Shigeru-Miyamoto posts(Subscribe to this feed)

Ahhh, grammar school -- there was nothing quite like trying to hide that GBA under the desk in fear of Mrs. Rosencrantz confiscating our portal into Pokémon Fire Red. Back then, handheld games were little more than an obvious distraction in the eyes of our ruler-equipped teachers, but Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto plans on changing all of that. Speaking with the Associated Press in an interview recently, the legendary game developer explained his latest devotion: bringing the Nintendo DS and Wii into schools. He said that the DS would be making its way into "junior high and elementary schools in Japan starting in the new school year" (beginning this April).

Miyamoto didn't get too specific on how his company's consoles would help Japanese students with their education, only detailing it as part of Nintendo's initiative to expand the audience for gaming consoles. We have to imagine that the kids won't be using them to decide whether or not Resident Evil 4 on Wii is the best version (besides, we all already know that it is). Thankfully for our unborn children, Miyamoto didn't mention any amorphous plans to bring gaming consoles into North American schools just yet. Presumably they'll have to play it fast and loose like we did -- keeps 'em sharp!

The Official Nintendo Magazine UK is hanging out at tonight's BAFTA Video Game awards, and has punched into its Twitter account that not only did it get to talk to one Shigeru Miyamoto, but that he's confirmed Pikmin 3 is in development and "well under way." Over a year ago, the game was rumored to be released a week-and-a-half from now, but we'll presume it's not quite that far along in development.

Still, good to hear that the game is still going on, considering that we've only seen the barest sprouts of information about it so far. Maybe Miyamoto should give his team a 30-day time limit within which to finish the game, and see how they feel about that.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced that it'll be awarding Shigeru Miyamoto with the storied BAFTA Fellowship award, which is "the highest accolade the Academy can bestow on an individual for their creative work." Miyamoto will receive the award in a ceremony next month. It's a pretty high honor for his work in film and television, which includes this Mega64 video and this old kids' television series.

Oh wait, no -- it's actually part of the British Academy's Video Games Awards, and it is honoring him as the creator of Donkey Kong, Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. That makes much more sense. Nobody should be giving anyone awards for the Super Mario Bros. movie.

During an acceptance speech at the Japan Media Arts Festival this past weekend, Shigeru Miyamoto casually referred to unannounced Nintendo hardware and at least one new Wii project he's working on, which uses the MotionPlus peripheral. Of course, since Miyamoto wasn't making any formal announcements, that's all he said on those fronts, according to Andriasang's summary of a 4Gamer report.

Miyamoto was onstage accepting a Special Achievement Prize when he revealed that, in addition to Zelda, he's working on an unspecified number of other projects that use MotionPlus. While unconfirmed, the "Special Achievement" might have been awarded for Miyamoto's work in the field of vague announcements.

[Via Andriasang]

It may have been a quarter century since Mark Cerny's groundbreaking arcade game Marble Madness was first developed, but this year the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences will give the influential developer an induction into its Hall of Fame. On February 18 in Las Vegas, Cerny will become the 13th member of the AIAS' small club -- a club that includes development bigwigs like Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto, among others.

For those of you who don't know, Cerny's been hard at work behind the scenes of some of our favorite games throughout the years. The developer's had a hand in everything from Sonic 2 through God of War 3, with his influential "Cerny Method" of tenacious development being passed down to modern day big boys like Insomniac's Ted Price and Naughty Dog's Evan Wells. "Mark has left an indelible mark on all of the games he's been a part of, the developers that he's collaborated with, and most importantly the individuals that he's worked along-side of," Wells said in the press release (warning: PDF link). For Cerny's part, he said he's "thrilled to accept this award" and humbly offloaded some respect to past colleagues that he's "had the pleasure to work with over the years." We're looking forward to witnessing the "Cerny Method" in action during his acceptance speech, wherein he only allows himself 30 seconds to catch our interest before reevaluating the entire thing.

