The Wiire sat down in an exclusive interview with Grasshopper Manufacture Director Goichi Suda (known as Suda 51, maker of Killer 7) and Product Manager Nobuhito Nakamura at E3 2006 about the studio's Wii project, known currently as Heroes. Readers should note that Nakamura acted as Suda 51's translator. Grasshopper Manufacture did not have a booth at E3 this year, giving The Wiire the first breaking news on the project.

As The Wiire reported in March, Nakamura intended Heroes to be shown during E3 2006. However, the game trailer may not be available until this summer. Suda 51 responded, "I'm afraid to say this, but we don't know actually why the Heroes wasn't revealed at this show." When asked if the Marvelous Interactive and Spike, Heroes' publishers, made the decision to withold the game from the show, Suda 51 stated, "Maybe. We don't know that. I think [the] publishers also don't know why."

"We are thinking about the reveal date. So, we are planning now," Suda 51 mentioned. "So maybe this summer... we are going to show the world."

When asked how many members of the development team from previous Grasshopper titles are working on Heroes, Suda 51 said the studio is approximately divided in half between Heroes and a new PlayStation 2 title called Blood+, with members of each half going back and forth to work on both titles. However, the team working in tandem with Grasshopper Manufacture's first DS title Contact is now an independent studio called Audio, meaning the Contact team will not be helping create Heroes. Although members of the Killer 7 team are involved with the new Wii title, Suda would not say how many developers are from the team.

The Wiire asked if Heroes is a sequel to Killer 7, to which Suda 51 responded, "No. Heroes is not sequel to Killer 7. [It is a] completely new story and new game of Grasshopper," emphasizing its originality.

Killer 7 sparked controversy due to plot focus on politics, religion, among other topics. When asked if gamers could expect the same social and political commentary from Heroes, Suda 51 commented, "You can expect social matter, not political. You can expect a various theme in the game."

As for the extent of obscene material such as strong language, violence and swearing in Heroes, he noted, "We want Heroes to be more wide-ranged... [I] want more range of ages. Maybe include some violence and language." On that note, Suda 51 mentioned that he doesn't want it to carry the "M for Mature" ESRB label as Killer 7 received.

In regards to the look of Heroes, The Wiire asked if the game would be cel-shaded like Killer 7, but Suda 51 did not want the visual style disclosed to the public. He reiterated that Grasshopper Manufacture is thinking of the best way to reveal Heroes, and when asked if he's considering revealing the title at Tokyo Game Show, he laughed and simply said, "We can't say."

Moving on to Wii hardware discussion, Suda 51 mentioned Nintendo's helpfulness in Wii development procedures. "First, we developed Killer 7 for GameCube so we are very familiar to Nintendo this time with Nintendo Wii," stated Suda 51. "Nintendo is very helpful for us to develop a Wii game... Nintendo gave us [technical] support and we develop it similarly." However, when asked if Nintendo had a hand in the game's actual development outside of providing tools, he responded, "Only we, Grasshopper, [are] developing Heroes. Nintendo gave us [a] developing kit and we developed." Suda 51 also noted that it was relatively easy to work with the development kit.

Suda noted that the Killer7 GameCube code was not ported over to Wii for Heroes, but rather that "the style of Grasshopper is to create [a new] engine for each game," he stated. "So the engine of Killer7 and Heroes [are] totally different; we created [Heroes' engine] from scratch."

Regarding the Wii controller speaker functionality, Suda 51 and Nakamura were made aware of the speaker during, not before, Nintendo's press conference. Suda 51 said he is already planning on how it could be implemented into Heroes.

As for whether Heroes might find its way to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as well as Wii, Suda 51 responded, "We are very sorry about that... that question is very hard to answer because we are developers and [with] publishers, they decide."

The Wiire asked which of the controllers he likes most out of the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii, Suda 51 laughed and replied, "Wii. Wii."

According to Suda, last autumn Spike President Mitsutoshi Sakurai and Marvelous Interactive Yasuhiro Wada approached Grasshopper Manufacture about crafting the title. Suda 51 had worked with Sakurai and Wada on past titles, and both company presidents held the Killer 7 producer in high regard. After some discussion between the three men, the companies decided on making a title. Production on Heroes began sometime after the agreement made last fall.

As a final message to gamers, Suda had the following to say: "After publishing Killer 7 in North America and Europe, [we received] very many e-mails from fans. So please look forward to Heroes. [It] will be extreme game that no one has seen before. Everyone can be surprised about Heroes...[I] want [the game] to make [a] big piece. So many people can play Heroes, but [it's] a completely new game. Many people can play, but extremely new."

Any other information regarding the title was asked to remain confidential until the unveiling of the game. Stay tuned to The Wiire for further exclusives with Grasshopper Manufacture's titles.

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