Tyrone Rodriguez says Metal Gear Solid creator should "start making bad movies"...

Nicalis may be best known for bringing little bundles of joy into gamers' lives by publishing such gems as Cave Story, NightSky and VVVVVV, but studio founder Tyrone Rodriguez had some choice words regarding a certain fellow developer.

In an interview with Indie Games, Rodriguez was quizzed about a perceived decline of the Japanese development scene among western developers. He dismissed that the current Japanese scene had nothing of quality to offer, citing Dark Souls, The World Ends with You, Final Fantasy XII, and the output of Nintendo as some of his personal favourite games of recent times.

However, he had a distinctly strong opinion of Konami, and in particular the style of development of Metal Gear Solid auteur Hideo Kojima.

"Konami doesn't make good stuff... [Kojima is] terrible at making games. Metal Gear is good in spite of him. I haven't enjoyed a game of his since maybe the original Metal Gear Solid, maybe."

He went on to argue that Kojima's recent games are tedious, with bad writing, bad story-telling, and bad control. He suggested Kojima would be better suited making "bad movies".

Rodriguez also revealed how he is irked by the self-labelling of many "indie developers".

"The main thing I want to see from indie developers is to stop calling themselves indie developers. You're either a game developer or you're not. Indie has nothing to do with it. It's like this cool buzzword now. Do you make games? Okay, then you're a game developer."

Nicalis has a fair bit on its plate with Nintendo platforms at the moment. The studio is set to publish Ikachan - from the creator of Cave Story - on DSiWare, as well as port its critically-acclaimed NightSky onto the 3DS eShop. It is also believed to be working on a downloadable title for Wii U. Finally, its 3DS version of indie hit VVVVVV is awaiting approval for release on the European eShop.