In the most recent edition of Iwata Asks, Nintendo prez Satoru Iwata gathers up Takashi Tezuka and Toshihiko Nakago for a thorough discussion of their time with the company, the many projects they've worked on and their 25-year-long partnership with Shigeru Miyamoto. Let's break it down: Takashi Tezuka and Toshihiko Nakago both started at Nintendo around 1984, helping to shape everything from Balloon Fight to Super Mario Bros. These guys were part of the team that developed Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda -- at the same time.

During the 10-page chat, a plethora of interesting tidbits are revealed about some of the game industry's most influential Nintendo titles. Did you know that Zelda was initially designed as a dungeon game without an overworld? Or, how about the revelation that World 1-1 was created last, after the rest of the levels in Super Mario Bros., and designed implicitly to teach the game to non-gamers? The chat even gets into the lurid sleeping arrangements of Miyamota-san and Nakago-san while on business trips for ExciteBike (spoiler: it's not that lurid).

Eiji Aonuma has spent a lot of time developing Legend of Zelda games. In fact, he's been in a managerial role on the franchise ever since the series' arguably most popular installment, The Ocarina of Time. So when Mario creator (and his boss) Shigeru Miyamoto asked Aonuma and his team to develop an "Ura Zelda" (a flipped version of Ocarina of Time -- what would eventually become the Master Quest), Aonuma protested. Miyamoto's compromise, though, instead turned out to be a much greater challenge -- produce a sequel to OoT within one year.

"We were supposed to make its sequel in a year ... at first, we had absolutely no idea what sort of thing we were supposed to make, and we just kept expanding our plans," Aonuma told Nintendo prez Satoru Iwata during a recent Iwata Asks column."in the beginning, it was all trial and error ... ultimately, we adopted the 'three-day system,' and made it so that, if you couldn't clear the game inside of three days, the world was destroyed." Aonuma claims this concept was what allowed Majora's Mask to be created and released just 18 months after OoT came out. He also adds that lessons he learned from the development of Majora's Mask -- from having to remember a sequence of events in order to proceed, to "deep, compact play" -- helped to shape the development of the most recent Zelda release, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

We'd like to say that Aonuma will have a break from the series after serving as producer on Spirit Tracks, but he's the man in charge of the upcoming LoZ game for the Wii. We're sorry, Mr. Aonuma! Keep on truckin'!


[Via Gamasutra]

Though the latest edition of Iwata Asks is technically focused on New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the first few pages of the interview go off on a tangent about the overall-clad plumber's roots which you might find interesting. For instance, did you know that Miyamoto's original plan for Donkey Kong was a video game based on Popeye? It's true -- it was only after he was denied the rights to put the muscly-armed sailor man in a video game that he created the most prolific video game character of all time.

Of course, just like a timid middle school student, Mario was forced to go through some awkward formative phases. Miyamoto revealed that in the original design for Donkey Kong, Mario -- who, at the time, was referred to as "Mr. Video" -- was unable to jump. Man, we feel like we just gazed into some kind of creepy alternate universe.

"It is me, Mr. Video. I'm going to slowly walk over there, all the while praying that I don't encounter any ground-based enemies."

In the upcoming issue of Edge Magazine, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto discusses a variety of topics with the UK gaming magazine. Develop Online got their hands on a copy of the magazine already, revealing a rather ... revealing quote from the father of Donkey Kong. "Nintendo has become one of those companies that graduates from colleges and good universities really want to work for ... I often say to [Nintendo head] Mr. Iwata: 'If I was applying for a job here today, I, with my actual college degree, would probably not have been employed by Nintendo."

Though he adds that he "might pick up on [applicants] and try to find out something really different within them which you can't judge just by a college degree," it worries us greatly that today's equivalent of the man who helped to birth some of the game industry's landmark franchises may end up unemployed or even dissuaded from game development altogether. All alone! Without a home! We imagine somewhat like a rolling stone!

... Our apologies. That was quite enough.

Much like he did for the just-launched New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Shigeru Miyamoto has announced that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be "really difficult." But will it be so difficult as to require Nintendo's new in-game life preserver, the Super Guide? Miyamoto isn't so sure yet. "In general," Miyamoto told Official Nintendo Magazine, "wherever and whenever appropriate, I think we will want to incorporate that kind of thing, but I cannot commit to anything specific right now."

