I’d like to start by thanking you both for joining me today.

Thank you.

Now the two of you have lunch with Miyamoto-san on a more or less daily basis. I sometimes join you, which means that we’ve spent a lot of time together. But this is the first time we've ever spoken in this kind of formal setting. Especially for Tezuka-san, even though the Iwata Asks interviews have been going on for such a long time, this is the first time that you have formally participated, isn’t it?

That’s right! (laughs)

You know, I always got the sense that you were suspicious that there was some kind of ulterior motive behind these interviews. (laughs)

Well, I always thought it would be better to stay out of them. (laughs)

(laughs) Well, I asked you to join me for this interview because I felt that it was impossible to discuss the history of Mario without reference to the triangle formed by Miyamoto-san, Tezuka-san and Nakago-san. Perhaps we could start with the two of you briefly explaining what your roles are.

I work as a producer in the Entertainment Analysis and Development Division, working alongside Shigeru Miyamoto-san in overseeing all aspects of game development.

You’re the head of the Software Development Department.

That’s right. My official position is General Manager of the Software Development Department in EAD.

Actually, I was really pleased when you became the head of the department, as it was the first time a department was headed by someone younger than me.

Is that right? (laughs)

You’ve worked alongside Miyamoto-san ever since you first joined the company, haven’t you?

That’s right. I joined the company in 1984, so that makes it twenty-five years...

So you joined the year after the Famicom¹ was released.

1	The Famicom, known as the Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan, was a home gaming console released in July 1983.

That’s right.

You timed it perfectly!

(laughs)

I can still clearly remember Tezuka-san joining the company. Miyamoto-san brought him round the office to introduce him to everyone. That was back when Tezuka-san was still really slim... (laughs)

You did use to be really slim! (laughs) I mean, it’s not really my place to comment...

(laughs)

So at that time you were Tezuka, the new boy in the company. And now we’ve known each other for twenty-five years… (laughs)

Indeed we have.

Nakago-san, it’s your turn.

I’m currently the President of SRD². I originally came to Nintendo to assist with programming for the Famicom and ever since then I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in many of Nintendo’s products.

2	SRD CO., LTD. is a company that was founded in 1979 to programme video games and to develop and sell CAD (Computer-Aided Design) packages. The company is based in Osaka and its Kyoto office is located inside the Nintendo headquarters.

So how were you originally introduced to Nintendo?

The job I originally did at SRD had absolutely nothing to do with video game development. The kind of work I did included programming office calculation software for use on standard personal computers.

You were working on applications such as control systems, meaning you were more on the business end of things. So how did you end up becoming involved in video game development?

Well, the thing that got me involved with Nintendo was the 6502 chip³ that Ricoh had developed for the Famicom.

3	The 6502 chip leapt to prominence when it was used as the CPU in the Apple II home computer. The Famicom CPU was a specially-developed version of this chip.

That was the Famicom’s CPU (Central Processing Unit), wasn’t it?

Right. So at that time, Nintendo were looking for programmers who were familiar with the 6502.

Yes, that’s right. When I first visited Nintendo back then, I remember thinking: “I might be the person who knows the most about the 6502 here!” (laughs)

I was told that because Nintendo were developing a new chip, they wanted to develop new programmes in tandem with that and I became involved in working for the Famicom. So I started off dealing with Research and Development 2 (R&D2).

R&D2 would later be merged into the Software Planning and Development Division, but at that time they were the department responsible for developing both hardware and software for the Famicom and Super Famicom⁴.

4	The Super Famicom was the successor to the original Famicom games console and was released in Japan in November 1990.

That's right. I worked on a wide variety of titles together with R&D2, including Donkey Kong⁵, which was released at the same time as the Famicom, Donkey Kong Jr.⁶, Mahjong⁷ and Donkey Kong Jr. Math⁸.

5	Donkey Kong was the first game designed by Shigeru Miyamoto. Released in the arcades in 1981, it appeared on the Famicom in 1983.
6	Donkey Kong Jr. was released in the arcades in 1982 and appeared on the Famicom in 1983.
7	Mahjong was released for the Famicom in August 1983. Mahjong is a Chinese tile-based game.
8	Donkey Kong Jr. Math was a fun educational game released in December 1983 for the Famicom.

So your job was to port arcade games like Donkey Kong over to the Famicom?

That’s right. Then around the time that job was coming to an end, someone I didn't know came up behind me and said: “You’re Nakago-san, right?” And that turned out to be Miyamoto-san.

So even though you’d ported Donkey Kong across to the NES, you didn’t know Miyamoto-san? (laughs)

I honestly didn’t know anything about him! (laughs) At that time, I didn’t even know that anyone by the name of Miyamoto was working for the company. Then he came up to me and said: “We’re going to be working on Excitebike⁹ together.”

9	Excitebike was a side-scrolling racing game released for the Famicom in November 1984.

Excitebike? So how many years would that make it since you and Miyamoto-san began working together?

It’s just over twenty years.

It’s longer than that, isn’t it?

Well, yes, it's around twenty-five years. So immediately after working on Excitebike and Ice Climber¹⁰, I was thrown right into the Super Mario Bros. and Zelda series.

10	Ice Climber was an action game released for the Famicom in January 1985.

I’m going to ask you all about what happened after you were thrown into the Super Mario series in a moment. But casting my mind back, I believe I met you just prior to that.

That’s right. What sticks in my mind in particular is the guidance you gave me at the time of Balloon Fight¹¹.

11	Balloon Fight was an action game released in the arcades in 1984. It appeared on the Famicom in January 1985.

Ah yes. At that time, there was an arcade circuit board called the Nintendo Vs. System¹² that used the same chipset as the Famicom.

12	The Nintendo Vs. System was a circuit board for arcade machines that was developed to be compatible with the Famicom. A large number of titles, including Balloon Fight and Excitebike, were released in both Famicom and arcade versions.

The Vs. System! That really takes me back! (laughs)

There were a lot of games that were developed both for the arcade and the Famicom. HAL Laboratory worked on the home console version of Balloon Fight while SRD…

We worked on the arcade version. Then after we'd completed it, we wondered why the player's movements were smoother on the home version developed by HAL and asked Iwata-san for some advice.

That’s when I told Nakago-san everything I knew. One thing I recommended was that instead of calculating the character’s position using integers, they should also calculate it using decimal points, thereby doubling the precision. In this way, calculating gravity, buoyancy, acceleration and deceleration all become more precise and the movements look smoother. That’s the kind of thing I explained at the time.

When Iwata-san explained all this to me, the scales fell from my eyes! (laughs) But I remember Miyamoto-san complaining: “Why do you have to go to another company to find this stuff out?” (laughs)

I was actually really pleased to be asked.

Is that right? (laughs)

Well, I hoped it would prove useful, and I believe that it did when you came to work on Super Mario Bros.

