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Interview  Iridion 3D - Page 1 || Page 2
- By Mike Schneider, 5.01.01

Iridion 3D is posed to offer some wicked flight shooting action on Game Boy Advance, so when we got the opportunity to offer up some questions to its developer, we were thrilled to do so. Here is what ensued: 


NShooters: Does Iridion's style of play most similarly compare to that of Star Fox for SNES and the aforementioned game's relatively linear action sequences?

Manfred: The game is played linear.


NShooters: Is there much in terms of character/story development, or does the game move along strictly as an action outing?

Manfred: It's a challenging action. A nice anime style intro creates an entry point for the action that follows.


NShooters: The GAX Sound System is a powerful tool. In what ways has it been utilized to really bring the world of Iridion to life?

Manfred: Iridion features 21 songs and over 50 soundfx.
So the music is really a key part in the game as it's changing for
every level, every boss, and for some different areas of the game.

A lot of enemies also have their own unique sounds to give more life to the game.

GAX doesn't use any old GBC soundchip to produce any audio. It mixes samples with hi quality real-time synthesized sounds. So you will experience sound effects that give you a really a great feel for the game.

As the GAX music driver is very fast we use 8 channels of music and FX for the in game parts and even more music channels for menu parts. So the music quality is quite comparable to the SNES and even superior in some things.


NShooters: Up to how many enemies do you expect that we may see on the screen at once?

Manfred: You see up to 126 enemies and bullets at screen at once. All moving at constant 60fps.


NShooters: Is the game really always running at 60 frames per second?

Manfred: We could easily say 99.99% of the game runs constant at 60fps.

We are moving always very close to the absolute edge of the cpu power. So in very very rare cases (if you don't destroy any enemies and you blast all of your own weapons in maximum power into space) a framerate drop can appear in a certain level.


NShooters: What type of variety in enemies and environments will the game player encounter?

Manfred: You will encounter 14 territories (7 levels, 7 bosses).
There are over 50 enemy types in the game.

Although Iridion is using only a 32Mbit ROM you will see over 64Mbit of grafix in the game. We used very efficient compressing algorithms and real-time decoding to make the very high amount of grafix possible.


NShooters: Can you describe the control scheme in the game?

Manfred: It's easy to learn but not too easy to master. You can control your ship in an arcade mode or in a fly mode. The fly mode changes control to like what you are used to in a flight simulator. The movement itself can be compared to games like Afterburner or Space Harrier.


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