We recently had the chance to chat with some of the team from "tons of bits" a small team from Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Previously they worked on flash games such as "Mission in Snowdriftland" and "chick chick BOOM" and have just finished work on a WiiWare upgrade of the latter. With that I'd like to welcome and thank Bogac Sariaydin, Steve Welz and Ivica Aracic from tons of bits.

Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to be with us today. Firstly can you can you give our readers a quick mention of what involvement you've each had in the development of chick chick BOOM?

Bogac: Hi Franklin, I was responsible for everything art and design related.

Steve: I was in charge to transfer Bogacs' designs into the third dimension.

Ivica: I am the guy responsible for saying: "You're driving me crazy guys, how are we ever going to implement all this!?".

chick chick BOOM was originally a web based flash game back in 2007, what differences are there between the original Flash game and the WiiWare version?

Bogac: chick chick BOOM has been completely redesigned and improved for WiiWare.

The core idea "two chick teams fight each other in a whacky way" is the same, but the presentation and the game mechanics have been completely changed. The focus was on optimizing the game for the Wii, especially on the feature of simultaneous use of the Wii remotes for the multiplayer mode.

There are 5 big improvements in the new chick chick BOOM:

1. Defense
A completely revised feature is how you defend your chicks.

In the original chick chick BOOM you had defending gestures, now you defend by drawing a line into the arena. For instance, a falling weight can be blocked by drawing a horizontal line. If the weight collides with the line, it's blocked and your chicks are safe. Another example is to block the bomb explosion with your line. You can use the line drawing feature also to sabotage the opponent's line. Moreover, your chicks will collide with the line too, so this way you can keep them away from dangerous areas.

2. Attack Upgrades
For each attack you can activate one of two unique upgrades. For instance, you can upgrade your weight attack to a Sumo Chick, which not only looks extremely funny, but also will jump twice on enemy chicks.

3. Corncobman and Pi�ata
Two interesting elements have been added to the game: Corncobman and the Pi�ata. Corncobman appears from time to time behind the fence. The players can shoot his kernels off, which add health when collected by the chicks. The Pi�ata contains bonuses. You can shoot on it to pull it on your own side, when it falls on the ground it gets activated and you receive a bonus. The opponent can also shoot on Corncobman and the Pi�ata, so an additional fight for kernels and bonuses arise.

4. Multiplayer
Also a big improvement is the multiplayer option. You can play any combination of 2-4 players. There is also a coop mode available where 2 players can share one side. One is attacking, the other is defending, and both shooting at Corncobman and the Pi�ata. It is one of the highlights when four people shoot at the same time on them. :-)

5. New arenas and unlockable teams (hats)
There are 3 different arenas available now: City, Ship, Haunted Wood - each with its own special attack (UFO, Sea Monster, Ghost).

Players can choose from 15 funny teams, 5 available by default and 10 more to unlock by specific actions/achievements.

What was it like working with Nintendo back in 2007 when they distributed the game for free? Was it good to work with the company again?

Bogac: I think everyone, who loves to play video games (and started with this at the beginning of Nintendo's success story), knows how special Nintendo's place in the video games history is. We are glad that we managed to come to this point, where we can develop and publish our own games and we enjoy it.

What was it like working on WiiWare as opposed to Flash?

Steve: For the flash version, I had a totally different part and programmed the game in action script. So this time I enjoyed being not responsible for the code and all the bad bugs However, it was really nice to see the chicks jumping in smooth constant 60 fps

Ivica: Working on WiiWare was for us working with C++ and libraries/tools provided by Nintendo. In summary, it was a quite traditional game development process. From the coding perspective, you have endless possibilities to do cool stuff which is running very performantly, but it is not always that comfortable as Flash-Programmers might expect.

How long has the WiiWare version of chick chick BOOM been in development?

Bogac: Reduced to the development time it took about 1 � year.

chick chick BOOM certainly has a bold and distinctive art style. Are there any other games that gave inspiration for the cutesy, colourful look blended with the extreme animal-violence?

