Shigeru Miyamoto is Disappointed with One of His Games

Shigeru Miyamoto has created some fantastic games. From Super Mario Bros. 3 to Donkey Kong to Pikmin 2, the designer has one of the most impressive resumes in the history of video games. Many people hold his work in high regard, oftentimes deeming it the best the industry has seen. Miyamoto-san has left an impact on the industry that will not be forgotten in any of our lifetimes.

Yet, despite the pantheon of classics, Shigeru Miyamoto is disappointed in one of his creations. In an interview with Kotaku, the game developer revealed he believes he’s made a “bad” game.

Kotaku: Do you feel like you’ve ever made a bad game?

Shigeru Miyamoto: Yeah…

Of course, the interviewer pressed on to know more. Here’s what Shiggy had to say.

“I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever made a bad game, per se, but a game I think we could have done more with was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.“

Yes, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is the game for which Miyamoto has some regrets. Not Wii Music or Luigi’s Mansion, as many would expect, but the sequel to the NES classic The Legend of Zelda that did so many things differently from the rest of the franchise. Side-scrolling areas and a life system are hard to come by in the land of Hyrule, but Zelda II’s entire design was built around these two mechanics.

“When we’re designing games, we have our plan for what we’re going to design but in our process it evolves and grows from there. In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, unfortunately all we ended up creating was what we had originally planned on paper.

“I think specifically in the case of Zelda II we had a challenge just in terms of what the hardware was capable of doing.

“So one thing, of course, is, from a hardware perspective, if we had been able to have the switch between the scenes speed up, if that had been faster, we could have done more with how we used the sidescrolling vs. the overhead [view] and kind of the interchange between the two. But, because of the limitations on how quickly those scenes changed, we weren’t able to.”

What do you think of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link? Is Miyamoto being too hard on himself, or is this game severely lacking in anything original? Would you like to see Nintendo return to the Adventure of Link formula? Sound off in the comments.