Hyrule Interviews

@hyruleinterviews.bsky.social

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A database of interviews with the Zelda team. Our goal is to preserve that legacy, share it here, and build a safe community for our followers! By @maxnichols.bsky.social www.hyruleinterviews.com

PEOPLE: - Takafumi Kiuchi. Enemy Designer for Skyward Sword. QUOTE: Kiuchi: With the only instructions that it should be enormous and that “its vulnerability is on its head,” we were allowed to design the Imprisoned [in Skyward Sword] as we pleased. Its design looks more like a kaiju than a monster. Trying to show the impressive presence and the overwhelming power of Demise, we drew him again and again until we got it right. To give him some resemblance to Ganondorf, we didn't just make his hair red, but set it on fire. [laughs] His sword looks like a black Master Sword.
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 36. Creator of Zelda & Mario, Producer of Nintendo EAD’s Software Development Department. QUOTE: Miyamoto: In the medium of animation, you just show what you want people to see. So if you want someone to move fast, you just make them run fast. But in a game, you can't just make a character speed up for that one moment. There are all sorts of strategies involved there. Take a human character, for example. Let's say you design them to walk in a pleasant, smooth way. This may conflict with the player's feelings—there are times when they want to run away, or times when they want to chase something. If the character keeps walking in that "pleasant, smooth" way when the player is desperate to escape, the player is going to get pissed off.
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. I had some experience with arcade games, and right away I knew that none of what I was looking at would be any help in designing a new home system. They simply didn’t have expressive enough graphics. They had a monopoly on patents for them, circuit structures and features such as scrolling. And they were simply old-fashioned. That’s why I couldn’t use anything from them.
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! Miyamoto: If it becomes a worldwide format, it'll be fun. Purely and simply, I just want everyone to use it in a variety of ways. … Well, that ambition about the city hall thing might be a bit extreme, but I do want Mii to be more widely used.
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] Miyamoto: … Dreams are absolutely forbidden.
Morita: Aonuma-san came over and I was like, ‘Uh-oh!’ and immediately closed the screen. Aonuma: Well, you were supposed to be making a boss! Iwata: We had pushed back the project [Ocarina] several times, so making a boss was pressing business. You should have been doing that! [laughs] Morita: Nonetheless, for some reason, it just kept coming together and… Iwata: ‘For some reason’?! Yeah, because you were pouring your energy into it! [laughs] Is it really that easy to make a fishing game? Morita: Yeah. I didn't have to put much effort into it. Aonuma: Really…? Morita: No, it's true. And it turned out just as I imagined.
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. If we as players mess up a move because of the controls rather than something we did wrong, then we end up not wanting to play any more. On the other hand, if we feel like things would have worked out if we’d just jumped a little earlier, then that makes us want to try again.
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] I … played a lot of Ridge Racer and I kind of patterned my voice after the announcer from Ridge Racer because he's got that that great inflection.
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? Miyamoto: I forgot about that feature [laughs]. At one point, there was a move to bring forward the release date of Zelda, and at that time, we were told that no further changes to the system were allowed. At the end, “THE END” would have displayed, a beep sounds, and “It has been XX days since leaving Kokiri Forest.”
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? Koizumi: Ocarina of Time. It was a lot of fun to work on, and perhaps the reason it stayed with me is that we had to start from zero to make that game.
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] Itoi: I wanted to depict the terror of the weak. But man, it was tough.
Character Voices: Fujiko Takimoto, Nobuyuki Hiyama, Jun Mizusawa, Takashi Nagasako, Yayoi Jinguji (credited as Yayoi Jinguji), Kaori Mizuhashi Motion Capture Actor (JAC): Yoshinori Tsujimoto Action Coordinator (JAC): Yuta Morokaji Motion Editors: Hiroshi Momose, Rui Shimamura English Text Writer: Dan Owsen English Text Translation: Hiroyuki Yamada NOA Support: Manabu Fukuda, Gail Tilden, Yoshio Tsuboike Manual Editors: Yushi Ozeki, Yasuhiro Sakai, Jim Wornell
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. Effectively, this was the same as asking them “Given these circumstances, what would have been your thoughts?” When somebody says, “I would have done the same thing,” of course it’s reassuring. Discovering a shared set of values makes both parties feel a lot more comfortable.
PEOPLE: - Hiroshi Yamauchi, age 81. President of Nintendo from 1949 to 2002. QUOTE: Yamauchi: Large-scale games are no good. If we keep it up, game makers the world over are going to collapse. These industrial-strength games are played out. The true nature of the video game business is developing new kinds of fun and constantly working to achieve perfection.
