Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise Tepid Seat
It took a while, but we successfully fielded questions from VP, fans, wielded them like blunt instruments against members of the VP: TIP team and crunched down their responses into a lucid and printable format. So here, for the entertainment of players who enjoyed the game back in ’08 or discovered it as a Games with Gold freebie late last year, are the results.
Which team members do we have securely restrained in the Tepid Seat for this session? We have designer Justin Cook, programmer James Thomas, artist Ryan Stevenson and producer Adam Park. All in one seat. It’s very cosy. Begin the interrogation!
Piñata people!
I’ve been a fan of the Viva Piñata series for years and I was just wondering if any Piñatas were cancelled during the making of Trouble in Paradise? What were their names? What species were they? Are they honored in the game in any way?
Thanksmuch!
Ana-Lee R. Kolch
JC: We considered many, many animals when we first started Viva Piñata, but on Piñata Island only the sweetest survive. Some of the Piñatas we’d liked but hadn’t managed to break free from the drawing board did get a second chance when we made Trouble in Paradise. Adding the desert and arctic spaces gave us a bunch of new beasts that just seemed to fit.
Naming Piñatas is fun but tricky, so we didn’t really give names to anything that wasn’t likely to make it into the game. The Piñata names were especially difficult because we couldn’t use the old Rare trick of just sticking the letter ‘O’ on the end of their names…
Do you ever want to bring Viva Piñata to the Xbox One, or to the 3DS?
Also what was the biggest design challenge you faced that just had to make it into the game?
Michael Langlois
JC: What’s that you say? You’re starting a huge viral internet campaign asking us to sticky up your Xbox One with sugary animal goodness?
The biggest challenge I faced as a designer was making sure that I got the tea order correct. You may not know it but some engineers and most artists have a clause in their contract where they can ‘down tools’ if they don’t receive a brew of the correct strength, colour or sweetness. Nightmare!
AP: We had a monster of a test matrix – the variations of Piñatas and parameters made it a massive, time-consuming game to test. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of hours to complete the various tasks in the game and make sure everything worked properly and you couldn’t break any of it by doing things wrong, or in a different way, or out of sequence. I’m getting the cold sweats again.
Howdy! I’m writing because you told me to!
I bought the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts/Viva Piñata bundle because my first copy of Nuts & Bolts messed up. I tried Viva Piñata but got bored partway through the tutorial… But I know it’s secretly amazing, what do you suggest for a n00b to get addicted to the greatest Piñata simulator?
Cheers,
Sir Lord Sir Anthony P. Fairfax the Great
P.S. I haven’t bathed since I got Nuts & Bolts, as I basked in its glory. When will Banjo-Fourie?
JT: I’m happy to admit that, if you let it, the sheer amount of stuff that goes on in VP can become overwhelming. The advice I always give is to just concentrate on one thing that you want to do and stick to that, ignoring all the other shenanigans exploding around your garden. Start with Master Breeding your Whirlms, for instance, maybe aim to get an Eaglair, or possibly shape your garden into the form of a Tudor knot garden. Focus.
JC: You’re probably thinking about burly space marines too much. Watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the good one with Gene Wilder, then go back and try again. I do remember the tutorial is a bit long… so hang in there!
RS: Great things come to those who wait. Persevere! Viva Piñata doesn’t like quitters.
AP: You could always try getting some Piñata Vision cards (for Trouble in Paradise) to give you a headstart – that was the purpose of them for inexperienced players. Or alternatively, just eat an absolute ton of sweets to give you a massive sugar high and then play the game.
Hi Rare! I put a ton of time into VP: TIP, but I always wondered how come you decided to go straight on from Piñata to its sequel when that wasn’t something Rare had been known for doing. You know, adding and improving things but still using the same engine. Must have been Banjo-Tooie the last time you did that. So I’m curious what the circumstances were to make it successfully happen when other sequels like Kameo 2 didn’t work out.
Mason S.
JT: We made the sequel because no-one told us to stop. Or at least that’s how I remember it. It’s one of my favourite aspects about those papery games; there were so many ideas of how we could improve, streamline, or expand things and so much energy on the team that a sequel was very unlikely not to happen. Not least because I wanted to get our online mode out into the sunlight.
What a lot of people don’t know, possibly even here at Rare, is that the engineering team had a huge debate about whether everything we wanted to do could fit in as DLC. Could we squeeze our work into a patch? In the end it was decided that there was simply too much – both in terms of content and work – and so we knuckled down for another couple of years.
