Aufgrund des großen Erfolges von 13AM Games‘ Runbow war es keine große Überraschung, als die Entwickler mit Runbow Pocket die Portierung des verrückten Platformers auf den New Nintendo 3DS ankündigten. Die Aussage, dass Runbow Pocket jedoch auf einen lokalen Multiplayer und auf Streetpass verzichten wird, sorgte dagegen zunächst für Enttäuschung, denn bei Runbow konnte vor allem der verrückte lokale Mehrspieler-Modus mit bis zu acht Spielern begeistern.
Im Interview mit unseren Kollegen von Nintendo Life verrieten 13AM Games, wie sie zu ihrer Entscheidung kamen. Demnach war es schon eine große Herausforderung, den auf Unity basierenden Titel überhaupt auf den New Nintendo 3DS zu portieren. Den Code für einen lokalen Multiplayer in den existierenden Netzcode zu implementieren stellte für die Entwickler dann ein zu großes Risiko dar, was im Zweifel zu einem deutlichen späteren Erscheinungsdatum hätte führen können. Ein Online-Multiplayer ist allerdings auch in Runbow Pocket vorhanden. Die vollständige Antwort von 13AM Games könnt ihr im Folgenden lesen.
The way multiplayer options work on the 3DS and New 3DS can go one of two ways... "local multiplayer features" and "online multiplayer." Local multiplayer features like StreetPass and Local Play use Nintendo's NEX servers and API and online multiplayer servers work the way we have things in Runbow. We're one of the first teams to bring a Unity title to New 3DS. We already faced a few challenges scaling down the game to fit the full Runbow experience, single player and all, into a smaller machine, and on top of that adding different types of networking to our already complex netcode was a risk that we were not comfortable taking. We were left with a choice: Use the online system we already have in place, something that we know works and is fun, or uproot the code and build it for local features instead, while these features were still being added to the Unity engine. The latter option produced an unknowable: how long would this take us? Will it work? How many New 3DS owners are friends with New 3DS owners in the same square mile? Unity has done a great job in helping us with whatever direction we wanted to go, but at the end of the day we thought it was of greater value to our players to give them an online experience where they can play with anyone, anywhere in the world, just like the original Runbow. Instead of having to find other New 3DS owners, you and your friends can jump into an online game of Runbow anywhere there is a wi-fi connection. Because of this, we also had to forgo the StreetPass features. We know this comes as a bit of a bummer to our fans, but at the end of the day it was important to us to preserve as much of the original Runbow experience as possible. From our massive single player campaign to those wild online matches with anyone in the world.
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