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? Shigeru Miyamoto: This is an old story, but Hollywood did a film version of the Mario Bros. many years back. There was a scene in the script where they needed a last name for the characters. Somebody suggested that, because they were the Mario Bros., their last name should be Mario. So, they made him "Mario Mario." I heard this and laughed rather loudly. Of course, this was ultimately included in the film. … But, just like Mickey Mouse doesn't really have a last name, Mario is really just Mario and Luigi is really just Luigi.
Miyamoto: I think we could have done more with The Adventure of Link. When we're designing games, we have our plan for what we're going to design but in our process it evolves and grows from there. Unfortunately all we ended up creating was what we had originally planned on paper. Q: What would you have liked that game to have been like? Miyamoto: So one thing is if the switch between the scenes had been faster, we could have done more with how we used the sidescrolling vs. the overhead and the interchange between the two. But, because of the limitations on how quickly those scenes changed, we weren't able to.
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. There are numerous staff members who’ve been playing Zelda for a long time, so when there are two options to choose from they know which better conveys the image we’ve chosen for Zelda.
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. Miyamoto: I see…
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. I definitely watch anime a lot. So much so that I’m called Captain Anime. [laughs] Anime I consider interesting I show people with reckless abandon. “This is great!” I say. Recently I’ve been enjoying Perfect Blue which is a psycho thriller. It’s not because we used it as a reference for the games, but the transitions of scenes were interesting.
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. Once you have the graphics data, you just need to use it with a computer. If you want to go upstairs, you just can. You can see the results pretty quickly, because unlike animation, you won’t need to draw wherever you go.
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. Aonuma: To add to that, it didn't mean that nothing came of it that one year. As we were testing things, that was a period when we hit upon the most distinctive feature of this game.
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 40. Creator of Zelda, Mario, Star Fox, & more. QUOTE: Miyamoto: It’s not easy to escape from the hum-drum everyday world. I often get bogged down in it. But there’s a shrine near here dedicated to a fox god, and this fox god can fly. So I had the idea of making a fox that could fly through arches. We use polygon rendering to make the 3D effect, so you feel you are the fox. People just watching somebody play might think it looks boring. Just to look at, Mario is boring, too. You can’t understand until you play it. If you just give people a shell, their imagination has room to fill in the details.
PEOPLE: - Junichiro Taku. Flutist for Breath of the Wild and the Link’s Awakening remake. QUOTE: Taku: “Mom! I can play Zelda’s treasure chest sound on my flute! ” Mom: “Games again? Stop wasting your time! Go and study!” I want to tell my dejected young self back then that 26 years later, you’ll be playing the flute in the [Link’s Awakening] remake.
PEOPLE: - Yasunari Nishida. Programmer on A Link to the Past. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 64. Producer of A Link to the Past. QUOTE: Nishida: Just before the [A Link to the Past] logo appears, a polygonal Triforce symbol comes spinning in. I was in charge of programming that. Q: You created that iconic scene? Nishida: Yes. Back then, I was just beginning to experiment with polygons, which were expected to be the core technology of the future. That scene was Nintendo's first time to use it in a game. Q: Quite some time ago, Shigeru Miyamoto said in an interview that Nintendo outsourced most of the programming prior to Super NES. Shimizu: That's right. … I was the first one in Entertainment Analysis & Development, the department that I belonged to at the time.
PEOPLE: - Yoshiaki Koizumi, age 49. Writer for A Link to the Past & Link’s Awakening. 3D Gameplay Director for Ocarina of Time. Co-Director of Majora’s Mask. QUOTE: Koizumi: I'm very particular about my coffee. I buy my beans, I grind them. I weigh the grounds and measure the volume of water. The water cannot be too hot [or else] the coffee will become bitter, so I like to pour over with a long stemmed pouring kettle. It has to have a long, narrow pouring spout or too much water will come out at once. The whole thing has become a ritual for me, I really enjoy the good smell of the coffee as I make it.
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 54. Co-Creator of the Zelda series. Producer or director of 17+ Super Mario Bros. games. QUOTE: Tezuka: In Mario games, each one has 60 to 80 courses, and each course needs to have its own unique defining element. If you build too many elements into every course, they start to feel the same. That's something you need to be careful of. To me, the real trick is limiting [the number of] course objects. That's what makes it really special.
