Nintendo 3DS

The worlds in the games you have created tend to have a sci-fi aspect to them. When did you start to cultivate those elements within yourself?

The first thing I remember is loving to watch shows like Captain Ultra⁷ and Ultra Seven⁸ when I was really little, before I even entered kindergarten. I'm not sure if you can call those sci-fi, though. 7. Captain Ultra: A Toei Productions produced "tokusatsu" show. The third in Tokyo Broadcasting System's Ultra series, after Ultra Q and Ultraman, which aired every Sunday, from April 16 to September 24,1967, for a total of 24 episodes. 8. Ultra Seven: A tokusatsu show produced by Tsuburaya Productions. The fourth in TBS's Ultra series, it aired every Sunday, from October 1, 1967 to September 8, 1968, for a total of 49 episodes.

Sci-fi (Science Fiction) can also be translated as "fantasy science," and Ultra Seven was a "fantasy tokusatsu," so I think you could call it sci-fi.

(Editor's note: Tokusatsu is a Japanese word to generally call a show centering around special effects. So fantasy tokusatsu are fantasy shows with a focus on special effects.)

Well, I really loved that type of fantasy tokusatsu as a child, so I think that's probably where it all started for me.

I can imagine you may have also watched Thunderbirds⁹? 9. Thunderbirds: A TV show using marionettes combined with scale-model special effects, produced in England in 1965, and aired in Japan on NHK in 1966.

Of course I did.

I have my roots in Thunderbirds, although I was in kindergarten then. (laughs)

(laughs). I also loved Star Trek¹⁰ and Star Wars. At the time, I lived in Shizuoka, so I could stay in the theater all day... 10. Star Trek: A sci-fi TV series which aired in Japan under the title of Uchuu Daisakusen. The show was produced in the US, and broadcast in Japan beginning April 1969. Later on, a series of movies were produced.

The old movie theaters didn't run on the shuffle system¹¹ like they do now. 11. Shuffle system: These days, when a movie ends, patrons are shuffled out, but in the past, at least in Japan, a patron could stay in the theaters all day once they entered.

Right. Since it was a movie theater in the countryside, I could see the movie multiple times in a day, and I could even see two different movies. At one point the theater was showing Star Trek and Star Wars, and I stayed in the movie theater all day.

I wonder what it was about sci-fi that the young Takahashi was drawn to.

I always liked messing around with machines. So then I started drawing them...drawing spaceships and rockets and those kinds of things... I just remembered that. I tried to think about why I liked rockets, but I think it stemmed from a heartbreaking incident. When I was four years old, I went to Expo '70¹² 12. Expo '70: The Japan World Exposition. The world fair held in the Senrikyuryo area of Suita, Osaka, lasting 183 days from March 14th to September 13th, 1970. 77 countries participated in the exposition, the theme of which was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." Various pavilions and businesses were built for the event, and at the time it was the largest national event in history.

Ah, the Japan World Exposition that was held in 1970.

I really wanted to go the American Pavilion to see the moon rock¹³. But, as I'm sure you know, Iwata-san, the crowds were huge... 13. Moon rock: the rock brought back from the moon's surface by Apollo 12 as part of the US's Apollo project. The moon rock was on display in the American Pavilion, and caused massive crowds as people waited in line for hours to view it. The command ship of Apollo 8 was also on display in the American Pavilion.

The American Pavilion had the longest line of any pavilion.

Right. My father went ballistic in front of the American Pavilion. He said, "We'll never get in, no matter how many hours we wait."

(laughs)

Then he said that we should go look at other places, and took us to all the pavilions with no lines.

The places without lines were the unpopular ones, right?

So I don't even remember which pavilions we went to. (laughs)

Hahaha. (laughs)

I really wanted to go to the American Pavilion and the Robot Pavilion¹⁴, but I couldn't go to either of them...I think you can call that heartbreaking, don't you? (laughs) 14: Robot Pavilion: Fujipan Robot Pavilion. One of the exhibition pavilions. The pavilion drew a lot of attention because it was produced by Osamu Tezuka. (One of Japan's foremost manga and animation producers, deceased)

I'd call that heartbreaking. After all, it's a painful event that you still remember, even though it happened 45 years ago (laughs).

