Steel Diver (series)

The Steel Diver series (Japanese: スティールダイバー シリーズ) is a small series of submarine navigation/combat games jointly developed by Nintendo and Vitei.
History and development[edit | edit source]
This section covers the development of games in the Steel Diver series.
"Submarine" and Steel Diver[edit | edit source]
The idea of a submarine navigation game was in development for several years before the release of Steel Diver for the Nintendo 3DS.[1] At E3 2004, various tech demos were broadcast for anyone who had a Nintendo DS, and they could be downloaded, probably via DS Download Play.
The tech demos included a Zelda preview trailer, "Zelda Gallery", a "Table Hockey Tech Demo", a Meteos demo, an Electroplankton demo and "Submarine Tech Demo". The Submarine Tech Demo is the game that eventually evolved into Steel Diver. It involved the players driving a submarine as far as possible within a two minute time limit, while avoiding an enemy ship, an enemy submarine and naval mines.
"Quite a while" after E3 2004, Nintendo of America wanted the team who worked on Submarine to release a game like it for the Nintendo DSi system and Shigeru Miyamoto would occasionally question Tadashi Sugiyama, the producer of Steel Diver, things related to how the project was going along. Nintendo of Japan would then team up with Vitei, a company founded by Giles Goddard to develop Steel Diver. Tayaka Imamura, the director of Steel Diver, explains that the development team was as if "Nintendo EAD had expanded to Vitei".
When the game was in development for the Nintendo DSi, there was only one mode at first, while the final game has three modes; Missions, Periscope Strike and Steel Commander.
Later, development of the game had moved to the Nintendo DS, and more modes were being considered to incorporate gameplay similar to the 1990/1991 game Radar Mission. These modes were added to the game later, and included the Periscope Strike and Steel Commander modes. Giles Goddard and Tayaka Imamura spent about three days making the prototype for Periscope Strike.[2]. Additionally, the number of missions in the game was increased after the transition from the Nintendo DSi to the Nintendo DS.
When the game's hardware changed from the Nintendo DS to the Nintendo 3DS, gyro controls were implemented into the Periscope Mode. According to Iwata Asks, Tayaka Imamura and Tadashi Sugiyama played the third mode, Steel Commander, a lot during the development period of Steel Diver for the Nintendo DS.
According to Takaya Imamura, the length of courses in the games were made about three times longer, but this change contributed to the gameplay "dragging on". [3]Imamura requested to Tadashi Sugiyama that items should be added and says that he thought it would be fine to make the game like a submarine version of Mario Kart, but Sugiyama refused. According to Imamura, there was a large gap between how Sugiyama (the creator of the game's foundation) and he thought of the game.
Sugiyama explains that he was very specific about the idea of making the game have the player control a submarine via radio control. Shigeru Miyamoto says that as development went in the way of making controlling the submarine easier, it would raise the question of why it couldn't just be controlled with the Circle Pad, but he believes that that kind of change would really make the game more like Mario Kart, causing the game to lose its "distinctive appeal".
Without telling Tadashi Sugiyama, Takaya Imamura made the game so that moving the levers would feel lighter, but Sugiyama noticed this change and thought it didn't feel right and changed the mechanics back to how they were. Mario Club, a subsidiary of Nintendo that tests and debugs games thought that the controls were too slow, but the development team insisted that the game was fine that it was.
At first, Imamura wanted to make the gameplay in the Missions mode like a slow version of F-Zero, in regards to having to turn in advance to get past a chicane (curved road).[4]
When the Submarine ghosts were in development, Imamura realized that it would take up too much space to completely record the player's behavior, so "repeated adjustment" were made, until the ghosts turned out to be "incredibly natural".
Decals were added to the game as Imamura wanted people to play the same courses time and again.
At one point, Shigeru Miyamoto was thinking of giving up on submarines and using simply a "container", due to the complicated shape of a submarine and how it is relatively easy to make a submarine collide with something. To work around this problem, Giles Goddard says that the development team "assembled shapes like points and cigars".
Relatively late, Shigeru Miyamoto told the development team of Steel Diver about the Nintendo 3DS, so development moved on to that system. Originally, the 3D effect was "not apparent at all" and as the team were among the first to develop games for the Nintendo 3DS, there wasn't a development kit to make developing the 3D effect easier but eventually one day the 3D effect "started popping out". [5]
Like how Tadashi Sugiyama refused to make the lever controls feel "lighter", he originally was not interested in having characters in the game, but Takaya Imamura requested this and eventually got permission to draw the captains.
Steel Diver Sub Wars[edit | edit source]
In Nintendo's E3 Analyst Briefing presentation, Nintendo suggested that a new free-to-play game was in development.[6] At E3 2013, Nintendo revealed to IGN that the franchise was Steel Diver.[7] Later, the Australian OFLC ratings board rated this Steel Diver game, and its name was revealed to be Steel Diver Sub Wars.
Even though Steel Diver Sub Wars was announced to be the first free-to-play game on Nintendo 3DS, the first one was actually a game called Darumeshi Sports Store (Japanese: だるめしスポーツ店), which was released in Japan on August 8, 2013. Steel Diver Sub Wars was released later on February 13th, 2014 in Japan, Europe and North America, following the game being officially revealed on Nintendo Direct on the same day.
As Darumeshi Sports Store will be localized outside of Japan as Rusty's Real Deal and is planned for release there in April 2014[8], this does give Steel Diver Sub Wars the distinction of Nintendo's first free-to-play game on the Nintendo 3DS outside of Japan.
Games[edit | edit source]
- Submarine Tech Demo - Nintendo DS (2004)
- Steel Diver - Nintendo 3DS (2011)
- Steel Diver Sub Wars - Nintendo 3DS (2014, downloadable Nintendo eShop game)
Merchandise[edit | edit source]

In May 2012, a series of miniature models of the Arwing, the Landmaster and the Blue Marine submarine from the Star Fox series, as well as the three playable submarines from Steel Diver; the ND-01 Manatee, ND-03 BlueShark and ND-05 Serpent were released in Japan for 300 yen each. This series is called the Nintendo Mechanical Kit Collection (Japanese: 任天堂メカニカルキットコレクション). The models come in capsules and must be assembled.
Related games[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Iwata Asks | 2. Conquering Land, Sea and Sky | Iwata Asks: Steel Diver | Nintendo
- ↑ Iwata Asks | 5. Play on a Swivel Chair | Iwata Asks: Steel Diver | Nintendo
- ↑ Iwata Asks | 3. Sugiyama-san Says No! | Iwata Asks: Steel Diver | Nintendo
- ↑ Iwata Asks | 4. F-Zero in Slow Motion | Iwata Asks: Steel Diver | Nintendo
- ↑ Iwata Asks | 6. Depth More Than Volume | Iwata Asks: Steel Diver | Nintendo
- ↑ Nintendo E3 Analyst Briefing - Presentation, page 3
- ↑ Nintendo's Free-to-Play Game is Steel Diver - IGN
- ↑ Rusty's Real Deal Baseball 3DS Haggles With Real Money - SegmentNext