Hyrule Interviews

PEOPLE:

Satoru Iwata, age 59. President of HAL from 1993-2000, President of Nintendo from 2002-2015.

QUOTE: Iwata: People … allow their co-workers to take care of everything outside of their own responsibilities, letting go and bracing themselves for the results. As this arrangement increases in scale, it develops levels, broadening in scope. This is what we call a company.

When working this way, forging connections as we strive to achieve our objectives, respecting others becomes incredibly important.

PEOPLE:

Takahiro Takayama. Physics Programming Lead on Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom.

QUOTE: Takayama: When I first saw the prototype [for Tears of the Kingdom], I was excited that this was going to be a great game. But I also knew this was going to be very, very difficult. I said to myself, "Are we really doing this? Development is going to be chaos." The more I thought, the more I worried. But in life, it's sometimes important to have the courage to push forward. As expected, the world fells apart.

[He shows footage of ludicrous physics bugs]

PEOPLE:

Takaya Imamura, age 51. Art Director of Majora’s Mask, artist for A Link to the Past and F-Zero.

Takao Shimizu, age 52. Director of BS The Legend of Zelda and F-Zero.

QUOTE: Q You didn't think about [F-Zero] characters at all during development?

Imamura: No. Captain Falcon was originally the mascot character for Super NES.

Q: What?!

Shimizu: That statement is a bit shocking, isn't it? [laughs]

Imamura: Even most people at Nintendo don't know that. When development of F-ZERO was almost complete, I was doing a bunch of illustrations and someone expressed a desire to make a mascot character for Super NES, with a name like Captain Something. … So I started thinking about a character who would match the colors of the Super Famicom controller, with some red and blue and yellow.

Q: How did [he] become Captain Falcon of F-Zero?

PEOPLE:

Seikou Itou. Author of No Life King.

Shigesato Itoi, age 40. Creator of Earthbound. Later: Editor of the Ishinomori A Link to the Past manga.

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 36. Creator of Zelda and Mario. Producer of Nintendo EAD’s Software Development Department.

QUOTE: Itou: I mean, when you're actually playing a game, there's no way you aren't conscious of the fact that you are the one playing it. The idea that you could somehow "leap beyond" the fact that it's a game… well, that's just impossible.

Itoi: If we're talking about immersive tricks, movies are actually far more sophisticated at doing that.

Itou: Exactly. It's so bizarre. Society buys into this image of kids "getting sucked into the tube"… and people actually believe that.

PEOPLE:

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 62. Creator of Zelda & Mario.

QUOTE: Q: Mario has been a boxing referee, a doctor, an Olympian, and a carpenter. Are all these official careers in Mario lore? If he has a medical degree, why does he continue his plumbing business?

PEOPLE:

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 45. Creator of Zelda, Mario, & more.

QUOTE: Miyamoto: The original “virtual reality” is the make-believe worlds and games that children create. And those games are played with very lenient rules; as games created by humans, they’re steeped in that spirit of human kindness.

PEOPLE:

Shigefumi Hino, age 41. Link’s Awakening character designer. Director of Pikmin 2.

Takashi Tezuka, age 43. Co-creator of the Zelda series. Producer of Pikmin 2.

Wataru Yamaguchi. Ocarina of Time and Pikmin 2 illustrator.

QUOTE: Q: Much of the character art for [Pikmin 2] is clay sculptures. Did you actually work in clay to create the characters?

Hino: Actually, all of those clay-looking models you see in the artwork were in fact sculpted in clay. We took those clay sculptures, took photos and scanned them to make digital versions of them and then combined the different individual clay sculptures into essentially collages, which became the final pieces of art.

PEOPLE:

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 62. Co-creator of the Zelda series.

Takashi Tezuka, age 54. Co-creator of the Zelda series. Original character designer for Link.

QUOTE: Q: If you were making a live-action Zelda movie, who would you want to play Link?

Miyamoto: With Japanese TV drama and film they always use the same actors, so I actually think we should have someone completely new. [Turns to Tezuka] You know more about pop culture than me.

