Interview:E3 Roundtable May 12th 2004

Transcript of the Roundtable discussion from E3 2004 with Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma.

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Tom Harlin,Nintendo of America: I'd like to begin by introducing our speakers. This is my co-host, Bill Trinen from Nintendo of America. He will serve as the translator for this event. Next we have someone that needs no introduction, Mr. Miyamoto. Beside him is Mr. Tezuka, and Mr. Konno. They will each start by giving a small introduction about essentially who they are and their work at Nintendo. We'll start with Mr. Miyamoto.

Shigeru Miyamoto: Good evening. I'll be speaking Japanese tonight. [laughs]. I would like to thank so many of you for joining us here tonight. Mostly we're going to be talking about the Nintendo DS and the new Zelda game. But first there's something I'd like to clear up. I've heard that some of you have heard that my heart is doing so well these days. Is there a rumor going around? [Laughs] There are rumors going around that I've actually quit Nintendo? At least, that's the rumor going on over in Japan right now. [laughs] At the hotel yesterday I had a good kilometer swim, and my heart's doing fine, so you don't need to worry.

Actually, things are really going great for me, I'm really enjoying work and a part of a great situation at Nintendo. My work has been divided up a little bit recently. And I'm sure you all know that the president Mr. Iwata has been in development for some time and last year he has been taking a look at Nintendo's internal development and made some changes to our structure. We've been trying to break up the molds of all of our producers at Nintendo.

We have our own internal first party development studio. We also have second party development studios which are games that are developed outside of Nintendo but published by Nintendo. We also have games produced by third parties. We've seen the number of second party developed titles increase dramatically. And because of that increase in second party development, the number of titles I was overseeing had increased as well. And every day I'd get countless documents on my desk that I'd have to put my stamp of approval on just to disperse money to our second parties. [laughs] So, as of last year I have been put in charge of first party content exclusively. And that's where my focus is now. We've also opened an EAD studio in Tokyo. That studio has been responsible for Donkey Kong Jungle Beat which is available for play on the show floor.

So I'm in a great environment now and have a great setup because I work directly with a lot of the Nintendo DS tech demos on the show floor today.

Takashi Tazuka: I've been working with Mr. Miyamoto for the last twenty years, primarily on the Yoshi series, and more recently as the producer on Animal Crossing. My most recent title will be Pikmin 2 which I serve as producer as well. I've been helping out with the DS tech demos today.

Hideki Konno: I am Hideki Konno in EAD's planning department. I've been working with both Mr. Tazuka and Mr. Miyamoto for almost twenty years now. The best way to explain what I've been responsible for is to start with the most recent and work my way backwards. I was the director on Luigi's Mansion, the director on Mario Kart 64, and the director on Super Mario Kart on the Super NES. And before those rolls as director I was working with Mr. Miyamoto for several years on games like Yoshi's Story, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3. The reason why I'm here is because of the Nintendo DS, which I' m working on Metroid Prime Hunters, Mario Kart DS, and a little game called Nintendogs.

Shigeru Miyamoto: This is the Nintendo DS. (holds it up) If you glance at it, it kind of looks like a Game Boy. But we've created the hardware with the idea that it's not a Game Boy. Obviously the chipset and graphics the DS is capable of are far beyond what the Game Boy's been capable of during its lifetime. I'm sure because we've provided backwards compatibility with Game Boy people will see it as the next Game Boy. But really this is our third pillar.

What we mean by that is, with the DS, we're going to create software that we haven't been able to produce on any Game Boy, nor software that's been able to be created on the GameCube. It's going to be software that's never been seen before on any system. People always talk about Nintendo creating and innovating, and we're always under pressure to create new ideas. The idea was to reevaluate the idea of just continue to improve on graphics and technology. One thing we've looked at was to change the controller, and we've taken the DS and brought a whole new generation of capabilities to the hardware. We're also known for our software titles, so because of that we're able to put together a piece of hardware that no one else can create. As you can see, we've taken handheld graphics and increased the capabilities, we've taken ideas from other systems like connectivity and found ways to bring that into the hardware. We've been researching wireless connectivity with other systems for a long time and what we saw with the Game Boy was that with linking games, people would have to buy a cable, and as we released new hardware and new peripherals, and linking them becomes very complicated. What we tried to do was to bring it together, like the microphone that's built into the unit, which is really neat. We had lots of ideas for using microphones in games in the past. You have all this functionality in one box.

If you look at the game industry now, people have been playing games for a long time. There's been better graphics, better technology, and more indepth gameplay. But as the industry continues to grow, we see that the world is really separated into two camps. One camp that plays videogames and one camp that doesn't. So when I went back to the days of the original Mario where it had one button to jump and that's it, I think that people long for that type of control again and those days where games were for anyone to enjoy.

