they were playing as Jupiter in first-person. Now there’s no ambiguity around this! We’ve also made some graphic design tweaks, made some visual enhancements, and tried to improve the overall experience for people.
PS4B: How did you end up collaborating with Ken Ishii on “Blue Life,” the new ending theme song for the game?
Ken is a longtime friend. I first met him when I was an editor at 1UP.com and EGM, via our mutual friend Tetsuya Mizuguchi. I was the first English-speaking editor to interview him – his English is great, by the way – so it was easy for him to remember me through the years. When I went to work for Q Entertainment, I licensed some of his music to put into a game I produced called Lumines Electronic Symphony. I’ve stayed in touch with him through the years, like when he came to Brooklyn, NY, for the first time in a decade to DJ, and we hung out together.
I meet up with him fairly regularly in Tokyo whenever I travel there, which is often, and asked him to create a track for the end of the game. We originally wanted to license a William Orbit track, and William was keen, but Warner owned the publishing rights and wouldn’t license it out for some reason. He was really vexed about that, and I had designed the closing scene of the game around this song. But since we couldn’t use William’s music, I asked Ken to compose something with similar vibes, and he did an amazing job of it.
PS4B: Are there any plans for a potential physical release of Jupiter and Mars: Definitive Edition on a Nintendo Switch cartridge?
We do have plans for this, but we can’t announce anything just yet. I’m hopeful everything goes smoothly, though. Physical game preservation is so important these days.
PS4B: And that’s all the time we have for today. Is there something else you’d like to add before we go?
Thanks for the chance to talk about the game. A lot of people ask me if Ecco the Dolphin was an influence on this, and while I’ve always admired the character, I’ve never really played it much. It’s a hard game, so I think I got as far as halfway through the first stage, and that’s it.
Ironically, Ecco creator Ed Annunziata is a good buddy of mine. It’s my eternal shame that I never finished his game. But because he’s a good friend, we put him in the Nintendo Switch version of the game. Or rather, we hid him in the game, so I’m looking forward to seeing which eagle-eyed player finds Ed in Jupiter and Mars: Definitive Edition first and sends us a screenshot of where they found him.