Tezuka: I can’t think of any! [laughs] … This is just personally, it would be very fun and awesome if Link was played by a female actress, a boyish female actress.

PEOPLE:

Shiro Mouri. Engineer or Engineering Lead for Four Swords Adventures, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and A Link Between Worlds. Director of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

QUOTE: Mouri: I’ve been creating side-scrolling Mario games for many years now, but the goal this time was to create a 2D Mario that was fitting for this day and age—with mysteries and secrets for the time that we live in.

PEOPLE:

Shigesato Itoi, age 40. Creator of Earthbound Zero (Mother). Later: editor of the Ishinomori A Link to the Past manga.

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 36. Creator of Zelda & Mario. Producer of Nintendo EAD’s Software Development Department.

Seikou Itou. Author of the novel No Life King.

QUOTE: Itoi: Graphics becoming realistic [is], when you think about it, a ridiculous thing. If we go down that path it will eventually lead to caricature. A self-imposed bondage.

Miyamoto: … Rather than going for realism, you want changes like stereo sound. People aren't pining after perfection anymore. I totally agree.

Itou: It's about how weird you can get. Realistic sounds are just boring, you know?

Itoi: On CD-ROM, the games use actual human voices, but it's really lame.

Itou: It ruins the immersion. You lose the ability to project yourself into the character because you're forced to hear this other distinct voice.

PEOPLE:

Yuki Kaneko. NPC Designer on Skyward Sword.

QUOTE: Kaneko: For young Impa [in Skyward Sword] we referenced Impa and Sheik from Ocarina of Time. We also gave her an androgynous look, like a male role in an opera.

PEOPLE:

Tadashi Sugiyama, age 57. Zelda II: Adventure of Link director.

QUOTE: Sugiyama: [Adventure of Link] is rooted in actions like jump strikes, downward strikes, and high and low shield defense moves. Types of moves that weren’t possible in the first Zelda game. Rather than being a continuation of the series, it started as a new sword and shield type of action game.

PEOPLE:

Takashi Tezuka, age 49. Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda (1986).

Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for The Legend of Zelda (1986).

Satoru Iwata, age 49. 4th President of Nintendo.

QUOTE: Tezuka: Basically, we were going to make lots of dungeons using one square per room, and lay them out like a jigsaw puzzle.

Nakago: Right. Tezuka-san said, “I did it!” and brought this to me. I created the data exactly in line with it, but then Tezuka-san made a mistake and only used half of the data. I said, “Tezuka-san, there’s only half here. Where did the other half go?” and he was like, “What?! Oops, I messed up…” But Miyamoto-san said it was fine just like that. So, using the half of the memory that was left over, we decided to create the Second Quest.

Iwata: Huh? Just wait a second. If Tezuka-san hadn’t messed up, there’d have been no Second Quest?

PEOPLE:

Shiro Mouri. Sub-Director of A Link Between Worlds, Director of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Takashi Tezuka, age 62. Director of The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, & Link’s Awakening. Producer of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

QUOTE: Mouri: When I was playing Super Mario Bros. on the NES, I was amazed that you could warp to different places. You could go underground by entering a pipe or go up to the sky by climbing up vines that appear when you hit a block. So I wanted to utilize this idea to create a game with new wonders.

Q: What was Tezuka-san's reaction to that idea?

PEOPLE:

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 58. Producer and co-director of the first Zelda and Super Mario games.

Satoru Iwata, age 51. President of Nintendo.

Shigesato Itoi, age 62. Creator of Earthbound.

Takashi Tezuka, age 50. Co-director of the first Zelda and Super Mario games.

Toshihiko Nakago, age 54. Programmer for the first Zelda and Super Mario games.

QUOTE: Miyamoto: You stock up a lot of topics for "Iwata Asks" at lunchtime, right?

Iwata: Yeah. Miyamoto-san has lunch with the same people almost every day—Takashi Tezuka-san and Toshihiko Nakago-san. It's been that way for quite a while.

Itoi: Longer than our wives.

Iwata: Yes, that's how long we've been eating together! [laughs]

Miyamoto: It's true! [laughs]