Wii

As the two of you worked with Miyamoto-san on Super Mario Galaxy, I’m sure there must have been times when he did things that made you go, "He got me!" How did these things occur?

Well, there were a lot of times when the things he did made me feel like he got me, but this time I was actually the one who upended the tea table¹². But after I did that, Miyamoto-san came up and told me "why did you upend it? It was better the way it was", and he realigned the plates back on the table.

Shigeru Miyamoto cleans up the tea table.

(laughs)

Usually, when I hear that Miyamoto-san has upended the tea table, he would help the others clean it back up.

For this game, I tried getting as many plates ready as I could, so I could just throw away those that I didn’t need. But Miyamoto-san would see those plates and would reorganize them, saying "that idea was really good, let’s use it here". So it felt like he was cleaning the tea table for us. That’s actually the reason I used the cook as a metaphor earlier in this interview! (laughs)

There are so many cooks that try to order new ingredients when something goes wrong while they’re making a game. But with Miyamoto-san, he tries to combine these two dishes that don’t work on their own to make a dish that will work. He really doesn’t put any of the ingredients to waste.

Him doing so was really helpful.

It makes the person who made the dish in the first place feel a lot better, too.

By the way, Iwata-san, ever since the DS and Wii were released, you keep mentioning how to make games that can be enjoyed by anyone, from the age of 5 to 95. Hearing that, we really put in the extra effort to make Super Mario Galaxy a game that could be enjoyed by anyone as well, from the age of 5 to 95.

In order to make the game so that anyone can play it, we made it very easy to adjust during the early stages of development. However, when Miyamoto-san tried that version out, he said that it was too easy, and it lacked intensity.

I hear a lot from him about how a game must not lose the excitement when you make it easy, and that a game needs to be easy, yet be intense at the same time. This actually lead to what we talked about earlier, about how we put a limit on how often you could spin.

Since we’re talking about the intensity of the game, I placed a rather bold suggestion for this game. I wanted to change the life meter’s maximum to 3. With this, Mario ends up losing more lives as a result, but at the same time we increased the number of 1-Up Mushrooms that are available throughout the game, and created checkpoints. In Mario 64, the life meter’s maximum was 8. When we made it that number, it was rare to lose a Mario. The life meter’s maximum was also 8 in Super Mario Sunshine, but I felt that the life meter didn’t really tie in to the intensity factor. Even when you find a 1-Up Mushroom, you don’t think much of it. So this time, we changed the life meter’s maximum to 3, and it became a lot easier to lose a Mario, but you could get more 1-Up Mushrooms to compensate.

The fact that the intensity factor changes whether the life meter is set to 3 or 8 is representative of the things that players do not notice that actually changes the gameplay dramatically.

Thinking about all of these elements, added with the "from the age of 5 to 95" that was mentioned by Iwata-san, I really struggled as to how I could bring that intensity into the game.

During the development process, my message "from the age of 5 to 95" must have been a challenge for everyone among the staff. I believe that many of the games created in the past have overcome this exact hurdle, and at the same time, I understand that this was a difficult challenge upon developing Super Mario Galaxy. But the Co-Star feature was born as a result of this struggle, and in that sense, I feel a firm conviction that the game will help greatly expand the range of the gaming audience. And now to wrap things up, if I could get both of you each to say a few words to our readers about the game.

Fundamentally, I think a Mario game is the type of game that’s really not about finishing the game, but it’s rather about how fun it is to just play the game. So, I made sure there were lots of areas in the game that could be enjoyed, even by little children, just by moving Mario around. In these places, you don’t have to think about what you have to accomplish, so you can play around freely. I hope people who will play this game find a special place of their own in the game and discover their own way of enjoying it.

I think it’s about having everybody gather around the TV. A Mario game is not necessary something you play on your own. In Super Mario Galaxy, you’re able to create up to 6 save files.
So, for example, I think it would be fun if you looked at the save file that Dad made and notice that he had already collected 10 stars. You’re also able to check what time a person has been playing last in the file selection screen, so I think that somewhere in the world, a child may go up to their dad, and say "Dad, you’re playing in the middle of the night!" (laughs)

22 years ago, when the first Super Mario was released, there used to be many more people who would gather around the TV. The Famicom (NES) console would be connected to the TV in the living room, and a crowd of friends and family would gather around the player. The crowd would also enjoy the gameplay experience, and eventually the spectator would be trying to grab the controller away from the player, saying, "It’s my turn!" In truth, well-made games share a common quality where it’s fun just watching the person play. Since Wii is connected to the living room TV, I would love to see someone having fun watching the person play, to the point where they would then jump in the game using Co-Star mode, and the next thing you know, that someone (who does not usually play games) will find themselves playing Super Mario Galaxy.

Right, We made the game hoping something like that would happen, so I would like for as many people as possible to have fun with the game.