Posts Tagged ‘Shigeru Miyamoto’

Some Zelda and Site News

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

This is a little late, but two new interviews with Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma have emerged. Aonuma spoke with ONM (Official Nintendo Magazine) yet again revealing a bit more on the next Legend of Zelda console title (Zelda Wii). Although it isn’t published yet, our affiliate Zelda Informer obtained some bits of it.

Zelda Wii1) The development team is having a positive responee towards MotionPlus controls.
2) The game’s structure has been significantly changed.
3) Aonuma hopes it can be shown at next year’s E3.
4) A graphical style has not been set in stone yet, although the cel-shading style is not likely to return.
5) Aonuma has been playing Monster Hunter Tri to figure out what appeals to gamers.

Shigeru Miyamoto also mentioned about how they approach each new Zelda title (but of course not revealing anything on Zelda Wii).

Edge: What sort of innovation do you think Nintendo is bringing to gaming now?

SM: Our basic principle is very clear: we’re always trying to be different from everybody else. Many other companies might try to do the same things as someone else who’s already been successful in a certain area: they think in terms of the competition, and they think in terms of how they can be better than their predecessor in any established arena. But Nintendo always tries to be unique instead. We always try to be different all the time. Even when we’re working on those so-called ’serious’ titles, when we’re hard at work on a Zelda or Super Mario Bros., amongst ourselves in the same development team, the way we discuss the game is to ask: “What’s new? What’s fresh about this title?” That kind of focus on trying to be new, to be unique every time, of trying to create something different every time, will be carried on and on and on, so that even when we are working on several other titles, our spirit of trying to be different is always there in the background somewhere.

Read the rest of this interview here!

And now the site related updates…

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Miyamoto Talks with MTV about Zelda

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Another new Miyamoto was published, this time from MTV. He makes a few notes on Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass, but also mentions a bit about Zelda Wii.

MTV Shows

Miyamoto and Zelda Wii

Monday, October 19th, 2009
Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto

Popular Mechanics published their recent interview with Shigeru Miyamoto today. They talk about the Legend of Zelda series as a whole and a bit about Zelda Wii. Read part of that interview below.

PM: A lot of your characters started out as villainous in earlier games, such as Bowser and Donkey Kong and Wario, and in later games they became more sympathetic and almost goofy. Is there a conscience effort to “de-villainize” evil characters in later games?

SM: One thing I’m not really good at is creating truly heroic characters or truly villainous characters, with the one exception being maybe the Zelda series, where I think we did a pretty good job of defining the roles in that series. I think we never really see anything all that serious come about in the Mario series, and then we have games that fall somewhere in between the two.

PM: Speaking of Zelda games, they’re obviously very popular in lots of parts of the world, and they have almost a mythological story, that resembles Greek or any old epic you look at. Was there anything particular from Japanese culture or mythology that was put into the story that might go over the heads of Americans?

SM: I don’t really consciously do things like that or consciously sense those types of differences. Partly it may be because, even in Japan, we see lots of different types of movies from America where they have the types of armor and clothing that you see in a game like that. We also see a lot of Chinese movies, and Chinese armor. Ocarina, I think, maybe the visual style drifts more towards a Western fantasy style and art design, but I don’t intentionally ever try to replicate a particular cultural element from a particular country.

PM: Do you create background stories to the characters that maybe aren’t known to the public or presented in the games?

SM: For the most part we don’t create very in-depth back stories for the characters. I think the Zelda games and Ocarina of Time, in particular, may be somewhat different in that, although I don’t write the relationships myself when we created the game, but when we created Ocarina in particular, we did think heavily about who the characters are, their relationships to one another, and how that plays out in the story. But taking a game like the Super Mario Bros. games in particular, typically when we design a character it’s based on their function within the interactive gameplay world. So for example characters that have spikes are characters you cannot jump on. In that sense it’s not so much designing a character as it is designing their function within the world.

PM: What’s your dream type of game that takes advantage of the Wii-mote?

SM: Right now I’m focusing on creating the next Zelda game.

PM: Can you tell me anything about it?

SM: Not today!

New Miyamoto Interview

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

A new Miyamoto interview was posted up at IGN and although it is mainly about the upcoming Super Mario Bros. game, it does mention a tiny bit about The Legend of Zelda.

Do you think the Super Guide is a form of cheating, and do you think it can be applied to any game?

Obviously people will buy a game and if they can play through to the end they’ll do that. Some will buy a strategy guide, some will go online for hints, and all we’ve done is incorporate it in some way inside the game itself. We were able to create it for this game because we set out to make it specifically for New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and I think it depends on the priorities for other titles whether it may or may not make it in those games. We can’t really promise that it’ll be in every game from now forward, but at the same time there are some types of gameplay that are suited to a system like this. We’ll evaluate the titles on a case-by-case basis. Let’s use Zelda as an example, introducing it opens up a Pandora’s Box: do we solve the puzzles, do we show how to solve it in order to make them understand it, do we show the whole solution? It can be a difficult system, but we do see some value in it.

Is it possible that this “Super Guide” will be present in the upcoming Zelda title? Miyamoto sure does seem to hint towards that.