Extend Play

What’s special about Mr.Miyamoto is that he is unthinkably egocentric in one way, but he never loses an objective point of view. He’s always alert about people’s initial response to his creation. If he finds they don’t get it, he simply drops it and looks for an alternative.

— Satoru Iwata.

12 Dec / Comments (View)

Mario Bros. was also a collaborative effort with Yokoi-san. He proposed that we make a competitive game and development started from there. In Donkey Kong, if Mario fell any distance that was greater than his height, he would be stunned and you’d lose a turn. But this time round, Yokoi-san said: “Why don’t we let him jump down from higher places?” I thought that if we did that, it wouldn’t be much of a game. But as I pondered it, I thought: “Why shouldn’t Mario be able to perform some super-human feats?” Then we made a prototype with Mario running and bouncing around and we realized that this was great fun. But at this point, we hit something of a dead end as we wondered what kind of game it was going to be. It was at this point that Yokoi-san, who is someone who considers problems from first principles, said: “Since we’ve got all these floors, why don’t we make it so that Mario can hit the floors from beneath, and defeat the enemy?” But when we actually tried it we found that it was incredibly easy. Before you knew it, you had no enemies left. And that made it a really cowardly kind of game. So then we made it so that you hit the enemies from below before going up to deliver the decisive blow.

— Shigeru Miyamoto.

12 Dec / Comments (View)

You can’t say that there’s no connection between Super Mario and the fact that Miyamoto-san spent his youth wandering around the fields in the countryside around Kyoto City.

— Satoru Iwata.

12 Dec / Comments (View)

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.

— Toshihiko Nakago.

12 Dec / Comments (View)

Wait! Hang on just a second! Are you telling me that someone who joined Nintendo in order to make video games and who is currently the head of the Software Development Department entered the company in 1984 without knowing Pac-Man?

— Satoru Iwata à Takashi Tezuka.

12 Dec / Comments (View)

When it was first developed, either the SIN member or the car’s owner would come out at random. But if we are destroying cars that someone owns, then it gives off the image of doing something bad. There was a lot of consideration put into it, but ultimately it was decided to leave this out. Sorry!

— On the car bonus stage, after wrecking it will the car owner come out and say “Oh my God!” or “Oh my car!” ? [Questions aux développeurs de Super Street Fighter IV]

12 Dec / Comments (View)

The use of rhythm in Balloon Fight and Wrecking Crew was an homage to Sly and Robbie.

— Hirokazu Tanaka.

11 Dec / Comments (View)

Après avoir réalisé que de nombreuses boutiques diffusaient de la musique dans la vie courante, nous avons demandé à Totake-san, qui est responsable de la musique d’Animal Crossing, de nous écrire une chanson. Grâce à elle, la chaîne est devenue un endroit agréable pour l’utilisateur, même quand il n’achète rien. Un peu comme s’il faisait du lèche-vitrine.

— Kiyoshi Mizuki (Nintendo, sur la chaîne boutique Wii).

02 Dec / Comments (View)

Sur un 1 500 000 Mario Kart qui ont été vendus en France, il y a 300 000 utilisateurs uniques qui chaque semaine jouent sur internet.

— Stephan Bole, LCI Gameclub.

30 Nov / Comments (View)

Miyamoto: In terms of the game’s structure, the swimming part is Balloon Fight. With Balloon Fight launching previously, that system of controls had been tried and tested. For the sky, we had the image of Sun Wukong from Monkey King jumping between clouds.

— A propos du Premier Super Mario Bros sur Famicom - http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page4.jsp.

28 Nov / Comments (View)

Miyamoto
Well, I called him “Mr. Video”. My plan was to use the same character in every video game I made.
Iwata
So you had that plan right from the start? Why did you intend to use him in every video game you made?
Miyamoto
Well, I thought the way Hitchcock cropped up in all the films he directed was really cool! (laughs)

— Sur Jumpman qui deviendra Mario - http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page2.jsp

28 Nov / Comments (View)

Miyamoto: That’s why at first I asked if I could make a game using Popeye. The basic concept of Popeye is that there is the hero and his rival who he manages to turn the tables on with the aid of spinach.
Iwata : When you put it like that, it’s the same as Pac-Man, isn’t it? (laughs)
Miyamoto: Yes, it’s identical to Pac-Man! (laughs) So I sketched out a few ideas for games using Popeye. […] And that’s how Donkey Kong came about.
Iwata: But originally it was going to be a Popeye game.

— http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page1.jsp

27 Nov / Comments (View)

SFII’s car was a sedan, SFIII’s car was an RV Car. For Super SFIV, there was an idea of having a giant yellow truck like you’d see in a construction area, and even the idea of having a tank. However, because one of the game’s themes was “returning to the basics,” they decided to go with a sedan.

— Anoop Gantayat -andriasang.com.

24 Nov / Comments (View)

Je me suis rappelé d’un Weekly Jump acheté il y a plus de 15 ans. Tetsuo Hara y dessinait une vingtaine de pages (au moins deux en couleurs) qui mettaient en scène les personnages de ce jeu d’arcade (Muscle Bomber, Capcom, 1993).

Depuis je l’ai perdu dans un déménagement, et pas une trace d’un recueil ou d’un scan sur le net. Je crois que je suis malheureux.

23 Nov / Comments (View)

Ces temps-ci,

Credits x 5