Actually, I've got another heartbreaking incident in my childhood. My father wouldn't buy me the toy robot I wanted, and I sobbed all the way home. That's how much I loved robots.

So if you like robots, you must have been into Gundam¹⁵ too. 15. Gundam: Mobile Suit Gundam. A robot anime produced by Sunrise Inc. 43 episodes in total, running from April 7th, 1979 to January 26th, 1980. Afterwards, a film and a new TV series were made.

Of course I was. My son calls me a Gun-Ota. (laughs)

A Gundam Otaku? (laughs)

That's right.

So in other words, it might have been that those heartbreaking experiences—not being able to see the moon rock, not getting that toy robot—may have become the driving force for you to lose yourself in the world of sci-fi.

That's true. On the other hand, if I had gotten into the American Pavilion, my life might have turned out a little different. So, after those experiences, I lived the life of a boy who loved sci-fi, including Gundam and beyond.

Sci-fi often has a lot of contradictions in the storylines, so it's easy to joke about it, and when you start talking about that, it just makes things even more fun.

That's true. When I was...I think it was in middle school...there was a sci-fi magazine called Starlog¹⁶. I read sci-fi magazines and armed myself with all the knowledge I could. I really started to express myself then, thinking up my own stories and things like that. 16. Starlog: A monthly sci-fi magazine published in the US by Starlog Group Inc. The Japanese Edition of Starlog had 100 issues, published from August 1978 to February 1987.

You took in a lot and then started to put out something using everything you'd gathered.

Right.

So, earlier you said that you liked to fiddle with machines. What kind of things did you do?

I took apart home electronics. You did that too, right, Iwata-san?

Of course, I loved doing that. (laughs)

But I did more dangerous things like taking apart the stereo and the TV. (laughs)

Televisions do have high voltage parts inside, so that's pretty dangerous. (laughs)

We had a really nice, big stereo in the house, and when I took it apart, I couldn't put it back together. (laughs) My father was so angry.

So that was another time your father got angry with you?

He sure was! If I remember right, I think he hung me upside down in the closet! (laughs)

Ahahaha. (laughs) How old were you?

I must have been in kindergarten.

Kindergarten? That's pretty precocious, to be able to take apart stereos in kindergarten. (laughs)

I was the kind of kid who couldn't see a screw without wanting to unscrew it. I was really curious about what was inside.

Did you fiddle around with electric circuits?

I don't know if you can call it electric circuits, but I did play with those something or other blocks...

Oh, denshi blocks¹⁷. 17. Denshi Blocks - These electronic experimentation toys were produced by Gakken Co., Ltd. (Current: Gakken Holdings Co., Ltd.). The blocks contained electrical components such as transistors and resistors, and allowed children to learn about the basics of electrical circuits while playing.

Right, denshi blocks. I played with those all the time.

Denshi blocks were really expensive, so my parents wouldn't buy me them. (laughs) You know, Takahashi-san, even though we're slightly different ages, we've had a lot of the same experiences.

That's true.

I never thought we'd be talking about Expo '70. (laughs)

Same. (laughs)

I think there are a lot of people whose lives were changed by being able to experience a bit of the future at the Expo, even if it wasn't your moon rock experience.

There must be, especially among people born from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.

I was born at the very end of the '50s and you were born in the '60s, so we did have similar tastes in childhood. But In my case, I got into computers, and when I was a high school student living in Sapporo, I used programmable calculators¹⁸ and made games, which really came in handy later on when I started to work on video games. 18. Programmable calculators: A calculator which uses a program, much like a computer, to make difficult calculations automatically.

Right.

On the other hand, you were exposed to all kinds of sci-fi works, and that led to drawing pictures and thinking up stories, and that in turn helped a lot later on when you turned to expression through video games.

I believe so.