Overview[]
Rodea the Sky Soldier had a complicated, drawn out development history, experiencing delays, and botched ports.
PROPE & Naka's involvement[]
After leaving Sonic Team, a subdivision of SEGA, in 2006, Yuji Naka, the programmer of Sonic the Hedgehog and the creator of NiGHTS into Dreams, formed his own company, PROPE.
Over the years, he led his team in creating small projects such as Let's Tap! and Ivy the Kiwi?, but Naka wanted to do something much bigger; an action adventure game using a combination of gameplay styles he pioneered in the 90s. The game was originally planned to be a Nintendo Wii exclusive, and was built around using the Wii remote's IR cursor to target onto objects, and fly towards them.
Kadokawa Games' involvement[]
About a quarter way through the development of the Wii version, PROPE and Kadokawa signed an agreement, setting Kadokawa Games as the publisher, and letting them make their own version of the game for Nintendo 3DS.
The Wii version of the game was shown in the very first trailer, which also detailed that the game was coming to 3DS. The deal stated that both games must be released at the same time, and although the Wii version was completed in 2011, Kadokawa's 3DS version was still in development.
Kadokawa Games took so long to create their version that by the time it was done, the Wii was to be discontinued within the year, and its successor, the Wii U, had been out for over 2 years. Because of this, Kadokawa decided to port their 3DS version to Wii U, fixing many bugs and framerate issues as they went. This took nearly another whole year, and by the time they were ready, the Wii was off store shelves. Kadokawa cancelled the stand-alone Wii version, and released it in first-print runs of the Wii U version.
NIS America's involvement[]
To get the game published in the Americas, Kadokawa Games decided to have NIS America publish it in the West, as they had a history with localizing and publishing niche Japanese titles. NIS America took 7 more months to record English voices and translate text, yet didn't include credits for the English voice actors.
The Wii version was the most impacted by this, as the ending credits were completely changed from starting with an epilogue of Ion waking up back on Garuda, and then finding and reactivating Rodea, followed by Dino's Rodea played, to Ion waking up on Garuda, followed by the credits set to Rodea the Sky Soldier, and ending with Ion reactivating Rodea. After the credits, the Japanese version shows a medal tally screen, detailing how the player performed over the course of the game, as Rodea, Ion, and Sonia commented on it. The US release of the Wii version soft-locks on a black screen after the credits.