Yes, it proved incredibly useful. The reason why Mario moves so smoothly in the underwater stages is thanks to the guidance I was given by you.

At that point, I had been involved in the development of a whole variety of software while working at HAL Laboratory, but I’d always thought: “It’s only the main Mario series that I’ve had nothing to do with." But it turns out that because of what I told Nakago-san all those years ago, I was actually indirectly involved in a Mario title. When I found that out, I was rather pleased! (laughs)

(laughs)

Out of interest, how old were you when we first met in 1984?

At that time, I’d have been about twenty-six. Miyamoto-san is five years older than me, so he'd have been thirty-one.

I was twenty-four at the time. How about you, Tezuka-san?

Well, I was the new boy, aged twenty-three.

We were so young, weren’t we? (laughs)

(laughter)

Now at this point, I’d like to turn to you, Tezuka-san.

Go ahead.

What did you work on after you joined Nintendo?

Actually, the year I joined, I was initially asked to work on a small job on a part-time basis.

This is before you joined the company full-time?

Right.

Was the company particularly busy at the time?

I suppose they just wanted to give me a trial run.

They wanted to find out what you were really like! (laughs)

Right. I guess they were a little nervous. (laughs) When I was working at the company part-time, Super-Punch Out!!¹³ was in the works and I helped out with some of the pixellated images.

13	Super Punch-Out!! was the sequel to Punch-Out!! and was released in the arcades in 1985.

So you were working even though you were still a student at the time?

That’s right.

But students on an art course would have had their final project to work on. Weren’t you really busy in the run up to your graduation?

I was just about to graduate, so I had plenty of free time.

I see.

But I really only worked in that part-time position for a little while, just for a period of a few weeks. That was my first job at Nintendo.

What was your first impression when you met Miyamoto-san?

Well, I…

You don’t remember?

Right. I don’t really remember! (laughs)

That’s just like you, Tezuka-san! (laughs)

(laughs)

So even though Nakago-san worked on porting Donkey Kong to the Famicom, he claimed he didn’t have a clue who Miyamoto-san was. Now, although it should have been some kind of date with destiny, you can’t remember anything about first meeting Miyamoto-san. Yet from those inauspicious beginnings, you've worked together as a three-man team for the last twenty-five years! It really is a funny old world! (laughs)

I belonged to the Creative Department at the time…

Was Miyamoto-san assistant manager at that point, or was this before he was promoted?

It was before he was promoted. So he was my senior in terms of experience at the company, but not in terms of position. Now there were only a few people in that department…

That was a time when there were very few designers on the staff. This meant that graduates from an art background would tend to be gathered in that department, and then depending on the demand for designers from across the company, they would try to adapt and meet those needs.

That’s right. So we did all kinds of things such as working on instruction manuals and designing playing cards…

You’d also design the images on arcade cabinets. If anyone needed anything designed, it was your department that they’d call.

Right.

Why did you originally apply to work at Nintendo?

I wouldn't have described myself as being a particularly big fan of video games, but I did have a lot of interest in jobs related to leisure and recreation. For instance, I was interested in getting involved in designing goods branded with characters’ images. Students who’d studied design at university would often go on to work for printing companies or advertising agencies. But I wasn’t particularly interested in the kind of jobs where you would first get a client, then design things in line with their requirements…

You wanted to make things for yourself.

That’s right. I felt really strongly about that.

How were you introduced to Nintendo?

A friend of mine at the time had applied to work for Nintendo and he’d told me that it seemed like an interesting company.

So if it hadn’t been for that friend, you wouldn’t be sitting here today?

I wouldn’t be here today! But that friend didn’t manage to graduate, so he didn’t end up joining Nintendo.

Life is strange, isn’t it? If it hadn’t been for that coincidence, Miyamoto-san wouldn’t have gained his closest ally.

(laughs)

So after joining Nintendo, what was the first job you worked on alongside Miyamoto-san?

When I was here part-time, I worked on Super Punch-Out!! Then once I joined the company full-time, the first job I did was... What was it again? Oh, that's right! It was Devil World¹⁴. It was a dot-eating game¹⁵.

14	Devil World was an action game released for the Famicom in October 1984.
15	Dot-eating games were games where the player attempted to avoid enemies in a maze while manoeuvring over dots in order to increase their score.

It was a game along the lines of Pac-Man¹⁶.

16	Pac-Man was an arcade game released in 1980 by Namco (now Namco Bandai Games Inc.). A huge hit worldwide, it later appeared on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Right. But at that time, I hadn't heard of Pac-Man…

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?

I'd never heard of it! (laughs)

That’s unbelievable! (laughs)

(laughter)

Do you find that shocking?

No, I’m just a little taken aback, that's all! (laughs)

Then when I played Pac-Man for the first time, I just thought: “Well, this is a fun game!”

(laughs)

At the time, my job was to create pixellated images. Usually, I’d be given very rough and ready instructions…

So you’d be told: “Just draw something. It doesn't matter what!"

Right. But because Miyamoto-san had a strong basic idea of the image he was after, he'd give me fairly detailed instructions: "Make it this shape. And it should be this size.”

At that time the hardware imposed severe limitations, so if you didn’t have a clearly defined image of what you wanted, it would often end in failure.

That’s right. In a sense, having to create something within the bounds of those limitations was actually a really enjoyable job.

It was a bit like trying to solve a puzzle.

Yes, it was. What’s more, the company at that time didn’t have dedicated game designers who would come up with ideas for games...

In the period we're discussing, the position of full-time dedicated game designer didn’t yet exist, so the people designing the graphics or doing the programming would come up with ideas.

That’s right. At that time, everyone put their heads together, collected their ideas and made the games in an amateur spirit. So I would also come up with ideas…

What kind of ideas did you come up with?

For instance, when I was working on Devil World, there were roller bars on the left and right of the screen which would scroll...

Then if you got pinned between those bars and the wall of the maze, it was all over.

That’s right. Anyway, I suggested that we should have holes and you’d lose the turn if you fell into them. So we actually made a version to test it out.

From around that time, Nintendo developers were starting to make games in a way where they could actually make a version in order to test ideas out. And when you tried it out, how did it go?

I was told: “This is a bit flat.” So we went back to the original feature of being pinned by the roller bars.

So your idea wasn’t used in the end.

Right! I was really disappointed! (laughs)

When did the “Golden Triangle” of Miyamoto-san, Tezuka-san and Nakago-san first come into being?

It was at the time of Super Mario Bros.¹⁷ I mentioned it a little earlier, but I first met Tezuka-san when he was introduced to me as a new member of staff. At that time Tezuka-san was…

17	Super Mario Bros. was a platform game on the Famicom released in Japan in September 1985.

…I was working on Devil World.

And I was working with Miyamoto-san on Excitebike.

