Viva Piñata (Xbox 360)

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Viva Piñata (Xbox 360).

"Describing Viva Piñata to anyone is a bit weird. Very brightly-coloured...gardening simulator."¹

To do: https://bsky.app/profile/borman.bsky.social/post/3mw4wlsmcpc2f

Development for Viva Piñata dates all the way back to a simplistic gardening simulator, with an emphasis on food chain before Piñatas made their way into the picture. It was certainly an unusual idea. But at the same time it was a great one, so great that a tie-in series was even produced in tandem with 4Kids Entertainment, allowing access to Rare's full developmental materials.

But other than that, many other things were planned for the game itself such as even more Piñatas, but were cut due to coding and technical constraints.

Though the game was a critical success, it didn't do as well in sales due to being overshadowed by the console's other titles consisting of first-person shooters, only getting just around 200,000 copies. It's retrospectively seen as a full-on return to form for Rare after the Microsoft buyout, not only having an interesting formula but is respected for it's colourful aesthetics and score.

Development Timeline#

circa. 2002

• Unknown - Tim Stamper comes up with an idea for a game called Your Garden.
• Nov 21 - Steve Burke starts composing music for the game.

2003

• circa. Mar. - The game begins development, with three people for the Microsoft Pocket PC. Said literation would be scrapped and would move onto consoles before settling with the Xbox 360.

2004 Jun. 11 - Date of the latest composed piece by Steve Burk.

2005

• Early - Mumbo from Banjo-Kazooie was considered appear in Viva Pinata but the idea was scrapped². Though, his model remains in the game files.
• Jul. 28 - Date of the aid_movie_common_test_wmv1 video.

2006

• Mar. 15 - Rare unveils Viva Pinata to the public,
• Nov. 9 - Viva Pinata is released in North America.
• Dec. 1 - Viva Pinata is released in Europe.

2007

• Jan. 11 - Viva Pinata is released in Japan.

Early Development (circa. 2002)#

Your Garden#

One day when Tim Stamper was out, he found an unusual creature hovering around a flower which he later identified it as a Hummingbird hawk-moth. Stamper wondered what kind of objects he would require to make more of them appear in his garden.

He began to write down a pitch to Rare titled as Your Garden, which had the general idea of the food chain and nature, depicted on a board with Post-It notes drawn by lines. Development began on the game as a small team, with Gregg Mayles as the project lead, where he handled the concepts, animating and modelling. The team had also taken inspiration from Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon in terms of gameplay concepts.

It then started development for the Microsoft Pocket PC, because the team wanted a gaming device that would make usage of communication features. Only one image of that build remains from the Rare Replay video:

Said handheld never took off so it was moved to other consoles instead, allowing them to experiment with graphical fidelity. Such as the GameCube, Xbox, Windows and finally the Xbox 360.

Later Development (2002-early 2006)#

At that time, development ramped up, where much of the team behind Banjo-Kazooie began to develop Viva Piñata. Very little is known about the developmental period on GameCube and Xbox consoles.

The Origin of Piñatas#

Conceptual artist Ryan Stevenson came up with ideas on how the animals should look, with the main objective being a style that would bring everything together like a family. Ideas like toys or "ragdoll-like things", or generic cartoon designs were considered.

Stevenson particularly had a liking towards southwestern aesthetics, specifically around Luchadores, so he wanted to turn them into Piñatas we all know and love. Even though Piñatas came in different animal species, it still had that togetherness motif he sought to achieve.

This particular piece above also inspired the overall worldview for character designs, like Leafos for example.

But one problem happened in conceptulastiaion: considering the food chain theme they went with, they had to take romantic and deathly connotations into discussion, like how the Piñatas would mate or die respectively.

In terms of mating, they had to come up with a solution that didn't branch into anything overly inappropriate. Thus Romance Dances were considered and everyone enjoyed that idea, even allowing Kirkhope to experiment with a wide range of musical genres.

