For this last instalment, I’ll be interviewing (Shigeru) Miyamoto-san, the creator of Mario and the person in charge of the game design for Super Mario Galaxy.

Thank you.

Miyamoto-san, there are so many things that I would like to ask you in this interview. To start things off, I would like to ask you about the Co-Star mode, which is a very important element of Super Mario Galaxy.

The Tokyo staff really worked hard to make the Co-Star mode into the great shape that it is in now.

I think the issue of two-player simultaneous gameplay has been a long-term challenge for you as the creator of the original Mario Bros. Back when I was working on Kirby’s Fun Pak for the SNES at HAL Laboratory, taking on this challenge from you resulted in the creation of the game’s helper system.

That’s right! (laughs) Two-player simultaneous gameplay definitely was a challenge that was on my mind all these years. That’s why I worked on the Mario vs. Luigi mode^１ in New Super Mario Bros.² for a very long time to make it the way it is in the finished product.

1	Mario vs. Luigi is the two-player competitive mode playable in New Super Mario Bros.
2	New Super Mario Bros. is a side-scrolling action game that was released on the Nintendo DS in Europe in June 2006.

So, with the creation of the Co-Star mode do you feel that you’ve finally successfully solved this challenge that has spanned about 25 years since the birth of Mario Bros?

Absolutely. For every game I worked on, there were always times when I would keep discussing the issue of two-player simultaneous gameplay, and the staff also became conscious of the challenge, so every development team kept trying hard to solve it too. Though I think that might also have been because they thought if they didn’t deal with it first, I’d come in and ask how it was coming along for sure! (laughs)

(laughs)

But there’s a part of me that’s difficult to please. Though I was happy to hear the staff suggest new ideas, on the other hand, I also thought that they were taking it lightly at times.

You knew that it wasn’t going to be so easy.

Right. There were times I even told them off for it. But even though I said it wasn’t going to be so easy, I really wanted to overcome this challenge. As the pointer had become available to use with Wii, I started to put into place piece-by-piece the things that I wanted to do in two-player simultaneous play using that feature.

I’d heard that towards the end of development, you had clearly defined what you could do in single-player mode and what you could do in two-player mode.

The single-player mode had become very complicated, so we removed some of its features and moved them to the two-player mode. Doing so cleared things up quite a lot. Friendly two-player play is something that’s easier said than done. It’s not a problem in competitive play where the two players are equal, but in scrolling games where one player is the main player, the question of whether the other player could really enjoy the game was just one long-term challenge. With those games, it always seems like the second player is being forced to play, and at times it’s not much fun.

If the first player is enjoying the game much more than the second player, the second player is just playing to make the first player happy.

That’s right; you end up playing just to entertain the other player. That’s why I wanted to make it so that the second player could enjoy the experience as well. Of course, people who play together usually have some sort of relationship with each other and that relationship helps make up for this problem. For example, two good friends can have fun no matter what they play. But I wanted the second player to also be able to enjoy action games for what they were. So, by making good use of the Wii Remote’s pointer, I think we were able to have the second player play the game with a very strong sense of participation. During the initial stages of development, we’d made it so that the person assisting the main player was able to do things like shake the Wii Remote to make Mario spin or make him jump by pressing A, but we ended up taking those features out because it lent itself to negative play and made play difficult. Getting in the other players’ way can be a fun part of gameplay, but I think that with Co-Star mode, which also includes functions to entertain the other player, we were able to finalise the style of the two-player mode.

I heard that you had a lot of people from the general public come and try out this game.

Quite a lot. We had parents and children come together so they could play together, we had people over 50 play the game – oh, come to think of it, I’m actually also over 50 myself... Anyway, we had a lot of people play the game, and we observed them, had them write about their impressions, things like that. I analysed those reports as I read them, noting things like how people might have written “It was fun,” but they didn’t look like they were having fun, or how some people wrote how they enjoyed the game more as the levels had become harder.

How do you imagine people will be playing with Co-Star mode?

When you presented Super Mario 64 to the world eleven years ago, it felt like the dawn of a new era and was celebrated by people across the globe – but at the same time, the game had created a group of people who felt disinclined towards 3D action games. On the other hand, there were also people whose expectations towards new Mario games had grown higher and who wanted us to create another incredible game that would surprise the world. Amidst all that, Super Mario Galaxy will be the next long-awaited Mario 3D action game; please tell me how you were able to meet this challenge, and what kind of things you thought about as you did so.

The reason that people felt disinclined towards 3D action games was because those games made it easy for some people to get lost or get motion sickness. Having a background in industrial design, I was used to working with CAD³, and since drawing in 3D was my original job I couldn’t grasp how somebody playing a 3D game for the first time would feel from a calm, objective perspective.