So that means that Tezuka-san and Miyamoto-san were working on Devil World at the same time as Miyamoto-san was working with Nakago-san on Excitebike.

Those titles were released at more or less the same time.

Devil World was released in October 1984…

And Excitebike was released in November. 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 economic bubble 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.

…What!? (laughs)

(laughter)

That’s how we made Excitebike. Then after that, we began to work on Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda¹⁸ at the same time.

18	The Legend of Zelda was an action-adventure game released on the Nintendo Disk System for the Famicom in Japan in February 1986.

Right, those two titles were both developed at the same time. It’s surprising how many game fans aren't aware of this, but the first Super Mario and Zelda titles were made simultaneously, with the same staff. It's something that seems completely unthinkable now! (laughs)

Occasionally you’d get a transfer of ideas from one game to the other. For instance, there are bars of fire in Super Mario, aren’t there?

You mean the spinning bars of fire attached to the castle walls that you encounter as you make your way along the corridor to fight Bowser.

Right. Those first appeared right in the centre of the screen in Zelda.

…Really!?

Yes, that idea originally comes from Zelda. We thought it would work better in Mario, so we transferred it across. I think it was Miyamoto-san who suggested it. Or perhaps it was Tezuka-san…

It must have been Miyamoto-san.

I wonder…

There’s a fair chance that you may have simply forgotten about it, Tezuka-san! (laughs)

(laughs)

Well, I can certainly remember that it was in Zelda.

How did Super Mario and Zelda come about in the first place?

The initial concept behind Super Mario was that we wanted a dynamic, athletic kind of game that would be set on land, sea and air and that would feature a large character.

I’ve heard that the original plan was to have a huge Mario.

Right, we wanted a Mario that was twice the size of the regular one. But I don’t really recollect whether or not we’d decided to use Mario from the start.

Do you think you could try to remember? (laughs)

I’m certain that at the start, we had a 16 X 32 pixel square that moved about…

At first, you moved a square object about a single non-scrolling screen.

Really? So it all started with a square object that you could move around a single screen?

That’s right. At the time, having a square that moved was ground-breaking. SRD had experimented with a square object that simply moved in a wave-like manner.

And that’s where Super Mario began?

Right. That’s why at that time, you couldn’t even jump.

And why did that square object become Mario?

I more or less remember this one! (laughs) Next door to the development room was the Sales and Marketing Division. The head of that department at the time was a pretty approachable guy, and though it might be hard to imagine it happening nowadays, I got him to show me the sales figures.

At that point, you were a new employee who had just joined Nintendo.

Right. I was still in my first year at the company.

So a new employee just went up to the head of the Sales Division and asked to be shown the sales figures?

Well, at lunchtime I’d often wander to various places and chat to people from other departments. So I'd become friendly with people that way. Anyway, I was shown the sales figures and I saw that although Mario Bros. on the Famicom¹⁹ had been released over a year previously, it was still selling consistently well.

19	Mario Bros. was a platform game released in versions for both the arcades and the Famicom in 1983.

So you saw those sales figures and a light bulb lit up above your head?

Right. I thought: “This Mario is pretty popular." I recall that I mentioned to Miyamoto-san that Mario was selling consistently well and he said, “Mario seems like the way to go.”

In the last Iwata Asks interview, Miyamoto-san spoke about how he had originally named Mario “Mr. Video” and wanted to use him in every game he made. But at that time, Mario hadn't yet become an established figure and people at the company didn't always have this character at the centre of their thoughts.

I think that perhaps he’d already considered the idea of using Mario, but by seeing those sales figures, he must have became a lot more confident that this was the way to proceed.

I see. So while that square object was turning into Mario, how did Zelda get started?

I don’t really remember when we first began Zelda. (laughs) But I know it started with the dungeons.

At the very start, we were developing the game using the arcade system. You mentioned it a little earlier, Iwata-san...

We’re talking about the Nintendo Vs. System, right?

I remember that we started out using the Vs. System.

So it wasn’t originally made for the Famicom Disk System²⁰.

20	The Famicom Disk System was a peripheral for the Famicom released only in Japan. It went on sale in February 1986.

Right. Anyway, as Tezuka-san just said, it began with the creation of the structure of the dungeons. There were about five mountains on the screen and you’d go into the middle of them and there’d be a dungeon. That was all there was to it.

So at the start it was a game where you only went around dungeons.

That’s right. But part-way into the development process, we thought: "It would be better to have overground sections as well." So we began to make these sections afterwards.

At that stage, we were making faster progress in developing Zelda, so we all thought it would come out before Super Mario.

Really? So at one point it looked like Zelda might be released first? That's the first time I've heard that!

(laughs)

Let’s return to Super Mario Bros. at this point. Could you tell us about anything from the start of the development process that left a particularly strong impression on you?

I can clearly remember right at the start of the development process when the blue sky appeared on the screen.

Games at that point almost always had black backgrounds, didn’t they?

That’s right. At that time, there was nothing displayed on the screen aside from the blue sky with white clouds and the ground but that image really jumped out of the screen and I thought: “This is incredible!”

You’d never seen anything like it before?

Right. I'd never seen anything like it. When I saw that image, it was already late in the evening but I rang Miyamoto-san straight away, telling him: “We've come up with something amazing!” (laughs)

(laughs)

Even I was really surprised at the time that the Famicom could manage to display such vivid graphics.

So with that screen as your base, you went on to create the maps, right?

That’s right. Miyamoto-san said to me right at the start: “Make it so that a single level lasts about one minute.” But with a regular game, you could run across a single screen in about one second.

If it takes a second to run across the screen, and you want it to last for a minute, you’re going to need sixty screens.

That's why I asked: “Are we really going to make this many screens? ” Miyamoto-san responded by saying: “We’re going to have all sorts of things going on in between, so twenty screens should be enough for a single level.” At that time, I couldn’t grasp what Miyamoto-san meant.

I’d imagine that although the screen at that time only had blue sky, clouds and the ground, Miyamoto-san already had lots of concrete images in mind.

Yes, I think that’s right. We didn't even use twenty screens in the end.

When we came to actually create the levels, we’d only need about twelve screens.

Yes, that’s about right.

Even the longest level, which we put all of our energy into, only totalled thirty-two screens. There was only one level like that: all of the others were fine being shorter.

I see.

And even though Miyamoto-san didn’t have any level plans, he could envisage what was ahead. I was truly astonished when I saw him stating what we’d need to do next with absolute confidence.

How did you go about creating the levels?

The data for the levels was entered manually. We'd sketch a design for the level on a piece of paper then pass it on to SDR, saying: "Please make it look like this."

Tezuka-san or Miyamoto-san would draw the level on a huge sheet of graph paper and we would have to painstakingly enter the data by hand.

So it was very time-consuming.

And if the map was modified, it would create a real headache.