PEOPLE: - Hidemaro Fujibayashi, age 44. Director of Breath of the Wild. QUOTE: Fujibayashi: We had this idea of including tiny people [in Breath of the Wild]. Since this is a 3D game, we could have all these tiny-sized towns, and Link himself could shrink. We thought it'd be super fun if we had all these tiny characters all over the place... but with all these other characters that stand out, we thought it would be difficult for these little guys to be able to live out their own place in the game. So we really wanted to have them in there for the gameplay, but sadly had to give up on the idea.
PEOPLE: - Masanobu Endo, age 32. Creator of Tower of Druaga (1984), which likely influenced The Legend of Zelda (1986). - Shigesato Itoi, age 37. Author. Later: Creator of Earthbound (1989) and editor for the Ishinorimori A Link to the Past manga. QUOTE: Endo: When you talk to game developers, they'll often say, "working at the foot of Mt. Fuji would be perfect." Itoi: … [laughs] That kind of asceticism isn't limited to the digital field. … There was even an era when "suppressing consciousness" was considered beautiful. … Those who suppressed something until it burst out and killed them were called "those who died young." Those who persevered until death were called "those who stubbornly stuck to their principles their whole lives." It's a kind of stoicism. But that kind of repressive power cannot create things that appeal to people. It's very handy for leading people in the wrong direction though. It's incredibly useful for steering people down dangerous paths.
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 45. Producer of Ocarina of Time. QUOTE: Miyamoto: There are six types of magic [in Ocarina of Time], including fire, wind, darkness, and light. I'm thinking about mixing the different types of magic. Truthfully, you can use magic in conjunction with Link's bow and arrow. Since you can use magic missiles, it's important that you can use magic on arrows.
PEOPLE: - Eiji Aonuma, age 53. Director of Twilight Princess, Producer of Twilight Princess HD. QUOTE: Q: You worked with Tantalus Media to create the Wii U version, but they're an Australian developer, aren't they? How did the collaboration on Twilight Princess HD come about? Aonuma: As you know, we've got our hands a bit full with making a new Zelda game at the moment, so even though we wanted to make Twilight Princess HD, we didn't think we could. That's when I found out that there was an overseas developer with a great reputation for making HD remasters. I thought it must be fate, so I contacted them right away!
• Event: Hyrule vs. Lorule 3 – A Zelda Charity Marathon • Where to Watch: twitch.tv/TSGtv • Dates: June 8–14 • Benefiting: St. Jude Children's Research Hospital • Hosted by: TheSpeedGamers, a volunteer-run charity gaming community that has raised over $940,000 for charity since 2008. • What is it?: A week-long livestream celebrating The Legend of Zelda series, featuring playthroughs of games from across the franchise. • Volunteers are divided into Team Hyrule and Team Lorule, competing in challenges throughout the marathon to earn points and claim victory. • All donations support St. Jude's mission of finding cures and saving children. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing, or food.
PEOPLE: - Eiji Aonuma, age 50. Franchise Producer for the Zelda series. QUOTE: Aonuma: With fan sites and Miiverse, its almost as though we’re sitting in the same room [as the fans], because there’s no go-between; it’s direct. But with regard to how fan voices or fan opinion affects my daily work and my creative process, I certainly have the fans in mind when I’m creating something, and I want to create something that will make them happy, but it’s my creative responsibility to also give them something they didn’t know they wanted. An element of surprise always has to be there, because I’m a creative person; it’s my job. … I like to leave a little bit of distance between myself and my fans, because it’s that distance that allows me the space that I need.
PEOPLE: - Shun Moriya. Ocarina of Time 3D Programmer. - Satoru Iwata, age 51. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: Moriya: Take the scene in which you set a spiderweb on fire [in Ocarina of Time’s Deku Tree]. Lots of people, including me, have Link roll forward or swing his torch to light it, but some people use how the tip of the torch lowers when he is holding the shield. So when I heard that the fire wouldn't light [in the 3DS remake], I thought, “Uh-oh…this isn't gonna be easy.” [laughs] Iwata: The ways to solve that are stuck in the players' memories, so you have to recreate those, too. Moriya: When I looked into why the tip of the torch wouldn't light the fire, I realized that Link's arms and legs were longer and his waist higher, since we had designed him a little more to today's styles.