3	CAD (Computer Aided Design): A method of using computers for product design, architecture and the like.

You’re very used to visualising 3D space like that.

That’s because I’ve been doing it for so long... It’s why I’ve made a point of looking at how the average person feels or responds to 3D, but it really is difficult since these things aren’t something I can estimate myself. From another point of view, though, I really enjoyed making Mario 64. When I was a child, I played with puppets, I started drawing manga comics in my student years and when I started working, I began making video games… When I started making games, I was really looking forward to getting to do animation. So when what was originally 2D could finally be made 3D, I was happy just being able to look at Mario from various angles.

Before you worked on Mario 64, you created Starwing⁴ with the limited abilities of the SNES while making use of the Super FX⁵ chip, so in retrospect, you must have felt freed from those old limitations. There were many things piled up that you wanted to do using 3D, and it seems like all that energy really came out in force in the development of Mario 64.

4	Starwing is a 3D shooting game for the SNES that was released in 1993.
5	The Super FX chip was installed in some SNES cartridges. This chip made displaying 3D graphics possible.

The great thing about Mario 64 was how you were able to freely move Mario around, who was now in 3D for the first time. This is quite an extreme view, but I actually felt at one point that this didn’t really have to be a game.

You felt that moving Mario around was fun in itself.

Right. There was no other game before Mario 64 where you could truly move around freely in a 3D environment, so it was fun just moving Mario around and finding stars. But these days, simply having the game be in 3D isn’t interesting anymore. So in making Super Mario Galaxy, I thought about what made the Mario world distinctive amongst 3D games. This is different from things like the storyline.

That’s right.

So, what I came up with was gravity. In old movies, for example, they used all sorts of effects like people walking upside-down on the ceiling. Of course, no one can actually do things like that, so I thought that by creating this opportunity for the players, they can experience something strange and have fun just playing around like that. But when I told that to the staff, they became worried and asked me “Can we really call something like that a game?” So I told them that it’d be better to make something that everyone could enjoy that wasn’t a game rather than make something that was a game but wasn’t much fun. (laughs)

So if it’s fun at the very core, the rest somehow works itself out. On the other hand, if you make a game that isn’t fun, it wouldn’t come together unless you added a lot of elements to it later to make up for it.

I have an image in my mind of Mario as a dapper man doing all sorts of strange things for us like a Vaudevillian⁶ in the olden days. It was when I was thinking about how Mario was no ordinary man and how I wanted to make him cooler that the name “Super Mario Galaxy” came up, so I thought the combination of spherical fields, gravity and galaxies was a perfect match for him. But the staff objected to the idea.

6	Vaudevillians were entertainers who appeared in variety performances known as vaudeville.

Did they say “What? He’s in space now?!” (laughs)

They also said “I thought Mario was a fantasy game, is Mario going sci-fi now?” (laughs)

So after having Mario race through land, sea and sky stages, space was the next step beyond. But they didn’t think that space really fit into the Mario world.

That’s why I think Super Mario Galaxy was a good opportunity to re-think what a fun 3D action game is to the players.

The planning of the project didn’t progress smoothly, did it? I heard it took a while for the concept of spherical fields to resonate with the staff.

I felt that in this new Mario world, it wouldn’t be fun if the screen just scrolled as usual – since it was 3D now, I wanted to step things up. When we worked on Paper Mario⁷ in the past, we experimented with making fields in the shape of rolls or spheres, but they didn’t work as I was expecting them to at the time, so I had put a hold on those ideas. I packed these ideas into the Mario 128 experiment to exhibit them, and it worked really well. It was even on a spherical field, so the camera would follow Mario wherever he went. As the players didn’t have to change the camera angle, we felt that this could be used as a method to reduce the possibility of motion sickness. After all, when the camera angle is fixed by the game designer and moves in a way that’s not expected by the player…

7	Paper Mario was an action RPG that was released on the Nintendo 64 in Europe in October 2001.

Because the camera angle moves in unexpected ways, it makes it easier to get motion sickness.

That’s where it became simply a question of finding the right idea. From a design perspective, spherical fields let you create new styles, and this type of field is brilliant for camera angles too. So even after the Mario 128 experiment, I wanted to save it for another time.

I remember very well how you said you wanted to make the next Mario with spherical fields. But at the time, I did not fully understand its benefits. I knew right away that visually, it would look great. But I didn’t realise at all that its true value actually lay deep within.