Yes, it really would. Every morning when I got to work, I’d be handed about twenty sheets of paper and be told to get on with it.

And you’d get notes saying things like: “Please modify the map like this."

Yes, those instructions would be written on with pencil. We’d spend the entire day poring over these notes and adjusting the map. Then at around ten at night when we’d finally finished, we’d burn the data to the ROM, at which point the two of them would play the level. Then if there were any changes, I'd receive them in the morning. This process was repeated over and over again.

So there was a daily cycle going on.

We just about managed to make the adjustments in a one-day cycle. Compared to that, the way things are done now is paradise. We can now modify the levels ten or twenty times in a single day.

With the way you make levels now, you can request that something be moved slightly, then see it being done right in front of your eyes. Then you can give it a try and play the level right away.

To do that would have once taken a whole day.

That reminds me - I once heard that when you create the levels in Super Mario, you don’t actually start from the first screen.

That’s right. We might come up with World 3 or World 5 first of all. Those will be the most fun. But although they’re fun, when we got beginners to try them out, they’d prove to be incredibly difficult. At that point, our basic principle is to move easier features to the beginning of the level.

I think most people would assume that you’d generally start from the first screen and work from there. But that’s actually not the case at all. This is something we spoke about in the last Iwata Asks interview, but I thought that the level design for the start of World 1-1 was really superb.

Ah, you’re talking about the way it’s designed so that the player will always get the mushroom.

That’s right. I was incredibly impressed when I first became aware of this, and though it had nothing to do with me, I’ve gone around boasting about it to plenty of people! (laughs) Whenever anyone finds out that this level was designed with that very deliberate purpose in mind, they’re always really impressed. How did that level first come about?

It was largely worked out on paper. We’d start off with a rough outline of the layout and then Miyamoto-san would have firm ideas: “You’re going to come at it from here. And you'll do something here…"

So you’d simulate the process of playing through the level on paper, thinking that if the player was here, they’d want to do this or that next.

That’s it.

And we’d try to think through the various alternative outcomes. For instance, we might say that normally a player would get the mushroom, but just in case they fail to do that, we’ll get them to pick it up this way.

That’s the reason you positioned the first pipe where you did.

Right, because when the mushroom hits the pipe, it bounces back. Even right at the start of World 1-1, all of the elements of Super Mario were present and correct.

So level 1-1 was made towards the end of the development?

Yes, it was. I’m absolutely sure we created that level at the end. And World 1-1 was also the level that we were still adjusting right up until the last minute.

At the time the game was released, there were no strategy guides available. When the player started the game for the first time, they tended not to read the instruction manual, and there was no one who was going to tell them what to do. Everyone was a beginner when it came to Super Mario, so you designed the game with a particular awareness that this sort of player should become familiar with the way things worked in this world and become absorbed in it in a natural way.

Right, we were extremely conscious of that.

In particular, on World 1-1.

And it was no doubt because of this that so many players responded so positively to Super Mario.

Tezuka-san mentioned a little earlier that, at the start, the idea was to have land, sea and sky making up the stages of the game. But there was actually a moment when we almost scrapped the sky element.

So you nearly got rid of the levels set in the sky?

That’s right. We got part-way through making these levels, where Mario would climb on clouds. Then partly due to memory constraints, we gave up. But because Tezuka-san felt really strongly about the sky levels, we managed to breathe life back into them by adding vines.

So the vines were your idea, Tezuka-san?

Yes they were. I thought that we could do something along the lines of Jack and the Beanstalk in Super Mario. All I really did was suggest that it would be good if Mario could climb up a beanstalk in order to get to the world in the sky. Miyamoto-san then ran with this idea and came up with the feature where you
hit a block to make the vine grow.

So it really was a collaborative effort.

But while me may have got Mario up to the sky, we had a new problem - how to bring him back down.

We had no means of getting Mario to descend from the sky level so initially we thought that we could have him jump down. But it wouldn't normally cross your mind to jump down.

You’d be worried about losing the turn, wouldn’t you? (laughs)

That's right. We were all very concerned about this until one of the younger members of the team hit upon the idea of positioning coins in mid-air...

We thought that this would tempt players to jump! (laughs)

(laughs)

Thinking about it now, it doesn’t seem like a big deal at all.

But by positioning coins in the air, thereby encouraging players to jump towards them, everyone was able to get back down to the ground level.

In Super Mario, the player has faith that no matter how high in the air it may be, if there are coins there, you'll be able to collect them without coming to any harm. If the game was developed by people with a nasty streak, then a feature like that might be used to trick the player into losing a turn. If that were the case, then no matter how much you might want those coins, you wouldn’t jump towards them. But in Super Mario, there’s that level of trust: "If I jump to get the coins, there’s no way anything bad will happen." That’s why players were able to get back to the ground without any hesitation.

That’s right.

That’s why during development we would often say: “We can’t betray the players’ expectations.”

We’d say things like: “Well, the player has had to struggle to get this far, so it wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t have something to help them out..."

We did say things like that, didn’t we? We’d also say: "This is going to spoil the players’ enjoyment, so let's get rid of it."

I have the impression that throughout the entire series, the games have been put together with a very solid commitment to not “betraying the player’s expectations” or “spoiling their enjoyment”. But with the Famicom, you would have been working with a great deal of limitations. Did trial and error play a large part in the process?

Yes, of course. For instance, we had to display all the graphics on screen using only 256 components.

Yes, that’s right. Later on, a new integrated circuit would increase the number of available bytes, but at the time of Super Mario, the Famicom allowed a game cartridge to be able to contain just 256 components, each one of which consisted of 8 X 8 dots.

Right. That’s why we strived to make the items take up as little space as we possibly could.

And Tezuka-san would do things like put wings on the Koopa Troopas and suggest that you call them Koopa Paratroopas! (laughs)

(laughs)

We’d use the same image for both clouds and grass, just changing the colour.

The clouds and grass look like separate objects, but actually they both use the same graphical elements.

Yes. It was fun back then when we’d have to come up with ideas like that.

Even with mushrooms and flowers, we'd be looking to limit the bytes we used, so we'd draw half of the object then flip it round to display it.

That’s why these objects are all symmetrical.

That’s true of the stars too. They’re symmetrical. There was the advantage that you could get an object that was double the size using only half the bytes.

So all of these things were ways of limiting the number of bytes you were using.

That’s right. We came up with all kinds of objects, all the time trying to limit the bytes we were using. Then right at the very end, we made the Goomba.

You’re kidding! You made the Goomba last? (laughs)

We did. Even though it’s now such a major part of the game, at the beginning we actually only had Koopa Troopas. Then when we got people to play the game, they would say that it was quite tricky to encounter Koopa Troopas at the very start.

Right, because defeating a Koopa Troopa is a two-step process.

So we decided that that we should make an enemy that you could easily squash with a single blow. That’s why we made it so that the first enemy the player would encounter would be a Goomba. But we created it right at the very end.