JC: Yes, we’d been forgotten about in the basement, so we just kept working. No-one noticed until we started to stink the place up, they came down to ‘clean us up’ but by then we’d finished.
Okay, so I get some of the islanders like Leafos and Gretchen are like humans wearing masks, but some of the others like Fanny Franker just confuse the hellck out of me. Like she has a human body and hair but she has like a mailbox head, which at first glance I would assume was a mask too, but like when she talks like the door of her mailbox head starts moving like that’s her actual head and I’m like what? Same goes for characters like Arfur. Who or what are these characters with human bodies but inhuman heads? What are they supposed to be? Where did they come from? I’m frightened and confused.
Harrison Mays
JC: The results of freakish superglue accidents? Are you sure you want to dedicate any brainwaves to thinking about this?
RS: They’re all masks, some are just more complex than others. You may not know this, but Fanny Franker looks just like Gwen Stefani under the mask. It’s true! I also drew a concept for the factory boss at one point who was a kind of human Piñata. Hard to describe. Shame he didn’t make it into the final game, although if Fanny Franker freaked you out…
Hello, I’ve been playing Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise and I have finally got the Choclodocus egg. I have got my Cluckles and given it the Jurassic hair accessory. When I direct it to the egg it looks at it but then walks away and won’t hatch the egg. I have done all the steps correctly and even witnessed three of my friends hatch their Choclodocus but they can’t get my Cluckles to hatch it. I have made space in my garden and even tried different Cluckles but it still doesn’t work. I have tried everything recommended on the internet. Please could you help me?
Jack Bayley
JT: Dredging the back of my mind for TIPs here… have you tried crating up your egg, moving it to a different garden and trying to hatch it there?
RS: I have no idea! I just drew the Choclodocus, it’s Justin’s fault if it’s too complicated to get.
What features of Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise were originally planned for the first game but had to be left out due to time or memory restrictions? Was there anything else you would have liked to add or improve in VP: TIP but you couldn’t fit in for the same reasons?
Thanks!
Jason Day
JT: The biggest feature that appeared in the sequel that escaped the original was definitely the online multiplayer. Eike and I were the Live engineers for both games and although we slogged long and hard trying to breathe life into the online Piñatas, the scale of the initial game was just a little too great to do it in time. I still remember the day that Will (another engineer) called us into a meeting to discuss it all, and feeling utterly crushed that it wasn’t going to happen. Of course I didn’t know we’d get a second chance at the time, but at least all that groundwork we did wasn’t wasted as it formed the basis of the trading systems. Fun fact: your Piñatas are packed into crates the same way they are initially synced over Live!
JC: Lots of the work we did for Trouble in Paradise was responding to player feedback and adding new animals. Lots of the team members were throwing cool suggestions into the mix on both games – musical flowers, migrating storms etc. But unless I could pass the ideas off as my own, they stood no chance of happening… I mean, er, there just wasn’t time.
There was also that plan for aquatic animals…
RS: There was an early idea to make VP: TIP about travelling around the world in a caravan, exploring new places and finding new Piñatas, just to make it different. Bit too ambitious though!
Who was responsible for coming up with the Piñata names? It took me a long while to realise that they were sweets puns!
Emma
JT: If there’s one thing you can rely on the teams at Rare to provide it’s really bad puns. On any subject matter. Though many were down to Gregg’s genius I recall being on holiday in Scotland when fellow engineer Phil rang to tell me that there was effectively an in-team competition to come up with the best animal-sweet puns. Cue a week of myself and my wife-to-be roaming around the Highlands riffing on sugary variants of sheep.
JC: Just about everyone on the team came up with names, plus the guys at 4Kids helped out and then the nice men in legal made sure our names weren’t in use by anyone else. There were hundreds of names and it took months to sort out. What’s worse, most people don’t even remember most of them! I’d probably have spent my time better trying to remember the tea order more accurately.
RS: We actually had to send a packet of Tooty Frooties (British sweets) to the US to prove to our American contacts that the Hootyfruity wasn’t based on… something else.
Did you guys work on the Viva Piñata TV show too? I remember seeing Leafos briefly in the “new” intro (the intro after the season) and a Polollybear in a season 1 episode WAY before Trouble in Paradise was even announced. Was Leafos planned to appear in the show at one point before it ended and was the Polollybear appearance in the season 1 episode, “Pig-Out Mountain” like a secret hinting at Trouble in Paradise?
