Siliconera has just revealed that Nintendo and Platinum Games got assistance from Hexadrive in some development work for Wonderful 101 and The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD.
Hexadrive is an independent company formed in 2007 by former Capcom developer Masakazu Matsushita. They have mostly done adaptations of existing games, including Rez HD, Okami HD, and Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D. They also made E.X. Troopers for both the 3DS and the Playstation 3, and did some work on a Zone of the Enders 2 patch for Zone of the Enders HD Collection. Some mobile games they have worked on include Demon’s Score and Metal Gear Solid Social Ops. Their most known original game is theParasite Eve spinoff The 3rd Birthday.
As you may guess from their specialization, Hexadrive helped Nintendo in adapting Wind Waker HD’s textures to a higher resolution. On another end, they also assisted Platinum Games in optimization for the highly detailed Wonderful 101.
Independent and smaller Japanese developers doing discreet grunt work for bigger companies has been a truth since the early days of Japanese gaming, with the likes of TOSE having longstanding relationships with Nintendo, Capcom and others to port and make games for them without taking credit.
Both games do look very good in HD. Wonderful 101 is clearly the more impressive accomplishment, with how responsive the game is, while it stays consistent with its technical graphics benchmarks. It is possible that Nintendo will seek out their assistance in future Wii U first and second party games, as they continue to master the ins and outs of HD development.
Source: Siliconera