But by the time we had decided we were going to make the Goomba, we had hardly any bytes remaining.

And as it was an enemy, the character needed to have movements.

That’s why by having it rotating from left to right, we made something that looked like it was walking. That’s why the Goomba's body slopes slightly.

I see. So you’ve doubled up a single image.

By doing this, it looks like it’s trotting along.

By the way, is it a coincidence that the Goomba looks like a mushroom?

It’s a shiitake mushroom!

It’s a shiitake? (laughs) So it’s not a chestnut?

That’s right. (laughs)

But leaving that aside… (in a serious tone) The Goomba was really the last thing you made?

(laughs)

That’s really come as quite a shock to me! This is another thing I had no idea about! (laughs)

So you successfully managed to introduce the Goomba into the game. (laughs) And with that, the first Super Mario Bros. title was complete. How did you expect the users to respond to the game?

To be honest, I didn’t think that so many people from around the world would end up playing the game. But just before we released it, we got lots of people to test the game and when Miyamoto-san saw how people were responding to it, he said: "This is just like it was with Donkey Kong".

So people were really getting that excited.

Right. I clearly remember Miyamoto-san, who had been through this experience once before with Donkey Kong, saying: “This could well turn out to be huge".

At the time you completed work on Super Mario Bros., I came to Nintendo to help finish up F1 Race²¹. At that time, I was given a pre-release ROM of Super Mario Bros. and was asked to give my impression of the game. I took it back to HAL Laboratory and for the next two weeks, the dev team did absolutely no work. The whole staff did nothing but constantly play Super Mario.

21	F1 Race was a Formula One driving game released for the Famicom in November 1984.

(laughter)

That’s why my feeling before release was that you’d really come up with something out of the ordinary. At that point in time, I didn’t think it would become such a phenomenon, but I did feel that this was an incredibly exciting game, the like of which I'd never experienced before.

But actually, after we’d completed the game, this reality didn’t hit home for us.

When you’re actually working on something, you sometimes lose sight of what you’ve got on your hands.

You do tend to lose sight of things, don’t you?

All you’re thinking is: "It’s finally over!"

“There are no more levels to redo!" (laughs)

And you start discussing your next job.

Right. You’re thinking: “Okay, we need to finish Zelda now!”

Since we’d started Zelda at the same time, the day after we completed work on Super Mario, we were already discussing Zelda.

So once you’d got Super Mario on the ROM, you soon forgot all about it and focused all your attention on Zelda.

When we finished work on Super Mario, Miyamoto-san made sure we kept our feet on the ground. He said: "Celebrate by all means, but only for about three hours after completing the game."

So you only had three hours to enjoy the feeling of having completed the game? (laughs)

Miyamoto-san said: “Let’s give the next project our all!” And we all replied: “Okay! Let’s get on with it!” That’s the way it was at the time.

Yes, that’s what it was like.

So we went over to working on Zelda right away.

I’m going to try to avoid asking too many questions about Zelda, as this interview is about Super Mario Bros., but if I were to ask you to recall one episode that left a particularly deep impression on you, what would you choose?

Tezuka-san, do you remember the discussion we had about dividing the heart containers into quarters?

Umm… No, I can’t recall that one.

(laughs) With Zelda, the number of items you could collect was very small which presented us with a real headache. I recall a time when I discussed this issue with Tezuka-san for a whole day, all the while playing a puzzle game.

So you held discussions about increasing the number of items while playing a puzzle game? (laughs)

Right. Then Miyamoto-san went home without saying a word. When he got to work the next morning, he said out of the blue: “I can see exactly what the result of your work yesterday was.”

Did he mean it ironically, because you’d spent the whole day playing a puzzle game?

No, no, it wasn’t like that. While playing the puzzle game, we had actually drawn a heart divided into quarters on the white board. When Miyamoto-san saw that, he was able to grasp that image of the pieces of heart without us having to explain it to him.

Ah, I see. So by dividing the hearts into quarters, you could make up for the shortage of items.

That was the idea. We’d just sketched a really simple picture on the white board, so I thought: “Miyamoto-san really is a fairly special guy.”

Right.

I felt exactly the same way towards Tezuka-san.

What aspect of Tezuka-san did you think was special?

Well, it was when we were making Super Mario Bros. 3²². Mario can become Raccoon Mario, can’t he?

22	Super Mario Bros. 3 was a platform game released for the Famicom in Japan in October 1988.

Yes, Mario gets big ears and a tail and becomes able to fly.

When we first came up with that feature, Mario could simply keep flying through the air. But if we had gone with that, all of the obstacles and the objects on the ground that we managed to create would have been wasted, so I said we should abandon this idea. But Tezuka-san really liked that Raccoon Mario.

Yes, I did. (laughs)

I remember during a subsequent meeting, Tezuka-san started to slowly flap his hands and pretended to be Raccoon Mario flying. He said: “Mario would go like this and he’d fly, right? Don’t you think that would be great fun?"

So Tezuka-san, who we know had strong feelings about the sky level, put all his passion into arguing his case. (laughs)

But if we’d simply gone with Tezuka-san’s idea as it stood, Raccoon Mario would have been able to stay in the air and fly straight to the goal. That would have been ridiculous.

If Mario can just keep flying about, you couldn’t really call that a game. (laughs)

But Tezuka-san insisted that we had to come up with a way of making it work. That's when we discussed enforcing some limits on Mario’s ability to fly. We then made it so that Mario has to run in order to fly. He needs to run at least eight times the width of his sprite before he can take off.

So you made it so that, in order to fly, you need a certain amount of flat terrain.

I’m not sure who came up with the name, but we all referred to this as “the runway”. So at that point, we looked again at the maps and completely reworked the levels so that Mario would have places where he could take off from. In the end, we made it so that if you got an item called the P-Wing, which was the Koopa Paratroopa’s wing, you could fly through the whole level.

So Tezuka-san’s persistence about the sky infected you all! (laughs)

Yes, it did! (laughs)

I was also glad that we included this feature. After all, there are those players who want to get through a level quickly. Moreover, the P-Wing item in Mario 3 is a forerunner of the Super Guide feature in New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

So in a sense, Tezuka-san’s persistence gave birth to Raccoon Mario in Mario 3.

Yes. But I think in terms of persistence, Miyamoto-san is in an altogether higher league.

What makes you say that?

Miyamoto-san has all kinds of notes and sketches stuck around his desk and from the time we worked on Mario 3, he’d always had this image of Mario riding a dinosaur.

When you say dinosaur, you’re talking about Yoshi, right? (laughs)

Indeed it was Yoshi! (laughs) Well, at that time it was just a picture of Mario riding a dinosaur. Then in Super Mario World²³, you were able to ride a dinosaur for the first time.