Iran Nack
JC: We did talk to 4Kids about the show, we looked at their scripts and we got the work-in-progress episodes. 4Kids had access to all our stuff so yeah, they got to use some of our Piñatas (like Polollybear) before we did. We’re so generous here at Rare.
RS: We supplied 4Kids with concept art for the ice world and some of the new Piñatas as they were being designed, as we knew we’d also be using them in VP: TIP and it seemed like a good way to make the game and the show feel connected.
AP: 4Kids would send us animatics on DVD so that we could make sure everything was in character. Just as we fed into the show, the show fed back into the game: we went over to attend the voice acting session for Professor Pester, and were so impressed that we went back and gave him a bigger speaking role in Trouble in Paradise!
Hello, I am a long time on-again, off-again fan of you lot, and I have a question about Trouble in Paradise that I’ve been waiting six years to ask you about!
Something that always confused me is the presence of Langston Lickatoad. He’s the only Piñata capable of speech, and works with Piñata Central to assist the players in capturing other Piñatas. He even uses his own kind in the Piñata Paperchase races!
I knew he originated from the TV series, but what’s his story here? Why does he have these traits when no other Piñatas does?
Cheers,
Krazy Kopter
JC: Six years? Sounds urgent.
Langston was created for the TV show and his job in the show was perfect for the Piñata Central challenges we wanted to put in Trouble in Paradise. So we hired him, and all he wanted was a stronger Fudgehog trap and some Pretztail nets.
RS: Langston Lickatoad found one of the rarest candies on the island that imbued him with these crazy abilities. Thus began his meteoric rise to power within the factory. Either that or we just made him the same in the game as he was in the TV show. I dunno. Which sounds more fun?
AP: Synergy! It’s all about synergy!
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise is still one of my favourite games and have been playing since the game first came out, my Xbox broke not long after the game came out and I bought another Xbox so I could continue to play. Lol!
Just one question really, when is the next one coming out? 😀
Rose
JC: That sounds completely normal to me. Okay, this is a multiple choice answer, pick the option that makes you feel happiest:
a) Soon!
b) N-e-v-e-r… (sigh)
c) Before Viva Piñata 4: Undead and Delicious
RS: For response, see above, answer C.
How come there was never any DLC for the VP games other than a few item packs? I was surprised that there were no downloadable Piñatas or new areas to go with the desert and ice worlds. Or was Trouble in Paradise a DLC plan for Viva Piñata that grew and took on a life of its own?
Great games!
Baxter
JC: At the time we didn’t really know if anyone wanted DLC. I have to say Baxter, you’ve taken an awfully long time before you’ve let us know that you do want it after all. Your chances of getting it now are quite slim. Write in sooner next time and I’ll see what I can do.
JT: Truth be told, there was never any real consideration for DLC beyond the accessories. Though I mention elsewhere how at one point we pushed for a content update for the original, that was only from the enthusiasm of the engineers as opposed to a concerted plan to expand the game that was bumped in preference for a sequel.
In some ways I think it’s easy in hindsight to talk about DLC for it, though. These days expansions are commonplace but back then DLC was still finding its feet. Don’t forget we launched VP in the same year as the infamous horse armour! The industry’s come a long way since.
The Viva Piñata games were the best thing that Rare did on Xbox 360. Has seeing Trouble in Paradise on Games with Gold filled the team with happy memories like a Fudgehog is filled with Joy Candy (before Pester comes along and bashes its head in) and made them run off to sneak dozens of Piñata references into whatever game they’re working on now? DON’T LIE TO ME VIVA PINATA TEAM!!
Terry Mayer
JC: Piñata gotta party!
JT: I’d never lie to you. I’d just change the subject quickly…
AP: There were Buzzlegum sponsor stories (and a Buzzlegum outfit) in Kinect Sports Rivals. There weren’t many ways of referencing an animal-based gardening game in a motion sports game, but we were happy with that one. And who could forget the cheering Easter egg in Halo?
RS: Always lovely to hear when people find Viva Piñata. It contains the biggest part of my soul. It is my firstborn child. It means I’m happy on the inside.
The Piñata Vision card scanning system in VP: Trouble in Paradise using the Xbox Live Camera was a great touch, and seemed like it was tailor-made for expansion in a third game using Kinect. Was this ever seriously discussed?
