Iwata Asks is a series of interviews conducted by former Nintendo Global President Satoru Iwata with key creators behind the making of Nintendo games and hardware.





Kirby's Return to Dream Land

With Eyes Ablaze

Iwata

Thank you for waiting, Yamagami-san.

Yamagami

No, not at all. (laughs)

Iwata

Over the last 11 years, this is the first Kirby game you have worked on. Could you tell us what you thought when you and Hattori-san became involved with the project and what you thought you would tell the team in order to complete it?

Yamagami

Sure. When first approached about it, I couldn't understand why the three previous games had been canceled. I thought if I could unravel that mystery, I would be able to come up with a measure against it.

But looking at each of the games, they were all fairly complete. Even if I gathered info on why they got cancelled, I couldn't quite grasp the reason. So I stopped looking for the reason and decided to work with the parts that already existed. Then I tapped Hattori-san, who's good at lining up parts.

Iwata

Then Hattori-san came on board.

Yamagami

That's right. And then I added (Kazuhiro) Yoshikawa-san12, who's good at action games, and paired the two. When development began, since the previous three attempts had been canceled, the three of us were very thorough about trying to convey to HAL Laboratory exactly what we had in mind.

Above all, we wanted a product that would, without fail, go on sale. Meetings began about March last year, and at that time we were very clear, saying, "We're going to put it on the market in August or September next year. It's already decided, so we have to complete it."

Kumazaki, Nakano, Kamitake

(laughs) 12. Kazuhiro Yoshikawa: Software Development Department, Entertainment Analysis & Development Division.

Iwata

Yamagami-san, you were a prophet.

Yamagami

That's right. Instead of giving them the big concept early on, at first we said, "Make a single-player game." We knew we definitely wanted a game for four players, but we thought laying it all on them at once would be too much of a burden, so we had them focus on a single-player game at first, and then gradually introduced the multi-player element.

Then, we tried to express ourselves as best we could with regard to the specs that were done, saying, "We've come this far," and, "Considering the stage we're at, it's looking good." Like constantly mentioning how much distance is left in a marathon. Exactly. We were thorough about conveying our feeling as clearly as possible that it was going well. We wanted them to feel how complete it was. All right, Hattori-san. You weren't working on this game the whole time, so how did it feel like all of a sudden they handed you a bunch of parts and made the unreasonable demand that you do something with them? I started under banks of threatening clouds. I was hearing from everyone at the company how three games had ended incomplete and nothing had been finished for over ten years, so I felt…threatened. (laughs)

Everyone

(laughs)

Hattori

I was a little scared at first. I thought, "I'll pull an all-nighter with everyone to get myself fired up!" But once I got started, I'd never worked on a project before that I could just leave to the developers with such assurance.

Iwata

Wow. That's a compliment. (laughs)

Kamuzaki

Oh, thank you! (laughs)

Hattori

I was confident from the first meetings that it would be all right. I thought, "This'll definitely get finished. There's no way it won't."

Iwata

You were all under Yamagami-san's influence. (laughs)

Hattori

Oh, I suppose so. (laughs) But I really couldn't think of a reason why it wouldn't. And that wasn't just a logical conclusion, it was because of the team's exuberance. I mean, after three failures, their eyes were ablaze!

Everyone

(laughing loudly)

Yamagami

Yes, yes, they were! (laughs)

Iwata

Yes, the fourth time, you feel the past as a weight and lose motivation. Just when you were thinking that, a team of people overflowing with love for Kirby, with eyes ablaze, tackled their work fast and furious.

Hattori

Yes! They showed us all kinds of things, saying, "Isn't this awesome?!" (laughs) So I was dead certain from the very beginning that they would complete it. To illustrate, the only two requests we had to make were that they keep the Super Abilities and allow four players to all play Kirby.

Iwata

Why did you request those two things?

Hattori

Because we were certain so early on that they wouldn't have any problem completing everything else. The basic components of a Kirby game had built up over the past 11 years, so we could really feel confident in leaving it to them.

Yamagami

Here's one little episode from early in development. Talking with Hattori-san on the train on the way to HAL Laboratory, I said we should raise the issue of making it so all four players could use Kirby, but Hattori-san said that would be too much too suddenly, so we should just suggest each player controlling a different character. The idea was that if the game turned out to be fun, they would want to make it so all four could play Kirby. So at first, we kept all four players playing Kirby under our hats.

Iwata

You talked about that on the four-hour trip there.

Yamagami

Yes. Then, once development had made some progress and we brought up all four players playing Kirby, they were like, "We were talking about how we'd like to do that!" Like Hattori-san mentioned earlier, everyone on the team was exuberant, so we waited until they naturally wanted to do it themselves.

Hattori

Everyone wants to play Kirby.

Kawase

If all four players couldn't play Kirby, then when brothers played together, the little brother would never get to play Kirby. The older brother would always take him.

Kamitake

Like, "I wanna inhale things, too!" (laughs)

Kamuzaki

That's right. Inhaling and spitting each other out and copying each other's abilities are things the other characters can't do.

Hattori

That's what's fun about the game. Competition rather than cooperation gets people fired up.

Iwata

Little scuffles within a broader context of cooperation is classic. Why did you request the Super Abilities?

Yamagami

Because they look so awesome! (laughs) Those scenes look so great that I wanted to put them in the ads. How fun they are comes across just by looking at them. But they're powerful abilities that change the nature of the game, so we asked HAL Laboratory to consider toning them down a little, saying, "Just as an effect is fine, so could you put them in for fun?"

Kamuzaki

With regard to the Super Abilities, they weren't in the first proposal that I submitted. The Super Abilities were in the specs for the third lost game, so we had done every experiment we could think of at the time, but it didn't come together. In the end, we included them, but at first I was scared to try.

Iwata

Those are really hard for designers. The cost of creating them is incredibly high.

Kamitake

Yes. You can do anything using a Super Ability. You can destroy landforms, and if there's something huge, you can burn it up. Ideas were coming to us right and left, but actually implementing them was hard.

Iwata

Am I correct in thinking that each ability is customized specially for each scene?

Kamuzaki

Yes. You can use them on any stage, but there are special stages on which you can make extra use of the Super Abilities. We cut down on the frequency and types, focused on power and surprise, and took care not to destroy the overall game's Kirby atmosphere and tempo.

Nakano

It's great the way you're on the edge of your seat wondering what will show up next.

Kamuzaki

Yes. Action on this large scale doesn't exist earlier in the series, so I think in the end there's a big value to generating surprise at how far we went.

Iwata

From what I can tell based on what I've played, when I'm playing and use a Super Ability, it feels like you have truly been considerate, and I'm happy.

Kamuzaki

It's an effect to raise up Kirby as if to say, "He's a hero!" (laughs) And by the way, toward the end, we prepared something challenging even for Super Abilities, so look forward to it!