23	Super Mario World was the fourth title in the Super Mario series and was released together with the Super Famicom in Japan in November 1990.

Miyamoto-san is a huge fan of country and western music and I think things like horse-riding hold a special attraction for him.

Yes, that’s right. It’s sadly not there any longer, but there used to be a country and western- themed bar near the office that Miyamoto-san would often take me to.

I see. So Yoshi was born out of a love of country and western! (laughs)

I believe that this might be the case. (laughs)

I'm sure that's right.

Well, if the two of you say so, you’re bound to be right! (laughs)

Back at the time of Excitebike, we had people riding motorcycles.

Right.

Letting Mario ride Yoshi is connected with that. But we couldn’t achieve this on the Famicom. I think Miyamoto-san wanted to have Mario riding a dinosaur even on Mario 3, but due to hardware limitations, we were unable to do it. That's why Tezuka-san came up with Power-Ups where Mario himself would gain the attributes of a raccoon or a frog.

So the reason why Mario ended up transforming into a frog or a raccoon, sprouted a tail and became able to fly was that he was unable to ride a dinosaur! (laughs)

(laughs)

Then the Super Famicom came along and he thought: “Right! Here’s our chance!”

Right, now we can make Mario ride Yoshi! (laughs) But did Miyamoto-san really say that? “Right! Here’s our chance!”

No, I’m just giving you a sense of what it was like!

(laughter)

But it was pretty much like that, wasn’t it Tezuka-san?

(laughs)

(laughs) But I do think that when Miyamoto-san sets his sights on doing something, he will always achieve it in the end. He never gives up… The Mii is actually something that he pursued doggedly for a very long time.

The Mii really was a very long time in the works.

Miyamoto-san is often thinking in time scales of five years, isn’t he? Anyway, with all this talk of Miyamoto-san, I’m sure his ears are burning right about now! (laughs)

(laughter)

Speaking of his persistence, the multiplayer mode is another example, having finally been achieved in New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

At the time of Mario 3, he said, "Wouldn’t it be great to have two players?” and "We want to play this with more people." But when it came to actually having two players...

The hardware couldn’t cope.

That’s right. That’s why in the end, we made the multiplayer mode into
a mini-game where you battle on one screen in the tradition of Mario Bros.

This is one of the ideas that he returns to with every Mario game. It’s a fair while ago now, but I once went to see Miyamoto-san to propose an idea for Kirby’s Fun Pak²⁴. He then set me a task to work on, saying: "We keep trying it every time with Mario but just can't seem to pull it off. Why don't we try having a multiplayer mode in Kirby?"

24	Kirby’s Fun Pak was a game released for the Super Famicom in Japan in March 1996. Two players could team up in the “helper system” which allowed cooperative play for the first time in the series.

So even though you’d gone to propose an idea to him, Miyamoto-san actually turned the tables and proposed one to you? (laughs)

That’s right. It was this which led to the director on Kirby, Sakurai-san – who is currently working on Project Sora – to come up with the idea of having a
two-player helper system and including it in the game.

Editor’s note: Mr. Sakurai is a former HAL Laboratory employee known as the creator of the Kirby and Smash Bros. games. Recently Nintendo Co., Ltd. and Sora, Inc., where Mr. Sakurai now acts as CEO, have jointly created a new development company, Project Sora Co., Ltd., where Mr. Sakurai will lead development of new software for Nintendo hardware.

Ah yes, that’s right.

I see. We gave it a try in Mario 3 but it ended in failure. Then with the Super Famicom, Mode 7²⁵ became available.

25	Mode 7 was a mode that allowed graphical effects that included rotating the background and zooming in and out of the screen.

This was the function that allowed you to zoom in and out of the screen and rotate it. It enabled you to pull back from the screen, didn’t it?

Right. So we thought that even if there were two players we could have the screen zooming out to accommodate them both. While making Super Mario World, we tested all kinds of ways of making the levels multiplayer, but the processing time required meant the system just wasn’t up to it. Then once we’d made it so Mario could ride Yoshi, we gave up on the idea of having a multiplayer mode. Another fifteen years went by and the Nintendo DS came out. So we thought: "This is it!" We now had two screens and we began to do tests in order to create a multiplayer mode which would allow players to appear together on the same level.

But you weren’t able to pull it off with New Super Mario Bros. for DS²⁶, were you?

26	New Super Mario Bros. was released for the Nintendo DS in May 2006 in Japan.

No, we weren’t. As the levels became incredibly complex, we couldn't have done it even if we’d wanted to. So then we created a special level where you could go head to head with Mario versus Luigi. When we tried that, we could see that having a multiplayer mode was indeed a lot of fun.

So you went on to finally achieve a four-player multiplayer mode on New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

We were able to have the action taking place not on a single screen, but rather with four players together on a scrolling level. So if we count forward from Mario 3, you could say that it’s taken us over two decades to make this a reality.

So this is something that you stuck at for a length of time comparable to the time it took the Mii characters to be finally realised.

We really did stick at this one! (laughs)

Tezuka-san, did you also have a particular ambition to create a four-player mode in the same way that Miyamoto-san did?

Well, I wanted to do it if and when it actually became possible. But because we'd tried and failed so many times in the past, it wasn't as if I was saying: "This time we have to do it!"

So you simply had that constant awareness that you had a good idea that you could use if the opportunity presented itself someday.

Yes, that’s exactly right.

But the tests that we’d done for the DS version proved to be incredibly useful in finally bringing multiplayer Mario to fruition in the new Wii title.

So even if it looks like you’re abandoning an idea, another chance to use it will be sure to come round in the end.

I really believe that to be true.

So the three of you were brought together in 1984 and you’ve been working with each other for a quarter of a century. What kind of conversations do you have day-to-day?

Well, I think we started out as a kind of hobby group.

A “hobby group”?

It’s something that I used to say all the time: “We’re not really pros.”

Hold on a minute! Are you saying that the team that has come up with games that people all round the world have taken to their hearts are not pros, but are just a kind of hobby group?

Well, I didn’t originally join SRD because I wanted to make video games.

And I didn’t even know who Pac-Man was!

(laughter)

But that hardly makes you a hobby group!

No, but we still eat lunch together discussing what we got up to at the weekend, and Tezuka-san always shows us the pictures he’s taken on his mobile phone. It just feels like a bunch of friends having a normal, everyday conversation. (laughs)

So you report back to each other if you've had some interesting experiences over the weekend.

Right. That’s what our conversation is generally like. The other day we were talking about how much we enjoyed going to work. Normally, you’d relax at the weekend and dread the thought of going to work on a Monday morning…

I’m exactly the same. If I have a good idea over the weekend, I actually quite look forward to the thought of going in on Monday and saying this or doing that. (laughs) Miyamoto-san is clearly the same and Tezuka-san, you can tell from your face when something interesting has happened at the weekend and you’re dying to tell everyone about it.