Bogac: I am not a fan of being inspired directly by other games or titles. I guess it has something to do with respect to other artists work or maybe I just want to come up with my own things It may happen subtle, but I don't look at other games and say �yes, that's what I also want to do!". Actually the style of the drawings in chick chick BOOM is something, which you can find for many decades in Comics, Animations or Games. It is called funny comic style and I am drawing in this style since my first steps in drawing at all.

Staying with the art style for a moment, we've noticed from the screenshots and video that the chicks in the game don't have any legs or wings... care to elaborate on this design choice?

Bogac: The question is �Do you need wings and legs?". Our game answered � No why, it works fine without ! � Seriously, we don't miss them and it might be also a relict of the simple flash version back in 2007.

We know the game offers 4-player local multiplayer. Are there any plans to feature online play also?

Bogac: No, unfortunately our team is too small to implement an online support. Not only it means more work but there are also more commitments resulting. For a small team and a first project that was a little bit too much.

chick chick BOOM is currently just waiting on Nintendo's stamp of approval before going on release. Can you give us an insight as to what kind of criteria Nintendo look for in WiiWare titles before granting approval. Do they impose any kind of limitations into what you can do on the platform?

Bogac: We received information about the release date meanwhile. chick chick BOOM will be available in the Wii Shop Channel on 29th October � Yay !

Bogac: About the approval process, we can't say much about this subject � simply because we have no insight.

Once chick chick BOOM is out the door and available for download what will be next for tons of bits? Are there any plans to create a full retail game or are you happy with just downloadable titles for now, how about DSiWare?

Bogac: We don't have any specific plans for now. Primary we want to observe how chick chick BOOM performs and after a few weeks we will start thinking of what our next steps could be. DSiWare as any other platform is interesting and will be considered as a possible option for our next project.

Have you had a chance to look at or test the upcoming 3DS? Do you think we could see any tons of bits games jumping out of screens in 3D in the near future?

Bogac: Hehe, yes, we had a look at it at the gamescom in Cologne. We won't exclude it from our list of platforms for sure But without knowing anything about the 3DS in detail it's hard to say something specific, so we will keep an eye on it.

How many Wii Points can Wii Owners expect to spend to download chick chick BOOM on release?

Bogac: We were informed about the price as well. chick chick BOOM will be available in Europe and Australia for 800 Wii Points.

You guys also worked on another flash game, the advent calender game known as Mission in Snowdriftland back in 2006, might we see an updated WiiWare or DSiWare version of that in the future too?

Bogac: Seriously we still love this game, the world and the characters we created. And Mission in Snowdriftland is all the time present in our heads. I think chances for porting it to another platform are not high, BUT there might be a revival for Chubby on the web one time�muhahahhaa�.

You guys are a little particular with the non-capitilisation of both your own name and the games name, with the only capital letters being BOOM. Why is that? Especially in regards to your own company name, tons of bits... why no captial "T" or "B"?

Bogac : Um, I think that's some kind of a spleen from me I just like small letters more than big ones I guess In case of chick chick BOOM it has a meaning though : Small chicks go big BOOM

Did any of you start singing:

Boom! shake-shake-shake the room
Boom! shake-shake-shake the room
Boom! shake-shake-shake the room
chick-chick-chick-chick BOOM!

At any point of development? (If on the slim chance the answer is yes is there perhaps a Youtube video you'd like to share?)

Bogac: Thank god I don't know this song, otherwise we would have provide you with embarassing videos now.

Thanks for your time guys, any last words for the N-E readers before we let you go?

No chicks died during the making of this game! Really!

Well that is good news indeed. Once again we'd like to thank Bogac, Steve and Ivica for their time. As mentioned above "chick chick BOOM" will be available for download on the Wii Shop Channel on the 29th Oct for 800 Wii Points. Have you found the urge to make "small chicks go big BOOM" and added this to your download list? Let us know below along with any other thoughts or comments you may have. And enjoy this latest ingame video from the game based on the "Ship arena"