They had many different ideas and outcomes on how Piñatas would die, where some of them were vicious. Piñatas could be beaten apart with shovels or by other Piñatas, and while they were broken into different bits, other Piñatas originally ate them as opposed to them floating outside of the garden so the player never actually loses them. The latter idea likely was worked into the candy that is left behind.

Concepts

Character Concepts

Deciding on Names#

At that time, they had to come up with a unique name, it started out as simply Piñata, which was what described the overall premise of the game but Rare feared it would run into trademark issues. Many names were considered, such as Piñata Paradise (the one they likely initially went with, hence the codename being present in the files), Loco Piñata or Microsoft Piñata Simulator but Viva Piñata was decided on in the end, because Viva means "life", fitting with the theme.

When it came to naming the Piñatas themselves, they opted for wordplay based off sweets but importantly, they all had to be copyrighted. Much of the names they came up with were confections only available in the UK and other certain places, but they also came up with names they did not know were considered rude.

Scrapped Piñatas

A total of 160 Piñatas were considered for the game, but only 81 of them made it to the final.

Loads of Piñatas did not appear due to technical limitations, and having to code them well, especially in regards to interacting with them one another.

A kangaroo Piñata.	A rattlesnake Piñata.	A goldfish Piñata. They would appear as the owner of the Paper Pets shop, inside a goldfish bowl.
A hammerhead shark Piñata.

• A giraffe Piñata was considered, but concept art has not yet surfaced.
• The goldfish and hammerhead shark Piñatas were considered for Trouble In Paradise as part of an underwater locale but were cut altogether due technical issues.
• A Piñata based on Spangles were considered but was scrapped for being "too old-fashioned". It is unknown what species it was based on.

A much later chart, containing 108 Pinatas were posted by Gregg Mayles on his Twitter in 2015;

Must of the chart is very hard to make out, but they all use the names based off their species likely as placeholders. The "Pest"-naming suffix was a placeholder name for a Sour. This chart was also possibly used for development in Trouble In Paradise, as that has the same Piñata total.

Misc. Concepts

• Online Multiplayer was considered for that game but got moved to the sequel, which were cut due to time constraints.

The Sounds#

Rare composer Steve Burke initially took up composing for Viva Piñata''. His dated work on the game ranges from Nov. 21, 2002 to June 11, 2004³, being involved with all of the game's music and sound design alongside Kameo. Due to Kameo demanding too much of his time, he eventually had to reel back onViva Piñata'', with most of his non-romance dance tracks being left unused.

Later in development when Steve started getting busy, Grant Kirkhope would be brought on to work on Viva Piñata. To fit the theme of the garden, he went for an English garden-sounding theme⁴, described as being "very pastorale in sound but had good melodic content", with musical inspirations taken from composers Edward Elgar and Vaughan Williams. Kirkhope also thought of the feel of Hobbiton and Howard Shore's theme from The Lord of The Rings films.

Some of the songs from the ill-fated title Project Dream would find their way into the game.

According to Grant Kirkhope, he was tasked to compose Romance Dance themes for over 60 Piñatas (with the average span of 20 seconds), so he settled on many different genres.

In terms of animal noises for the Piñatas, they looked at real animal noises but it felt wrong so they opted for human voices instead. They were mostly done by the Rare staff, who on the technical side, including that of Kirkhope himself. They were recorded by emulating the noises to the animations displayed on screen.

2006#

March#

Revelation#

Viva Piñata was revealed to the public on March 15, 2006.⁵

• Leafos was originally named Dedos. Her original name can still be found in one of the Press Kits.

Resources#

Articles#

• IGN Presents: The History of Rare
• The Tepid Seat - Viva Piñata (Archived)
• The Tepid Seat - Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise
• Edge Magazine Issue 219

Interviews#

• Rare Replay - The Making of Viva Piñata
• Rare Revealed - Five Things you didn't know about Viva Piñata
• 'Jury is still out' on downloadable content, says Rare

References#