PEOPLE: - Yoshiaki Koizumi, age 39. Writer for Link’s Awakening & A Link to the Past. 3D Gameplay Director for Ocarina of Time. Co-Director of Majora’s Mask. QUOTE: Koizumi: I was the one coming up with scenarios, just on my own, ever since the time of Link's Awakening. … I felt like I came up with this entire scenario and a backstory for Link, but nobody really seemed to care. They were always saying “Let's not try to push the story forward too much.” So I would try to find sneaky ways to get it in without them noticing too much. For example, I always liked the idea of you coming upon another character and hearing little bits of conversation that slowly begin to reveal different parts of the story. And that was the way that I tried to work on Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 50. Producer & Co-Director of the first Zelda. Producer of Link’s Awakening. - Takashi Tezuka, age 42. Co-Director of the first Zelda. Director of Link’s Awakening. QUOTE: Q: [What is your favorite Zelda?] Miyamoto: It has to be Link’s Awakening. I wasn’t very involved in the development of that game. I played that game a lot after it was finished, and I thought it was very fun. [laughs] That one was directed by Mr. Tezuka, actually. There are many elements portraying the pure Tezuka style, so I spent my time looking for the classic Zelda elements. … The one I most enjoyed relaxing with was Link’s Awakening.
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 49. Director of Link’s Awakening. QUOTE: Tezuka: I remember that we made Link's Awakening in a real peculiar frame of mind. We began in the free spirit of an afterschool club, so the contents are quite unrestrained. If you look at it, you can tell. Characters similar to Mario and Luigi appear, and Yoshi dolls appear, too. It was for the Game Boy system, so we thought, “Oh, it'll be fine.” [laughs] … We moved along at quite a good clip in a relatively freewheeling manner. Maybe that's why we had so much fun making it. It was like we were making a parody of The Legend of Zelda.
PEOPLE: - Kazuaki Morita, age 40. A Link to the Past Object Programmer, Link’s Awakening Main System Programmer. QUOTE: Morita: The first Zelda game that featured fishing was Link's Awakening on the Game Boy. That happened during a short period of downtime after the massive Link to the Past project ended in the early ‘90s. I wanted to learn how to program for the Game Boy, and did a lot of experiments. Once I started, I discovered that Game Boy programming was quite sophisticated, yet very accessible. Far beyond our original expectations, we did so many wonderful things with our experiments that we decided to re-conceive it all as part of a Zelda game for the Game Boy.
PEOPLE: - Hirohito Shinoda. Lead NPC artist for Breath of the Wild. QUOTE: Shinoda: The core design for the Rito [in Breath of the Wild] hadn't been set before production started, so finalizing Revali defined how the rest of the Rito would look. I experimented with a number of different bird motifs, like swallows and woodpeckers, but settled on birds of prey. Creating a design that communicated a character that sees Link as a rival—but could not be honest with himself about it—took a lot of trial and error.
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 39. Supervisor for Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 47. Producer of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. QUOTE: Tezuka: There were a number of characters in Ocarina of Time that we wanted to describe more fully. We didn’t have the means to do it in Ocarina, but in Majora’s Mask we do because players have the opportunity to meet every character in the game and learn more about them. Miyamoto: After seeing Toy Story 2, I realized that Majora’s Mask used a similar technique as the sequel. We focused on some of the minor characters from the original in order to expand the world.
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. There will always be people who see things differently than you. Perhaps to an unreasonable degree. Still, these people surely have their own reasons, their own history and values. Moreover, they’re bound to be able to do things you can’t do, and know things you don’t know.
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] At this rate, the world will destroy itself before Ganon comes back. And so began our battle against the true menace of Hyrule.
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? Imamura: I don't really remember.
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. Miyamoto: We call the games we make a simulated experience. And while we know players get immersed in that simulation, they're still aware it's a game. To say they confuse it with reality is incredibly condescending.
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? Miyamoto: There's really only one rule in terms of the things that Mario does. Generally, it's that he's more on the blue-collar side. He's hard-working, and certainly much more physical in nature. So, I think that a doctor is sort of an unexpected and perhaps unbelievable role for Mario. Perhaps the Dr. Mario you're thinking of was maybe, in some way, not necessarily legitimate.
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. But with computers, you have games that are overseen by a judge capable of strict accuracy. However, while that precision does allow us to do new interesting things … it’s possible for the judge to be too clinical, too severe. It’s now the magnanimity of the game developers themselves which will determine whether the games we all play are generous and lenient or clinical and severe.
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. Tezuka: One of the members of our illustration team, a fellow by the name of Yamaguchi, he actually was very passionate about doing this and worked very hard on creating the clay models and putting together the illustrations.
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. Miyamoto: This is something I never imagined because Link is very different from how a Japanese person looks. At the Japanese Expo I attended, there were so many people in cosplay who looked very good. They would be good!
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. The first Super Mario game felt full of surprises: Mario getting taller if you eat a mushroom, or discovering that you could go inside the pipes and be transported underground. As time went on, these ideas became normalized. We got used to them. So the development team took this on as a challenge … Until now I think we’ve been cleverly reusing our surprises, but we didn’t want to depend on that this time.