Since I wanted to be the first one to make it a reality, I was happy that nobody had realised those things yet. (laughs) Still, as I didn’t want that idea to be used somewhere else first, I tried to use it in Doshin the Giant⁸. When I told that to the staff, they said “What?! It’s too late now!” and I missed my chance then! (laughs)

8	Doshin the Giant was a game that was released on the GameCube in Europe in September 2002.

So that’s how it was! (laughs)

That’s how long ago I wanted to try using that idea. The spherical field concept challenged the abilities of the programmers who would make it a reality, but at the same time I think it was an interesting debate for the people involved as well. As I’m the kind of person who thinks new challenges make for more interesting work than repeating the same thing over and over again by routine, I felt that this was something that we definitely had to do. Sometimes while we were working on it I told the staff things like “You can do anything with this idea!” and “If you make the sphere infinitely large, you can make flat courses just like before - you can make anything!” (laughs) So, as the game began to take shape, everyone started to feel that we were on to something.

I think that this was a very difficult project for you because of the way in which you participated. You weren’t the director like in Mario 64, and even though you know the staff at EAD Tokyo very well, they were about 400 kilometres (about 250 miles) away from Kyoto.

Still, it ended up being relatively pleasant work. I don’t think we would have been able to make this game if I was the director, placed right in the development process, but it was possible because I was the producer this time. The development environment had also improved greatly; the computer on my desk was always connected to Tokyo.

I heard that you were e-mailing them even at times like in the morning on days off! (laughs)

They were constantly sending me the latest data, so I was always able to respond to them immediately. At first, when I went to Tokyo, I’d take over an entire room and have the development leads come in one by one, and we would talk about the game while playing it. But then I realised, “Do I really have to go all the way to Tokyo just to do this?” (laughs) So I had the same environment created in one of the conference rooms in Kyoto, where I held meetings displaying the game screen using a camera and talked about how we should change things in the game via video conferencing. So, I was able to work as if I were actually in the Tokyo office most of the time.

Koizumi-san, the director, referred to having you be the first to sample the “dish” they had created.

It was a strange atmosphere. I was very embarrassed having everyone stare at me while I played! (laughs) Mario’s the kind of game where you can trip up easily if you don’t pay attention. But if I were to make a mistake while everyone was watching, there’s no way that I could tell them, “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention!” (laughs)

(laughs)

I was worried they’d say things like “Miyamoto talks big, but he’s pretty awful at the game.” or “I don’t want someone with no skill like that telling me how to make games.” It felt like I was playing on a bed of nails! (laughs)
Anyway, I tried all the different stages in front of everyone while making comments like “The way you get beaten so easily here isn’t right,” and asked the staff to schematise the sort of things I can and cannot accept.

You wanted to define the “Essence of Mario”.

That’s right. I wrote these things in an e-mail and sent it to everyone involved, even if it wasn’t their responsibility.

That’s an interesting way to do things.

I decided to take those fundamental elements that were created then and make the game by applying them to various areas. For example, in 2D Mario games, it was taken for granted that Mario would run to the right, but in one out of the ten times that you go left, you’d find a little prize. Everybody usually thought that they had to go right, so we wanted to reward the people who turned back a bit. So we tried thinking about these fundamental elements in not just one but every stage in the game, but as the game would lose balance if everyone did that, I used e-mail to preserve co-operation among the staff.

I remember how during development, you said quite happily that you’d put the “Essence of Mario” into words for the first time.

(with a very relieved expression) It was really the first time.

Since you’ve been making Mario games for over 25 years, I almost wanted to ask you “Is this really the first time?!” (laughs)

Until now, whatever I was deciding on, I’d say “It’s instinct,” so I’m actually almost surprised myself! (laughs) For example, everyone thinks of a cute, cuddly character when they’re asked to think of a character from Mario.

The kind of cute characters that seem like they would live in the Mario world.

Because people believe that the characters should be that way, they make assumptions on their own, like how the eyes should be always big and bright. But I don’t really draw my characters like that. So, when new staff who have preconceived ideas like that come up and show me some sketches saying “Look, I made a Mario-style design”, they end up looking nothing like Mario designs at all to me. Lately, all the artists’ techniques have improved compared to the past, but their styles seem to be becoming more and more uniform. They’ve already got this mental template of a well-drawn picture, and it’s sinking into their designs more and more.

They have technique, but they lack character.