(laughs)

But ideas for games can grow out of that kind of conversation, can’t they?

That’s true. If that wasn’t the case, then we couldn’t call it work!

(laughter)

As you can imagine, a lot of things do get decided over lunch.

We decide some pretty important things, don’t we? We’ll often ask each other over lunch: “Which way shall we go?" We also often talk about the things that we loved doing as children. Well, I'm just a regular guy, so I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. But Miyamoto-san got up to all kinds of things…

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.

But the man himself will tell you: “There's absolutely no connection!"

I’m absolutely convinced that it’s connected.

I think so too.

Needless to say, Miyamoto-san didn’t spend his youth thinking that he would end up creating Super Mario Bros. But what he did back then became the inspiration for ideas in the game.

He is someone who can find material to use in games anywhere.

Wii Fit²⁷ came about from Miyamoto-san weighing himself and recording his weight every day, for instance.

27	Used in conjunction with the Wii Balance Board, Wii Fit is a title that aims to encourage users to lead healthy, active lifestyles. It was released in Japan in December 2007 with an enhanced version called Wii Fit Plus released in October 2009.

Tezuka-san also shares this characteristic. He'll find inspiration for ideas for games in all sorts of places.

Does that just come naturally?

It’s not something that I’m actually that aware of myself! (laughs) I forget a lot of things as well… I’m often left thinking: “Is that right?”

You’ll also forget things you’ve said and say: “Did I say that?” (laughs)

(laughs) Speaking of which, I remember that while we were making New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Tezuka-san and I had a discussion about coins.

Is that right?

There! That’s exactly what you’re like! (laughs)

(laughter)

We had included wind in the game and I initially suggested that we make it so the coins blow through the air.

Oh, I know what you're talking about! (laughs)

Players will think of wind as something negative because it blows them around and makes it hard to play, so we thought that we needed to come up with something extra. That's why I suggested that if there were coins flying through the air, the player would be pleased. So that’s why we made it so that when the wind blows, coins fly across the screen.

(laughs)

Coins are flying through the air like rain, and you can grab as many of them as you like. There’s no limit. It doesn’t get better than that!

It doesn’t get any better! (laughs)

But then Tezuka-san resisted this and we made it so that if you hit a POW Block, the coins all fall down. Then I had to agree by saying, “It’s surely better that way". (laughs)

(laughs)

So you create software by discussing things with each other and gradually building up a stockpile of ideas and material.

That’s right.

Would you be able to logically analyse the relationship the three of you have?

Umm… I wouldn’t really know about that.

I’ve been observing you all for many years, but I still feel that I've never quite cracked this mystery.

If I had to put my finger on it, I'd say that the image I have is that Miyamoto-san starts off by digging a hole. Tezuka-san then finds some way to fill this hole. Then, right at the end, I make sure it’s smooth and solid by pushing a roller over the soil.

Ah, I see.

That’s how I feel about it, anyway.

So that’s how the division of labour works out. What do you think, Tezuka-san? Does that sum it up?

Perfectly! (laughs)

(laughter)

From my perspective, it seems like this division of labour has come about completely naturally. The best comparison I can make is with a manzai comedy trio from the Kansai area²⁸.

28	Manzai is a popular kind of slapstick comedy particularly associated with a region called Kansai, which is located in a western part of Japan where the Nintendo headquarters are also located.

Yes, I can see that! (laughs)

There's definitely something in that! (laughs)

You’re always talking with each other: “If we do this, aren’t people going to burst out laughing?" (laughs)

Right! (laughs)

So you think about how you’re going to win the audience over at the weekend and then you unveil your performance on Monday! (laughs)

After all, our goal is to win that audience over! (laughs)

I get the really strong sense that between the three of you, you’re always unfolding and expanding ideas: “Well, if you do this, I should make this work like that..."

So basically you’re saying that we’re a manzai comedy trio who have managed to survive for twenty-five years without splitting up. (laughs)

(laughter)

I have the impression that the three of you were very deeply involved in the development process for New Super Mario Bros. Wii and that you worked on it for a very long time.

Right.

Nakago-san’s role has always been to be the first person to point out: “This could be a big problem!” (laughs)

That’s right! (laughs)

When I join you for lunch, I can get a sense of how the development process is going by taking note of when Nakago-san comes out with his line: “This could be a big problem!” Judging from that, I could tell that the depth of your involvement in this project had developed into something different from the usual. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?

Well, I’m not quite sure where to start! (laughs) Mario is a huge title, so the people in charge feel a heavy burden of responsibility.

Right. We’re always going to be conscious that we’re shouldering the burden of expectation that comes with one of the company’s flagship titles.

That’s why we feel we have to give it our all and do a solid job so that everyone is satisfied with the results.

So everyone is quite fired-up.

That’s right. Everyone also has their own sense of pride and they're determined to add new elements to the game.

Right.

But while there is that desire, these new elements don’t tend to work out very well.

There’s absolutely no guarantee that just because something is new, it will work successfully. That’s something we can say from experience.

Up to now, you must have tried out a huge number of new ideas. But only those ones that made the grade remain and can be found in Mario titles.

That's right. So even if you come up with a novel idea, you can’t expect it to be used in the game right away. If you stick lots of memos and notes around your desk, you might just see it actually appear in the game after twenty years or so. (laughs)

(laughs)

After all, you can’t expect something that might have taken you just a month to think of to turn into something amazing overnight.

In fact, hardly any ideas end up turning into something amazing.

Right, hardly any do. That’s why, when it comes to new ideas, we tend to put a dampener on things.

You put a dampener on things? (laughs)

I think that putting a dampener on things is the role that the three of us have to perform.

So in other words, you have to take a step back and overlook the development process in a calm, collected manner.

Right. The people in the dev team who are in charge are going to be really fired up, and when you gather people like that together, things can get out of hand. In that situation, you need someone forceful to keep a lid on things and bring everyone into line. That's basically what we're there for. (laughs) This was especially the case this time round with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. There really needed to be someone there to make final decisions about the features to be included in the game.

So this time all three of you needed to be deeply involved in the title’s development. Whereas usually you might just be overseeing the dev team, this time you were actually involved in a hands-on way. So from my point of view, I thought: “That looks really tough!”

But we enjoyed doing it!

Well, that’s true. You did look like you were enjoying yourselves! (laughs)

We really were! (laughs)

So you might be saying how terrible things were, but actually it looked like you were having a great time.

Yes, we’d be laughing while we said: “Things are so tough!” (laughs)

So what was Miyamoto-san like when he was with the dev team?

This was the first time in a long time that he’s actually come to the coal face of the development process, dropping in on the programmers at SRD.

Yes, that’s right.

