Nintendo Co., Ltd. president Satoru Iwata recently interviewed Nintendo Tokyo on their development process for Super Mario Galaxy. In chatting with the game’s producer, Takao Shimizu, and director, Yoshiaki Koizumi, we learn about Galaxy‘s origins, and how the development of the game has really been like cooking a gourmet dinner to perfection. Below are some translated excerpts:
“When the GameCube was first announced. We showed the Mario 128 demo, and I was the Director of that. I really wanted to use the Mario 128 system in a real game, but I was thinking that maybe it wouldn’t actually be possible to do so… The problem was a technical one. At the time of Mario 128, we effectively had Mario walking on a saucer, but to get him moving around a spherical object demanded a really great deal of skill. I was thinking that, unless the staff’s motivation was extremely high, we wouldn’t be able to get past this obstacle to development.” — Yoshiaki Koizumi, director
“I remember hearing from Miyamoto about this concept five years ago, but I couldn’t understand how the development of spherical play areas could be a revolutionary technique. But that’s precisely how Mario Galaxy has turned out, and at last I fully understand the significance of the concept.” — Satoru Iwata, executive producer
“We feel as though we’ve played the role of chefs. We showed people our recipe and said, ‘Look, we want to make this kind of Wii dish,’ but our staff weren’t really sure what type of meal would result from our efforts in the kitchen… But most staff members were of the opinion that we couldn’t make a great meal. Anyway, we decided to at least try our hand at some sampling food, and within three months we had made a prototype. With spherical objects, planets are the most easily understood forms, so we decided on a space setting and introduced gravity to come up with the basics of Mario Galaxy. It’s from there that the real development work began… Countless times we sent the food we’d prepared to Kyoto and Miyamoto replied, ‘This is a bit too spicy’ or ‘This has become really tasty.’ And when we were finished with development, we invited Miyamoto to our Tokyo ‘restaurant’ and he ate until he was stuffed.” — Yoshiaki Koizumi, director
“With Mario Galaxy, I just said to Miyamoto: ‘Please do what only you can do.’” — Satoru Iwata, executive producer
You can read a full translation over at Spong.