I think it’s perfectly OK for Mario to be drawn in a cool way, and by that I don’t mean drawing him specifically to be cool, but that the overall design treatment turns out looking cool. So in the past, I’ve always tried to not design anything that looks childish, and change the design depending on the game, but all this has never been put in words. And as I was thinking of the best way to explain to people to get them to understand, I remembered an experience I once had when I was working on Mario Bros. (Gunpei) Yokoi-san⁹ asked me, “What’s something that wouldn’t be able to move if I hit it from underneath?”, and I replied, “A turtle, of course.” From that point on, we had a continuous flow of ideas, like “I think it would seem more natural if you’re able to step on the turtle,” and “Wouldn’t it be better if it came out of the shell when you stepped on it?” This topic might get a bit long, but…

9	Gunpei Yokoi is the late Development Manager of Nintendo who headed the team which created the Game & Watch, and the Game Boy.

Please, continue. (laughs)

In the end, you were only able to knock over the turtle from the bottom and couldn’t step on them… In Mario Bros., when a turtle gets knocked over, it’ll start moving again after a short period of time. The thing is it’s hard to tell exactly how long it’s going to take to start moving. You can see it twitching, but you’re not able to tell after how many of those twitches it would get back on its feet. So, we decided to change this and make a rule that you could see this timing visually. We made it so that after you step on a turtle, it would pop right out of its shell, and the turtle would start moving again when it gets back inside the shell. The little turtle that popped out of its shell works as the timer, and we felt that this would be something that anybody would be able to see.

I don’t think anyone else could have come up with something quite like having the turtle pop out of its shell! (laughs)

But then I noticed I’d made a huge oversight in that turtles’ shells are an evolved part of their skeletal structure, meaning that we weren’t being entirely truthful to the children…

Indeed, turtle shells do not come off! (laughs)

Later, in Super Mario, the player could step on the turtles. But since Mario was now able to step on them without worry, we decided to introduce some that he wouldn’t be able to step on. We decided that the easiest way to tell them apart would be to place spikes on their shells…

It was our designer, Motokura-san, who said, “When in doubt, use spikes!” (laughs)

Well, it looks like they’ve been listening to what I say! (laughs) If you look at the Boos for example, and their peek-a-boo reaction when you turn the other way, you’ll see that they’re very shy, and they blush too. I think it’s aspects like these that point out the importance of designing things with functions that can be easily understood. I mean, if a designer was simply told to “make something unique”, how would they know how to proceed? This time around, the fundamental element of Mario is to create form around function, so we should just keep creating as many unique ideas as possible using this. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s quite a straightforward method.

Indeed. Now that you’ve explained it to me, I can finally say I understand how the design expresses the function.

Actually, it’s the same for me too; it all made sense after I put it into words. You see, the fundamentals of the DS and Wii are the same.

I see, I see.

When we took pictures of the DS, I felt it was essential to have the stylus appear alongside it in those pictures. We wanted to ensure that people looking at it for the first time would be able to understand how it works.

And that also explains why pictures of the Wii Remote always include a hand holding it.

I made it very clear that I did not want the Wii Remote to be pictured on its own. Having said that, it was only about a year ago that I finally realised my designs had been representing their functions. It took a really long time to arrive at that point! (laughs) In fact, it may not even have been a year ago! (laughs)

It’s been 26 years since Mario made his debut appearance in the first Donkey Kong game!¹⁰ (laughs) And finally, after all this time, the “Essence of Mario” has been put into words at last.

10	Donkey Kong, an arcade video game that was released in 1981, represented Miyamoto’s first title as a game designer.

This is the first Mario game that uses an orchestral soundtrack. Miyamoto-san, how did you feel about this?

There were quite a number of people who were opposed to using an orchestra. But I think they all assumed that I would say no, so they were extremely hesitant about broaching the subject with me.

I can imagine how they were pulling each others’ sleeves, saying to each other “You go and tell him”, “No, you go and tell him”! (laughs)

The fact is, I actually felt like asking them “Well, why shouldn’t we use an orchestra?” Since I had felt that instruments like the timpani and strings would be suited to the theme song of Super Mario Galaxy, I had approved this at a fairly early stage. I think everybody was still feeling uneasy however, thinking that I had done something rather drastic, or worried that I would upend things at the very last minute.

Hearing all this makes me realise how, as with the design, music is another expression of functionality within a game. By the way, I watched the video shot when the orchestra was recording in the studio. You looked like you were listening extremely attentively to their performance.

You mean you thought I was asleep, right?! (laughs)

(laughs)

I’m just kidding! (laughs) Yokota-kun, who oversaw the sound for the game, had a very firm idea of what he was doing. When he told me “The way a performance sounds will change depending on the image the musicians have of how their music will be used”, I said “I’m going to make sure I’m there!”

Before they started performing, I heard that you spoke to the whole orchestra.

