Hyrule Interviews

PEOPLE:

Masayuki Uemura, age 77. Lead Designer of the Famicom, head of Nintendo R&D2.

QUOTE: Q: [How did you analyze rivals’ game consoles, like the Atari 2600 and the Magnavox 2, while developing the Famicom]?

Uemura: I had a semiconductor manufacturer dissolve the plastic covering on the chips to expose the wiring underneath. I took pictures, blew them up, and looked at the circuitry to understand it.

PEOPLE:

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 58. Creator of Zelda & Mario. General Manager of Nintendo EAD.

Satoru Iwata, age 51. President of Nintendo.

QUOTE: Miyamoto: Ultimately, I want Mii characters to be the world standard for avatars. … I hope that in the future, when you have to go to the city hall for some formality, they'll ask you to submit your Mii character too. [laughs]

Iwata: [laughs] What an ambition that is!

PEOPLE:

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 58. Creator of Zelda & Mario, General Manager of Nintendo EAD.

Shigesato Itoi, age 62. Creator of Earthbound. Editor for various Zelda manga.

Satoru Iwata, age 51. President of Nintendo.

QUOTE: Miyamoto: When you've got those plans without any idea of how it will turn out, that's always when people say things like, "But doesn't it sound fun? It's so full of dreams."

That's when things get dangerous, when people start talking right away about dreams or how much fun it will be.

Itoi: I've also put a moratorium of dreams. I'm always saying that the smallest dreams are the best.

Miyamoto: I have a moratorium on dreams, too. And when it comes to something being fun, you need to know what makes it fun. You can't just say, "It's fun."

Iwata: I'm really getting a kick out of the two of you talking about a moratorium on dreams.

Everyone: [laughs]

PEOPLE:

Takashi Tezuka, age 59. Co-creator of the Zelda series. Director or Producer of over 20 Mario games.

QUOTE: Tezuka: It is the basic premise of Super Mario games that we can naturally enjoy Mario’s actions. The technical aspects may be different between 2D and 3D games, but this remains the same.

PEOPLE:

Jim Wornell. NOA Associate Producer for Ocarina of Time, Starfox 64, and F-Zero X. Graphic designer for several other Zelda titles.

QUOTE: Wornell: I had overseen the process for the Star Fox 64 voice-over work, and F-Zero X came out right after. Since we used the studio in Seattle for Star Fox 64 I thought, “Well let's use the same studio again.” So I went down there [with two other guys], we all recorded our lines one at a time in the booth, sent all three samples off to Japan, and Japan picked my voice. I kind of wanted the gig so I made sure I nailed it. [laughs]

PEOPLE:

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 46. Producer of Ocarina of Time.

QUOTE: Q: [Ocarina of Time] features the “flow of time.” Does that mean you can record the number of days it took you to clear the game?

PEOPLE:

Yoshiaki Koizumi, age 49. Worked in various roles on A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, and The Wind Waker.

QUOTE: Q: Which has been your favorite Zelda game to work on?

PEOPLE:

Shigesato Itoi, age 40. Creator of Earthbound Zero (Mother). Later: editor of Zelda manga and guides.

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 36. Creator of Zelda & Mario.

Seikou Itou. Author of the novel No Life King.

QUOTE: Itoi: With Giygas in Mother… I feel like we could have refined him so much more, but… well, it's out there now.

Miyamoto: I know. I really wanted to give it one more shot, right at the very end.

Itoi: For that final form, I'd actually given instructions for it to be like Butoh, that "dance of darkness." Something incredibly frail… like if they were right there in front of you, you'd feel like they'd collapse if you barely touched them. Eerie and beautiful… but that's easier said than done, right? [laughs]

Itou: That sounds… hard. [laughs]

PEOPLE:

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

QUOTE: Iwata: Listening to [employees] speak their minds one-on-one, I came to realize “The reason behind that particular decision isn’t getting through,” or “That thing I said was misconstrued and became a real source of frustration.” Where possible, I took these opportunities to provide additional context for why I’d said what I had said, or what events led to a particular decision.

PEOPLE:

Hiroshi Yamauchi, age 81. President of Nintendo from 1949 to 2002.

PEOPLE:

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

QUOTE: Q: Some people claim that Mario and Luigi's last name is "Mario." Are their names officially Mario Mario and Luigi Mario?

PEOPLE:

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 46. Creator of Zelda, Mario, & more.

QUOTE: Miyamoto: It’s often said that something or another is ‘Zelda-esque’, but when you ask “What exactly is that?” you’ll always find opposition.

PEOPLE:

Hayao Miyazaki, age 51. Co-Founder of Studio Ghibli. Director of films like My Neighbor Totoro and Nausicaä .

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 39. Creator of Zelda & Mario. Producer of Nintendo EAD’s Software Development Department..

QUOTE: Miyazaki: I didn’t know much about video games but [there is] a game I wanted to create… … It takes place when the Japanese forces were nearly wiped out by the US in the South Pacific Ocean. The objective of this game is to board a torpedo bomber and hit a US aircraft carrier with a torpedo.

That said, you can also choose not to get on a bomber. Then what will you do? Maybe you grow vegetables on an island to sustain yourself. Maybe you starve and eventually the war ends. Or maybe you become a prisoner of war and stay in a prison camp until the war is over… or maybe you die during the process.

Miyamoto: I see.

Miyzaki: So there are many choices you can make. … We would make these animated scenes and you need to choose your action [with a time limit]. I discussed making such a game.

PEOPLE:

Naoki Mori. Ocarina of Time Cinema Scene Director.

QUOTE: Mori: [Ocarina of Time’s] ending reminds me of Star Wars. It also sort of references Dark Crystal. More than figuring out where the scene cuts should be, we were worrying about how to project that atmosphere.

PEOPLE:

Hayao Miyazaki, age 51. Founder of Studio Ghibli. Director of films like My Neighbor Totoro and Nausicaä .

Shigeru Miyamoto, age 39. Creator of Zelda & Mario. Producer of Nintendo EAD’s Software Development Department..

QUOTE: Miyazaki: …I would construct a vague image of the house in my head beforehand. Then I start to draw it from the front door’s perspective. … But for dramatic impact, sometimes we need to draw the house from an unexpected angle, such as the back of the house [laughs].

Miyamoto: If you use the current technology, you won’t need a human’s touch to draw things anymore. … A game called The 7th Guest will be released this fall. The developers bought an old house and scanned the [it] to render it as 3D graphics data.

PEOPLE:

Hiromasa Shikata. A Link Between Worlds Director.

Eiji Aonuma, age 50. A Link Between Worlds Producer.

Shiro Mouri. A Link Between Worlds Sub-Director & Programming Lead.

QUOTE: Shikata: When Spirit Tracks was over, much of the staff went to develop Skyward Sword. The only ones left were Mouri-san, another programmer and I. The Nintendo 3DS wasn't out yet, but our goal was to make a Zelda game for the handheld that would follow the Nintendo DS, so for about the first year, we thought a lot about what to do.

Iwata: Just the three of you for a whole year? Wasn't that hard?

Shikata: Yeah. We anguished over it every day, wondering what we should do.