Iwata Asks: Miyamoto sleeps with Nakago and games are born

Nintedo President, Satoru Iwata, sat down with Takashi Tezuka and Toshihiko Nakago, both developers at Nintendo, to talk about their history at the company, titles they have worked on and the recent New Super Mario Bros. Wii as a part of the Iwata Asks series of interviews. They share quite a few things I found interesting.

When talking about all three working together (Miyamoto, Tezuka and Nakago), the “Golden Triangle” Iwata calls them, Nakago brings up this slightly awkward, innuendo inducing and maybe more than we need to know piece of information:

Nakago: And Excitebike was released in November. As Excitebike was being developed in Tokyo, I went on a lot of business trips there together with Miyamoto-san and we'd often stay over in a hotel. That was right at the start of the bubble economy and there were times when it would be really hard to secure a hotel room. There were even times when we slept in the same bed.

Iwata:…What!? (laughs)

All:(laughter)

Nakago: That's how we made Excitebike. Then after that, we began to work on Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda at the same time.

They transition into Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, which were developed at the same time periods and some ideas crossed over. Nakago recalls the fire bars in the castle leading up to fight Bowser: "Yes, that idea originally comes from Zelda. We thought it would work better in Mario, so we transferred it across."

The discussion then goes on about the level design of the original Super Mario Bros. and the smart tricks used to teach the player about the mechanics by playing the game—something numerous games overlook or avoid in favor of tooltips. For example, the mushroom, which in World 1-1 the player is given the best chance to get it due to the pipe placement, as Nakago says, "Right, because when the mushroom hits the pipe, it bounces back. Even right at the start of World 1-1, all of the elements of Super Mario were present and correct."

Continuing on teaching the player mechanics through play, Iwata speaks on the levels in the sky, specifically, how to convey it is safe to jump down and building a player's trust:

In Super Mario, the player has faith that no matter how high in the air it may be, if there are coins there, you'll be able to collect them without coming to any harm. If the game was developed by people with a nasty streak, then a feature like that might be used to trick the player into losing a turn. If that were the case, then no matter how much you might want those coins, you wouldn't jump towards them. But in Super Mario, there's that level of trust: "If I jump to get the coins, there's no way anything bad will happen." That's why players were able to get back to the ground without any hesitation.

They also speak on the technical limitations encountered over the years and what they did to cope with it. For example, Nakago recalls how they saved space on the NES: "We'd use the same image for both clouds and grass, just changing the color. Even with mushrooms and flowers, we'd be looking to limit the bytes we used, so we'd draw half of the object then flip it around to display it." That is why many of the objects are symmetrical, they are able to mirror them without issue. Many of the other power ups were inspired by techincal limitations as well. Nakago says: "Miyamoto-san wanted to have Mario riding a dinosaur even on Mario 3, but due to hardware limitations, we were unable to do it. That's why Tezuka-san came up with power-ups where Mario himself would gain the attributes of a raccoon or a frog."

They also mention how techincal limitations prevented multiplayer Mario games from being fully realized in the past and the iterations they took on the design throughout different games up to New Super Mario Bros. Wii. On the topic of the Super Guide videos, Tezuka makes it clear that they are from real people playing, untouched: "It is really tricky to record these videos though. For that reason, some members of the team would request that we let them correct things manually. But I had to put my foot down. If it's not all done by a human player, you'll lose that essential realism.”

Be sure to read the full interview here.


Ben