I talked about some impressive things. When I told them “The Super Mario series sells ten million copies worldwide,” everyone in the orchestra was very surprised! (laughs) And I continued by saying “On top of that, the people who will buy our game will play it over and over again. That means the music that you will be playing today will be listened to more than one hundred million times, so please do your best”.

Wouldn’t that be a lot more than 100 million times?

You think it would be more? (laughs)
When people in the orchestra cheered in excitement, I really felt glad I had gone.

So for Super Mario Galaxy, do you have an image of what kind of people will play the game, and in what way they will play?

Recently, if a young man has a Wii, they won’t hear those complaints from their girlfriends: “You’re playing video games again?!” (laughs) Even among college students, I think they’re saying things like “He’s got a Wii, let’s get everyone over there and play”. As this kind of development continues, I think people will greet Super Mario Galaxy with a sense of relief. Up to now, there have been a lot of games that were compilations of mini-games, and I think this will be seen as the first title in a long time where you can really sit down and get absorbed in it.

In the days of the NES Super Mario, I think video games were played a lot more frequently by a group of people, together in the living room. But as times changed, consoles were more commonly found in the bedroom, and we started to see more games that were only meant to be played by one person. However, as Wii is often set up in the living room; I would love for people to play Super Mario Galaxy in the way video games were played in the past. It is always enjoyable just watching someone else play a well-made game.

I touched on how the staff in Tokyo would watch me play, but even though they all said they were just working, I think they were all actually having fun! (laughs) Also, we made the levels shorter and made the bosses appear somewhat earlier than in previous games, so I think the game is now ideal for busy people who are not able to find that much time to play. We also placed checkpoints in the middle of the levels.

When you lost a Mario in previous games, you had to start again from all the way back at the beginning of the level.

Games have now become 3D, and as the scale of the games has increased, the levels have tended to become longer. I think this is something that has to be reconsidered, but playing the same part over again should actually be fun. As you’re playing the same level again, you become more attached to that level. But by placing checkpoints that makes it easier for the players to move on in the game, I think it results in fewer levels which leave an impression on players. So five years on, if someone were to ask you, “What did you think of that game?” you wouldn’t have a thing to say about it. I want to make games that everyone will remember.

The ideal would be to produce a game where the players are repeating the same thing over and over again, but that doesn’t diminish their desire to play the game in the slightest.

This is something I find personally, but when I listen to an hour-long classical performance, I only tend to remember its main parts. But if I were listening to Beatles songs, I would remember almost every song. There are certain songs that can make you recall the atmosphere of the place where you heard them for the first time and what was happening at the time. I think games should be able to have the same effect. In that sense, I’m not really in favour of adding more and more checkpoints in a game. But a busy person who wants to relax and play a game for a while just doesn’t have the time to spend 30 minutes trying to get one Power Star! (laughs) So I think that the feeling of distance and space in the game is fairly well-balanced. In fact, I have often heard people at events where they are trying out games saying “This game’s tempo is great!” or “I’m usually no good at platform games, but this is great fun!” So it is possible to get people you wouldn’t normally expect to be into games to like a game and I am hoping that this will be the case with Super Mario Galaxy.

With this game, we have two missions. The first is to get those people who have a preconception that 3D games aren’t for them to realise how fun a game in 3D can be. The other is to address those people who think Wii only has games for beginners, and let them know that the Nintendo EAD’s sports-gym style gameplay experience is still alive and well! (laughs)

That’s right. I would like to challenge the players to try to get all the Power Stars, if they think they can do it! (laughs)

Now, if I could please get some final words to wrap up this interview.

I wanted to eliminate those elements in the game that made players think “It’s not my fault that I can’t do this” And this has produced a game that feels like it’s worthwhile for the player to take it on. But this isn’t a game where you have to clear every single thing in this game, so you’ll still able to beat Bowser by playing normally. At the same time, we want players to be able to play this game at their own pace, so they can set their own goals like “One Power Star, every time I go home”.

And in four months, they will realise that they have collected 120 of them.

That would be great! (laughs) As I said earlier, Mario is a game where you can have fun even if you just move him around. You’re able to experience new things you were not able to before. I would really like the people who are good at this game to teach people who are not good at playing video games using the Co-Star mode; I think they’ll be in for an experience like no other. I think it would also be fun to help out your grandad or get your mum to play the game.

Would the Miyamoto family Wife-o-Meter¹¹ go up again? (laughs)

11	The Wife-o-Meter was mentioned during Miyamoto’s speech in this year’s GDC (Game Developers’ Conference) and displayed the interest level his wife had towards video games. The meter showed how her interest level increased with games such as Nintendogs, Animal Crossing and Wii Sports.

I’ll assist her as best I can! (laughs)