Nintendo reveals personalized Switch Sports concepts, including robot designs

If you We Sports Veteran, one of the first things you will probably notice when playing Nintendo Switch Sports are the new avatars. While it seems like a natural evolution on the Mii side, during the development of Switch Sports, Nintendo experimented with all kinds of different character designs.

In Nintendo’s latest translationAsk the developer“series,” the Switch Sports team showed off some other character concepts that didn’t quite work out. Some of the proposals included student and college figures, round figures, and even avatar robots that you control from the inside!

Junji Morey (Art Director): “Even before we decided on a fresh start again, we suggested different types of character illustrations. In the early stage, we suggested round-shaped characters without arms or legs, similar to the Mii characters in We Sports. We also created college student characters that looked like this with an intercollegiate esports theme.”

Takayuki Shammura (Producer): I remember we had the most bizarre robot-like characters. (Laugh)

Morey: At the time we decided to restart the project from scratch and were told we were going to start over to create the world’s most accessible motion-based game, I asked, “Are you sure we can’t go this far?” (Laugh)

The player is inside the bot, but it’s the bot that moves when you swing the Joy-Con controller. The robot is bowling.

What? Are you running a robot?

Yoshikazu Yamashita (Manager): Yeah, you run that robot, and the robot throws the ball. I know it doesn’t make sense. You may also be wondering how big this bowling alley is. (Laugh)

Morey: At first, everyone was so excited about this robot idea that we all thought, “This might be fun!” We even made a prototype, but when we saw the robot on the screen and moved it into place, a blanket of silence fell on everyone.

everybody: (Laugh)

Okan: This would make the gameplay revolve around the operation of the bot.

Yamashita: The player controls the robot character to operate the robot. Then the robot throws the ball. There are many steps in between.

In the end, the development team at Nintendo Switch Sports decided to play it safe and go with a human-like design – aka “sports companions”.

What do you think of the final character designs for Nintendo Switch Sports? What about these conceptual ideas? Leave a comment below.