Yoshiaki Koizumi, who we all remember as Super Mario Galaxy’s director, discuss’ the challenges of taking the helm on arguably the most iconic video game series ever. Most of the specific challenges stem directly from the fact that he is working on someone else’s brainchild:
Mario has a creator, Miyamoto, and you have to consider Mr. Miyamoto’s thoughts when you’re making a Mario game. But we share thoughts back and forth first for quite a long time. And once I start to outline some really broad strokes about where we’re going with the game, then I can get a little more feedback from Miyamoto. Then, getting a version together, I have to go to Miyamoto as soon as possible as we can get more feedback.
He also talks about how Miyamoto likes to give feedback in a slightly abnormal fashion:
Over time, as all of these broad ideas get a little more narrowly defined, the
feedback becomes a little more subtle, until finally it gets to the point where Miyamoto will give us feedback, and the only person who has any idea what it means is me. And everyone else who is CC’ed on these emails from Miyamoto have absolutely no idea what he is talking about. So I’ll translate for everyone else, “I think he’s trying to say this.” Having that sort of information gap is sort of like a puzzle or a riddle. It’s like playing Brain Age.
The whole interview is actually quite a good read, did you know that the whole storyline
for The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was done by Yoshiaki Koizumi?