Kim Strong
JT: Back when the first Kinect came out, there was some talk about what we could do with the Kinect and Viva Piñata. It was something of a psychiatric test for team members are you one of those people who wants to pet your Piñatas or one of those who wants to make a certain aggressive spade gesture towards them?
JC: Kinect had so much great new technology to show off, I’m not sure anyone was really interested in it borrowing ideas from its little brother the Xbox Live Camera. Besides, Rare was too busy getting to grips with the Kinect Sports series by that time.
How difficult did you find it to keep coming up with different patterns and visual hooks for the new Piñatas put into the second game? There must have been a point where you found yourself running out of ideas!
Chompra
JC: No way! We just kept hitting Ryan in the head with a shovel and the patterns emerged from his concussed brain. Do you want some more? I can fetch the old shovel…
RS: Not the shovel! Please, no more patterns, the headaches have only just stopped!
Will there ever be another Viva Piñata game?
Will you bring back a way to get the Piñata needed for the Famous Piñata achievement?
E Surm
JC: Another game? Never say never.
JT: For a long time I used to go by another name. One that was equally heralded and derided on forums. I am the Giant Goobaa.
Once upon a time I used to be able to hand out Piñatas through a wondrous portal that granted me access to the trading servers, simply slipping in crates of famous Piñatas to gardeners across Xbox Live. Unfortunately, through a series of upgrades, maintenance tasks and the passing of time, I have lost this ability and it saddens me. No longer can I seed gardens with famous Piñatas.
All I ask of the community is that those of you who still have celebrities as residents is that not only should you cherish them, but share them. Anyone who comes into your garden will get the Famous Piñata achievement, so open your gates and let the masses in.
You’ve said previously that there were 160 Piñata species in the original design docs for VP. Are there any Piñatas that didn’t make the cut in the first game, and then missed out again in the second game? If so, do you lie awake at night feeling guilty about them not being represented?
Rick Roll
JC: Yes, we had a stupid giraffe but I quickly started to hate him. His stupid neck would have made his head stick in the trees ALL THE TIME! And another thing, what noise do giraffes even make? So I’m glad he didn’t make it and I’m sleeping like a baby every night, thank you for asking. (Apart from the dreams where I herd up all the giraffes and hide them in a cave.)
AP: We decided to focus on arctic and desert for the new areas in VP: TIP, which gave us the best ideas for new animals – polar bear, yeti, penguin and so on. The giraffe didn’t fit into that plan, but I do remember him walking around in prototype form and being so different to the other animals because of his volume and height.
It didn’t help matters much that we had an ‘accidental server wipe’ incident during development that erased entire weeks of work on Trouble in Paradise. Gone forever. Sob.
RS: Just the giraffe. I’d have loved to get it in the final game and I did draw a giraffe Piñata. I sleep well, the giraffe lives in my mind.
Before we start, is it okay if my question has less to do with Trouble in Paradise in particular and more to do with the Piñata franchise as a whole? (Of course it is!)
Because for a very long time now, I’ve been wondering… what exactly is the connection between Baron Von Ghoul (of Grabbed by the Ghoulies fame) and Piñata Island? There’s a crashed Red Baron in the garden, there are TWO paid DLC accessories in his honor, and there’s even a photo of him framed on the wall of Professor Pester’s lair in the Viva Piñata TV series. It feels as if Baron Von Ghoul’s association with this island runs deeper than that of any other non-native, and it’s all very quaint.
So, why did he come here? Is Piñata Island simply where washed-up Rare villains come to die, or is there something more to it all? And oh yeah, it’s been like, eight years ? so what might the Baron be up to now?
Your friendly neighborhood stream of consciousness,
RawkHawk2010
JT: The dull answer is that a great number of the Grabbed by the Ghoulies team rolled straight onto Viva Piñata. A lot of us had a soft spot for his eccentric air and given the cameos from other characters from the team’s history (Banjo and Kazooie are also noticeable) it seemed a shame to leave him out.
Canonically, however, have you ever seen the Baron and Pester in the same room? No? Just saying…
RS: I have no idea how he got there, particularly because his plane clearly can’t fly.
AP: Let’s end with a little-known fact! Trouble in Paradise was almost called Viva Piñata Weed it and Reap, and right up to the end it was called Viva Piñata: Paradise Lost before it had to be changed for legal reasons. That’s it. Boom. We’re done.