With the DS we tried to focus on control where people can be directly in control, feel what it's like to be directly in control of that character. And that's what we're doing with the DS. So with the DS people who haven't been gaming for a long time or ever are suddenly brought to the same level as other gamers without having to worry about difficulty of control.

So the reason why we're calling it the third pillar is that with all these features and capabilities, the DS becomes a hardware system that doesn't just take games we've seen before and add new technologies or better graphics, it becomes a system where we can bring new styles of games that we've never seen before either on a handheld or a console.

That's why a lot of game developers who have been challenged in coming up with new game ideas see the DS and become very excited in its capabilities. One example of that is a game called Pac Pix which Namco has created. Namco had this idea floating around for a while, and made some experiments with it, but there wasn't any hardware out there that allowed them to create this idea. And when we showed them the DS, they immediately got very excited, and told us that they had a videogame idea that would be perfect for it. Everyone at EAD is very excited, there's a lot of energy, and a lot of fresh ideas floating around.

But just because there's two screens doesn't mean you have to use two screens. And even though we have wireless capabilities in the system, it doesn't mean every game has to be wireless compatible. And just because there's a microphone in the system doesn't mean you have to put in voice recognition into your game. And you don't even have to take advantage of the pressure control system. We think this is a system where developers have freedom to choose what to incorporate into their games.

The one thing I want to apologize for is how short many of the Nintendo DS tech demos are. There's a very specific reason for it. We think about how many people come to E3, how many people are going to be seeing the system for the first time, and we realize that the DS is a system that you have to get your hands on and play to understand what the system is about. We decided that we needed to have very short demos so that not only so the press could see everything in a very short time, but also so the developers who are here would see what it's capable of and use that to create ideas in their own minds. Hopefully you won't be let down by how short some of these demos are.

We have a request to all of you. This is a system that you have to touch and feel to understand. If you've had a chance to play it, try to find a way to explain it to them so they can understand how fun it is. That's why we're only going to be talking about the capabilities and not the specs of the system. Thank you.

Question: Why do you feel the industry is ready for a device like the Nintendo DS?

Shigeru Miyamoto: I think that if you ask the developers about the DS, they're going to tell you they're very excited to develop for it, and the opportunity it provides them. It's going to allow them to create new software, and that new software is going to please consumers in new ways.

Question: With the stylus control, have you had any problems in your internal testing where the screen would scratch over time? Is that a concern with this hardware? What have you done to address this issue?

Shigeru Miyamoto: I'm not the best person to answer this question since I'm not directly involved in the testing. But we are researching possibilities. We've looked at potential covers for the screen to protect it. But based on Nintendo's past, you can count on a very sturdy screen, so don't worry. Actually, I've been playing a lot of the games, and when I play Wario Ware, I find that I have a really good time playing it with a cotton swab, like the kind for cleaning your ear. It feels very smooth and very funny. (laughs)

Question: Which technologies or game ideas are you most impressed with, in general?

Shigeru Miyamoto: I'm very interested in games that change the way people play. Like Samba de Amigo and EyeToy and obviously our Donkey Konga and Jungle Beat, games that are not only fun to play, but also look fun to play to people watching people playing them.

Question: With the DS' chat and instant message capabilities, are you competing with mobile phones? What direction are you going with this?

Shigeru Miyamoto: I think there are two ways of looking at it. Our target user is everyone: people age 5 to 95. And if you look at that wide user base, you have children who see their parents with PDAs and such. So there's a lot of appeal for kids to use the DS and the stylus for its chat and IMing. And it's possible for someone with a wireless router in their home to potentially link up the Nintendo DS to that router, the computer and the internet and then to potentially link up to other instant messaging programs. I don't know how Microsoft will see this or if anyone will put anything out for this, or we may put something out independent as well. But maybe since Microsoft isn't making any cellphones maybe we'll be fine. (laughs).

Shigeru Miyamoto: I am overseeing Zelda in its entirety, in a sense. Mr. Aonuma is the producer. I think that if you have questions about Zelda you should perhaps not ask me, but Mr. Aonuma.

Just very quickly though, as for the reason why Link has changed, there were very, very, very, very many people out there who wanted Link to change [laughs]. Also there's another reason and that's that in developing the Wind Waker we know that we were going to be creating a game in which Link was a young boy and trying to create a very active and very energetic young boy and trying to choose the right style for portraying the young boy in a game like that we tried many different experiments. The ultimate decision we came to was that the cel-shading in Wind Waker was the best option for expressing that. We also wanted to create a very unique game world on the GameCube.

