Interview:Famitsu April 17th 1998

Famitsu April 17th 1998

Date	April 17, 1998
Interviewee	Shigeru Miyamoto
Interviewer	Famitsu
Description	After sharing his regrets regarding the lack of first-party software, Miyamoto answers a few questions about Ocarina of Time.
Source	[1]

Prospects for 1998

Famitsu: I'd like to ask you about where Nintendo is going from here. Is that OK?

Shigeru Miyamoto: Famitsu, in its 'Let's talk about games corner' once featured me saying that if developers want to make CD-ROM games, they should go with the PlayStation. So lots of readers misunderstood and thought I was going to develop games for the PlayStation. I'm going to have to be careful what I say to you!

Famitsu: No, don't say that! What are your feelings about the last two years?

SM: I work for Nintendo, so I think we showed some good things, but maybe not enough variety. I don't think we had enough titles.

Famitsu: You don't think you had enough titles, but I think the long gaps between releases were damaging.

SM: Last year, between Starfox and Yoshi's Story we didn't produce enough Nintendo (first-party) titles. It would have been good to be able to sell Zelda and F-Zero last year. But we showed some kind of throughput; I'm just sorry it wasn't more.

Famitsu: I have the feeling that there'll be some really big titles in 1998.

SM: Nintendo's sales department agrees. The production division, at any rate, will be releasing hardware (the 64DD), so when that happens I hope users will feel relieved that they didn't give up on us.

Famitsu: The N64 seems to have had a bit of a hard time in Japan.

SM: Yes, we haven't really been able to sell it in Japan, but I'm not that worried. People ask "why are you so confident" but software is selling very well in the States and people here worry because that news doesn't reach them here in Japan. But we've sold over 10,000,000 machines worldwide.

Famitsu: So you think there's reason to be confident?

SM: From now and over the next year, people will be able to use the intervals between releases to save enough pocket money to buy software. The hardware's matured over the past two years, as has the software. But I can't necessarily say we're going to be selling a lot of software before Christmas.

ZELDA

Famitsu: Zelda is highly-anticipated, isn't it?

SM: It has Mario-esque elements, with movie-like drama. It has the same kind of expression as a movie.

Famitsu: I'm surprised it almost has movie-like production values.

SM: Well, it's not exactly like a movie, but uses dynamic scenarios.

Famitsu: Did you use that kind of approach in Mario?

SM: Hmmm, it looks better than, say, Resident Evil or Final Fantasy VII, with the combination of graphics and content. I'm not very good at PR! Don't write what I just said! (laughs)

Famitsu: What about the mood?

SM: You get a real impression of immersion, as if you're really in the game's world. The movement, thanks to the 3D stick, is very fluid and smooth. We've put all of our best ideas into Zelda.

F-ZERO

SM: F-Zero's strongest characteristic is the sense of speed. Also, there are lots of opponents on screen with you.

Famitsu: There are going to be 30 racers, right?

SM: Yes, and besides, on the hard setting, up to 20 cars can be retired after crashes. So you can place pretty much anywhere on the scale of 1st to 30.

Famitsu: Are the courses varied?

SM: Yes, there are jumps, a sudden-death element, and so forth. And you can die if you skid out of the pipe (laughs).

Famitsu: Is there a lot of variety in the cars?

SM: You can eventually select from 30 vehicles, and you can tune them up, adding elements to the gameplay.