PEOPLE: - Yoshiaki Koizumi, age 43. Writer & director for various Zelda titles.. - Satoru Iwata, age 51. 4th President of Nintendo. QUOTE: Koizumi: I really liked Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. ...before Super Mario 64, I had actually been making Adventure of Link in polygons with Miyamoto-san. Iwata: You mean for the Super Famicom System? Koizumi: Yes. We were experimenting with a thin, polygon Link seen from the side and fighting with his sword. Chanbara was a pending issue at the time. We couldn't really bring The Adventure of Link into form at that time, but I kept that desire to achieve a sword-fighting Zelda game until I joined this team [Ocarina of Time].
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. Itoi: Imagine if the Flying Men's lines in MOTHER were read by a human voice... wouldn't that be awful?
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. The aging Impa’s costume also follows the passage of time, her entire body is dressed to reflect that. Her pendulum braid measures time, ticking away the seconds, and the entire triangular robe she wears becomes a sundial, with her age being measured by the braids in her hair.
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. We were experimenting while producing the game so we didn’t really have the first game’s systems in mind while developing it. As for it being unique within the series, we were searching for new ways to play so you could say it’s like a spin-off. At the end of development we decided on a story and that Link would be 16 years old then attached [Zelda] and released it as the second game in the series.
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? Nakago: Yes, that’s right.
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? Mouri: Tezuka-san said, “Warping somewhere else would be no different from previous games. Can't we make it so that the course itself transforms without players having to warp?” I was like, “No, no, how is that even possible?” [Laughs]
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] Iwata: About once a week, I join them and listen in. If I think something sounds interesting, I remember it and use it in "Iwata Asks.”
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 56. Director of The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, and Link’s Awakening. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 64. Producer of The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, and Link’s Awakening. QUOTE: Tezuka: At the start of development [of A Link to the Past], we wanted players to be able to freely choose which weapons to hold, not just the sword and shield. We also thought about having these weapons combine, say for example, having the Bow & Arrows set to the A button and a Bomb to the B button so that when you use them together, Link would shoot an arrow with a bomb attached. In the end we didn’t use this in A Link to the Past, as Shigeru Miyamoto requested that Link always have the sword equipped.
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 56. Director of A Link to the Past. QUOTE: Tezuka: In the midst of a forest … the sword stood waiting for someone worthy of wielding it to arrive. Link draws the sword out as the light trickles through the leaves. ... Our main aim was to show the birth of a hero in a scene fitting of The Legend Of Zelda, and overlap this with a sense of achievement for the player that they have been recognized as a hero after having overcome many challenges. What we had decided on from the start was that Link would first become a hero in the Light World and defeat the first boss. From that point is when his battle to defeat the real enemy, Ganon, in the Dark World begins.
PEOPLE: - Takaya Imamura, age 56. Majora’s Mask Art Director, Director or Supervisor for 3DS and Wii U downloadable games like Star Fox Guard, Steel Diver: Sub Wars, and Tank Troopers. QUOTE: Nintendo Tweet: Nintendo 3DS and Wii U “Nintendo eShop” product sales will end at 9:00 am on March 28, 2023 next week. Imamura Reply: Some of the games I worked on might never be available again... That's a sad thought…
PEOPLE: - Takaya Imamura, age 55. Art Director of Star Fox 64 and, later, Majora’s Mask. - Kazuaki Morita, age 55. Programmer on A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, Ocarina of Time, & Star Fox 64. QUOTE: Imamura: Star Fox 64 is the game of my life. It was a bit like a reboot, but by using a lot of ideas we couldn’t implement in the original, we managed to enrich the game’s scale. From planning to writing the plot, coming up with the gameplay mechanics and graphics, I really worked hard on this game. I also instructed composers on what kind of music I wanted for it. It started out as an experiment with Kazuaki Morita. … As we continued to work on the prototype, more and more people joined and it started to become serious. From modelling the characters, mechs and enemies to working on effects and backgrounds, I really worked on a lot of things.
PEOPLE: - Eiji Aonuma, age 54. Miyamoto’s successor as Producer of the Zelda franchise since 2007. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 64. Creator of Zelda, Mario, & more. QUOTE: Eiji Aonuma: I think that Mr. Miyamoto is a great man, but someday I want to surpass him. Well, because I’m working with him in the same building. I heard there are people overseas who worship Mr. Miyamoto like God, but I’m not like that. And I think I’ll exceed him some day. That hasn’t happened yet. But I don’t think he is a divine being, he is somebody you can catch up to. That’s why we end up trying.