But since then, we've been left with a very big question: and that was, what are we going to do when we decide to make Link a teenager again -- a 16-year-old Link. So after Wind Waker we tried several different models and made varied versions of them. Ultimately we decided that in showing a teenage Link really the best style of expressing him would be something that's closer to our graphical style in Ocarina of Time. So Mr. Aonuma actually wasn't lying at the Game Developer's Conference when he said we were working on Wind Waker 2. He just didn't tell the whole story. And fortunately because he didn't tell the whole story, we were able to surprise you all here with a big announcement about the series.

So the rest I will leave up to Eiji Aonuma.

Eiji Aonuma: I'm sure all of you saw the video of the new Legend of Zelda game at this point. One thing that I'd like to point out to everybody is that none of that is CG. It's all done in real-time and running on the [game] engine. That movie was actually created by somebody who took a version of the game, played it, videotaped and then cut the pieces together to make the movie.

One more thing I'd like to point out. For a long time now -- ever since Ocarina of Time -- Mr. Miyamoto has talked about how he'd like Link to be able to fight on horseback so he could have mounted battle scenes with Link swinging his sword. Unfortunately we were not able to do that in the N64 games. And this time that's been a big focus for us with the new game on GameCube. So I think in that sense, the fact that we're seeing Link on horseback and swinging a sword, I think that's one more way in which Link has matured.

Question: How long has the game been in development, how far along is it, and why isn't it playable at E3 2004?

Eiji Aonuma: In terms of playable versions on the show floor, we're still not sure exactly how long it's going to take to complete the game at this point. But the plan is to by E3 next year have a version that you will be able to play to your heart's content. And in terms of how far along the game is, as I mentioned everything you saw in the movie yesterday is from a version that's running real-time playable on the engine. At this point we've got the engine running and everything's working and it's a matter of plugging in and putting in the finishing pieces.

Question: Wind Waker had a water theme and Majora's Masks had mask. What kind of theme will the new Legend of Zelda game have?

Eiji Aonuma: Well, generally with Zelda games what we try to do is let everybody know what the main theme of that game is going to be once we can present the entire game to you in a format that you're going to be able to play. Hopefully you'll all be happy to know that we do have a quest and a theme and when you're able to play the game we'll tell you what it is.

One thing that I can say is that up until now we've really focused on a young link maturing into a more grown up Link. This time we're going to be focusing more heavily on a more teenage/grown-up Link and so with that in mind we're going to be looking at different ways to express Link as an older teenager and trying to incorporate those types of features into the game.

Question: The game looks great. Will the gameplay feel the same as Wind Waker?

[Eiji Aonuma turns to translator Bill Trinen, who has played the game, and asks for his opinion.]

Bill Trinen: Mr. Aonuma asked me what I thought since I actually played the game. [Laughs]. Yeah, it's pretty good. [More laughter]

Eiji Aonuma: One of my other ideas in Wind Waker was more simplified control for the game, which was tied to the graphic style and the theme of that game as well. One thing that we're doing right now as we go forward is looking at how we're going to show Link in this more grown up role. We ask questions like what kind of control scheme can we implement that's going to reflect that more grown up Link.

Shigeru Miyamoto: Obviously everybody wants us to show things as early as we possibly can and as much as we would like to show things at a very late stage we don't always have that opportunity. And if we wait to show it until everything is done then I don't get the chance to upend the tee table. Obviously one of the main purposes of the E3 show is to focus on the titles that we're going to have out in the next year. This game is going to be launching in 2005 so I hope you'll all understand that while the game is very far along at this point we're not going to be revealing a whole lot of details yet.

One thing I've been asking for is that over the last 18 years the Zelda franchise has seen a lot of the gameplay style used throughout the series and that's needed to remain true to the series, I'd like to see a lot of new ideas implemented, especially in the realm of puzzle-solving and that sort of thing. So I've asked Mr. Aonuma to focus his attention on that.

Question: In the trailer that we saw yesterday, a lot of areas looked very familiar to Ocarina of Time. We saw a castle and Link rode Epona. He might have been in the Lost Woods. Is Link going back to Hyrule and is this now the true sequel to Ocarina of Time?

Eiji Aonuma: How do you know that horse was Epona [smiles]? Unfortunately I cannot reveal all of that at this point in time. Please wait a little while longer.

Question: The graphics in the game are beautiful. Will the game feature high production values throughout? To be more specific, will we see detailed cinematics, major story developments and will characters speak with acted voices?

Shigeru Miyamoto: I actually don't want Link to talk very much. Maybe I'll record my own voice for when he talks, or maybe you can record your own voice [laughs].

Miyamoto on Link after the trailer was revealed at E3: (who had a sword and shield): "I'm not Link, but I do know him. Even after 18 years the Legend of Zelda never stops changing, and this game is not different. We are now taking you to a world where Link has grown up. A world where he will act different, and look different. In order to grow, Link must not stand still, and neither can I. So thank you, and goodbye." *crowd goes wild*.