He’d come in late at night and stand behind the programmers with his arms crossed, just watching them for what seemed like hours. He'd say things like: "Can't you make it a little more like that?" At times like that, I didn't dare approach him because he was in a world of his own. (laughs)

(laughter)

But he has no choice - that's what he has to do! (laughs) But the fact that, even after twenty-five years, he can maintain that level of involvement may be the secret of why Mario titles are so enjoyable.

Well, I think that from now on we’re going to have to stop looking over the dev team’s shoulders because once you look at how development is progressing, you’re always going to end up entering more and more deeply into the process.

I don't think that's quite the right way of putting it.

You don’t?

Well, you used the phrase “entering the process”. I don’t think you enter it; I think that you get sucked into it.

(laughter)

So even though it should be sufficient to tell the dev team what to do and leave them to get on with it, you’ll go there and end up saying: “Do this! Do that!” Then you’re somehow sucked into it.

Hmmm… I wonder…

When you use the word “enter”, it sounds like you’ve coolly considered the situation and are getting involved in the development process because you feel strongly that it’s necessary. But from my perspective, that isn't how it looks.

You’re right. We might be having a meeting separately from the dev team when Tezuka-san will suddenly stand up and pop into the development area, saying: “I think I’d better just mention this to them.”

And you think that’s being “sucked in”?

Yes, I think that’s what it is! (laughs)

Well, it's a fine thing to find a job that you can get sucked into.

Yes, it really is a fine thing.

Of course, you don’t tend to get many holidays, but at the same time you can sense that aura, that feeling that you’re doing something worthwhile.

(laughs)

So you’re basically being sucked in because you enjoy it, right?

Ah, is that right? Well, I enjoy what I do, so I guess I do end up being sucked into it. (laughs)

Finally, if you had to communicate one single thing to our readers about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, what would you each say?

One single thing, you say…

If you’ve got more than one thing to say, that’s fine! You can say three things if you like! (laughs)

This time round, the game will have a whole new feel to it when you play it together with other people.

How would you respond to players who might say: "But I don't have anyone to play with!" Would you tell them to stop saying that and just invite someone to join them?

Yes, I’d encourage them to invite someone to join them. There are elements to the gameplay now that haven't existed up to now, so if at all possible, I'd like people to try asking a family member or friend to join in. Even if you think they’re not going to be interested, twist their arm and get them to try it. If you do that, I'm absolutely certain that they'll enjoy it.

This is an element to the game that’s taken twenty years to realise, after all.

That’s right. Also, we've made this game a little more challenging than the last DS title.

I imagine the three of you probably took it quite hard when some people said that the DS version was a little too easy. Miyamoto-san in particular.

I think that was particularly true of Miyamoto-san. So this time we’ve got a difficulty level the player can enjoy. I’d really like people to experience this for themselves. There are times when you’ll think: “This game’s a pretty tough nut to crack!”

But even if there are tough parts, you've always got the Super Guide so beginners can relax and enjoy the game as well.

Right. And what's more, we've got some really great videos included among the Hint Movies.

You can see incredible videos of the experts at Mario Club playing, can't you?

Sometimes they’re so good that you’ll find yourself laughing out loud! (laughs)

But recording that footage was extremely difficult. We had to get them to replay the same parts time and time again.

There were even times when we'd consider throwing in the towel.

So when you were making final adjustments to the levels and you’d modify the programming even a little bit…

A small change might affect the timing for a jump just a tiny bit and we’d have to go and take the footage again from the start.

Some people think that the computer was playing, but it really is all flesh-and-blood human players.

A computer would never come up with the kind of ideas those players have. In the end, you have to record actual people playing.

It is really tricky to record these videos though. For that reason, some members of the team would request that we let them correct things manually. But I had to put my foot down. If it’s not all done by a human player, you’ll lose that essential realism.

What you’ve said just now is rather profound.

I really thought that it’s best not to tamper with the movies in any way.

So it must have been particularly tough right at the end. This is something that Miyamoto-san also spoke to me about. He'd have to say things like: "We shouldn't have done this at this stage, but because we have adjusted that feature, we're going to have to redo the Super Guide and the Hint Movies!" He told me all this over lunch, in fact! (laughs)

(laughter)

So even when you were making the most minor modification, people would be breaking out in a cold sweat.

Yes, we would.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to our readers?

Umm… Not really, no.

(laughs)

Wait! I’ve thought of something! It’s a particular way that I’d like people to play the game…

Go on.

There’s a tendency among players that once they’ve completed a level, they lose any interest in playing through it again. But I’d really like people to play levels again and again. If they do that, they’ll be sure to notice that they’re steadily improving. There are certainly going to be people who say that it's a bit difficult, but I’m approaching fifty and I can get right to the end, so I think if you play through the levels enough times, you’ll be able to discover a whole new side to Mario.

Well, I’m fifty-two and even I can get to the end! (laughs)

In fact, we made this title based on the assumption that players would play through levels over and over. They’ll be able to find new aspects of the game in all sorts of places. For that reason, I really want players to experience everything the game has to offer.

So you’re saying that if you play the same level over and over, you’ll make new discoveries.

That’s right.

I’d like to add something, if I may. A hugely appealing part of the Super Mario Bros. franchise titles are that they can be enjoyed by both the person playing as well as by the people watching. I think of that as a kind of tradition that has been upheld ever since the very first Super Mario Bros. title. Now with this game, anyone who is watching can simply pick up a Wii Remote and join in. That’s why I’d say that you should start off by watching the game. Then, if you think it looks interesting, go ahead and join in. Even if you've never played a Mario game before and you try the single-player mode, while it may be a little tricky at first, there are plenty of features included in the game that will help you to make progress. I think lots of people who never thought they would have anything to do with a Mario game will become absorbed in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and, because of this, both people who had never played Mario before and players who have long enjoyed it will now have a shared interest. In addition, skilled gamers will be able to play alongside players who are not so skilled. That’s my dream.

That is indeed the dream.

It really is.

And for the three of you to have worked together in such a lengthy and involved manner on a Mario title …

Well, it’s really been a long while since we did that.

It was the first time since Super Mario World on the Super Famicom, wasn’t it?

If that’s the case, then it's been twenty years.

It really is about that long, isn’t it?

When we were making the DS title, it was only Tezuka-san and I who got really deeply involved.

So in that sense, you could describe New Super Mario Bros. Wii as being the first straight-ahead evolution in the horizontally-scrolling 2D platform game since Super Mario World, with which it is comparable in terms of the attention to detail and care that went into it.

I think that’s right.

But I do sometimes wonder if we’ll be making games along these lines far into the future. I get a feeling that we may do, but I don’t know…

(laughs) I feel that 2D Mario titles will definitely be made along these lines. I don't think there's any other way. Even when the three of you are really old... (laughs)

Even when we’re really old? (laughs) I think that once we get a bit older, we won't have the stamina to allow ourselves to be sucked into games like we used to. (laughs)

(laughter)