Mark Mazzei

The Piñata origins (reloaded)

What could’ve been, in a week or less

December 6th marked the first year anniversary of the release of Viva Piñata in Europe, and as a celebration of the year that put Rare back on their road to recovery, the loyal Piñata Island forum and later Rare official site received a treat in the form of new information. Every day a developer from the game posted information about the infectious game. While MundoRare got a lot of information as an exclusive, there are a few new tidbits that we learned about. And what better way to do so than in list form!

  • Day 1
    • Most of what was shown was presented in our feature, but one thing worthy to note is the reason why the animals didn’t stay the way they did: a la Conker’s Bad Fur Day, they felt it was too “easy to lose in the mass of games that featured animals at the time.”
  • Day 2
    • The idea of piñatas being the replacement for pastel animals came from the “Mexican Day of the Dead” festival. From that point on, the piñatas as we know came into being.
    • Sours at this time were not entirely colored red. Instead, they were darker colored than their non-Sour brethren, had red eyes and sharp teeth to identify them.
  • Day 3
    • Originally, piñatas that weren’t your residents that hung outside your garden perimeters were not a monochrome version of themselves but a reduced in size version of them. According to the developer, one of the main reasons that it never came to be was that “it would require yet another model for every piñata.”
    • The helpers seen on that page were the then-incarnation of the Journal we use today. As seen in the Xbox render in our feature, the Lizard man told you all about Lizards. Concurrently, the girls in their bird and butterfly costumes told you information about their respective piñata specialties.
    • The Postman was an early incarnation of Fanny, as the woman in the stork costume eventually became Storkos.
  • Day 4
    • Baby piñatas, as briefly seen in the full version of the game, were “little darlings [that] were going to be custom made piñatas with tiny bodies, large heads and even larger eyes.”
    • Toco, as noted, is the long-lost bird of Leafos. Originally, Toco was to serve in the same way that Seedos does now (minus the whole massive damage deal): you’d get seeds for your garden if you were good to bird piñatas in general.
  • Day 5
    • The fifth day consisted of further detailing the Xbox render in our exclusive earlier. As an example, Dastardos served the same purpose, with his only difference being that “he was transported around the garden by the large, orange balloon that you can see attached to his back.”
    • Dedos was changed to Leafos because of the almighty “Legal reasons.”
    • Finally, the monkey on the chair who was really a small boy in disguise was to be your one-stop shop for everything, until we got Lottie and friends.

There’s more tidbits and amazing pictures of the development process within, so pay a visit to the Rare’s website. You never know what you could’ve missed.

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