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E3 2003: GameSpy Interviews The Man Himself, Shiggy

16th May 2003, 7:52pm
GameSpy has managed to grab an interview with none other than Shigeru Miyamoto. It is a pretty good interview with some key information below:

GameSpy: How much further can Nintendo take Game Boy Advance/GameCube connectivity?

Miyamoto: What we are trying to do with connectivity is to show developers that there are other ways that games can move in besides the trend of making them prettier, more complicated, and more in depth. I really like the idea of trying to use connectivity to create simpler gameplay that is easily understood by people who are not hardcore gamers.

GameSpy: Mario Sunshine did not sell especially well. Neither did Sly Cooper or Jak & Daxter. What has happened to the platform game genre?

Miyamoto: In the case of Mario Sunshine, I think that we could have made the game a lot more interesting if we had worked harder on it.

GameSpy: Surely it was not a matter of working hard. Was it a question of time or effort?

Miyamoto: Obviously, because of the concept of Mario Sunshine, there was a need to release the game during the summer. Based on that, you could say that we started the game a little later than we should have.

One thing that has hurt the Mario games ... Taking them into 3D, while it has expanded the worlds, has shrunk the user base. By going into 3D the games have become more complicated. Before that, the Mario games were the type of thing that anybody could pick up and play very easily. By going into the 3D world, we have limited who that game is accessible to.

After Super Mario 64, making a game that those 3D Mario fans can enjoy further requires shrinking the audience even more because you need to go more in depth. What we did with Mario Sunshine to make it more accessible is that we tried to create it so that you could control the camera any way that you wanted it. That was how we started development on the game.

A number of 3D platform games have come out this generation. I still think that Mario Sunshine is probably the best of those that have come out so far.

Obviously, the graphics in Sly Cooper were great. That game looked incredible. I can't comment on the gameplay. Mario Sunshine, from the gameplay value and the ability to go back in and find new things and have a sense of discovery, I really think that Mario Sunshine was really well done in that sense.

GameSpy: Are you interested in making adult games like Grand Theft Auto or The Getaway?

Miyamoto: As a producer, I am interested in working with people who make adult-oriented games. You will see that our line-up will continue to have a lot of games that are very adult-oriented.

Personally, as a game creator, I still think that the idea of family-oriented games, a games that span all ages and include everyone from young adults to adults and senior citizens ... There are still a lot of games that are waiting to be made of that market.

For the interview in full click here.
by Damien