Here's our absolutely ridiculous prediction: Miyamoto and crew are going to do with this sequel what they did with Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Since Galaxy 2 is basically another level pack for an existing game, the team is going to make it almost impossible to complete.

Of course, that won't happen. More likely, Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be on par with the first game in terms of challenge, but will include the Super Guide to stay consistent with Nintendo's current strategy.

In a voluminous response to an investor question about moving to support high-definition output, Nintendo executives laid out their current thoughts on how and when to make such a move in their consoles. Of course, these thoughts shouldn't be taken as a definite indicator of Nintendo's plans, but they might suggest where the company could be headed in the next generation. And if these statements do reflect future events, Nintendo's next console will be HD-capable, but won't require that standard for every game.

Genyo Takeda, GM of Nintendo's Integrated Research & Development Division, said that "moving to HD appears to me a natural flow" given the adoption of HD by television programming. "If we can find out the most appropriate medium, between SD and HD, and flexibly move around them depending on the game's contents, it will be good, I think," he suggested. Shigeru Miyamoto agreed, noting that HD wasn't the most important consideration for something like Wii Fit. "Won't HD be better for the games like Pikmin? The developers should choose the most appropriate graphical format depending on the software they make."

Nintendo's resident legend, Shigeru Miyamoto, has revealed that the next installment in the Legend of Zelda series on Wii will make use of Wii MotionPlus for more realistic sword combat and targeting. "In this (installment of the series), we're using MotionPlus to make you feel much more like you're actually fighting while holding a sword in your hand," Miyamoto disclosed during an October 30 Q&A session, as translated by GameLife.

"In the previous game, you aimed at things by pointing at the screen, but this time we'll use MotionPlus to create a much more convenient targeting system and a more pleasurable playing experience," Miyamoto added.

Despite these revelations, Nintendo has yet to officially state whether Wii MotionPlus will be an option or a requirement for playing the game. When this next Zelda was announced during E3 2009, Miyamoto could only say that MotionPlus-exclusivity was "possible." These gameplay elements -- especially the swordplay -- only make it seem more likely.

[Via GameLife]

Though Square Enix has yet to say anything concrete about releasing Dragon Quest IX outside of Japan, Nintendo has discussed its own plans to market the title. Last year, Satoru Iwata mentioned his intention to promote the game in the West, and during this week's financial results Q&A session, senior managing director Shinji Hatano reiterated that intention.

"Hatano said that helping to sell Dragon Quest IX outside Japan is part of a larger effort on the part of Nintendo to partner with software makers to sell their games for Nintendo hardware," GameLife summarized. Maybe eventually, Square Enix will announce this game.

Also on the subject of Dragon Quest IX, at the same event, Shigeru Miyamoto praised DQIX's communication mode, which allows players to collect and interact with others' characters passively. "Dragon Quest IX's passerby communication has caused the number of people walking around outside using their DS systems to increase greatly, and I'm thinking that I could probably make something unique like that," he said. And then he said "Also, recently, we got a cat." Hint, hint.

[Via GameLife]

For being a Nintendo property, the Star Fox series hasn't performed, well -- it hasn't performed like a Nintendo property. Gaming legend Shigeru Miyamoto recently divulged to MTV Multiplayer that the series has been on the decline since its inception, with steadily declining sales for each new iteration.

But, despite all of that, Miyamoto is still a "big fan" of the series. He says that every time a new entry releases, he's "hoping people will enjoy it as much as I do," but that -- in Japan, at least -- the series' popularity has not met with Nintendo's expectations over its lifespan. It's understandable, really; when a company puts out the best-selling "game" of the last decade, it might find it hard to justify putting out something that isn't guaranteed to create giant piles of cash.

It sounds like Nintendo's plans for the next console are going to continue largely in the direction they've always been going (you know, the one that has resulted in millions of dollars). Shigeru Miyamoto told Popular Mechanics that, despite not having a solid plan yet for upcoming hardware, motion controls are likely to stick around.

"With both the Wii remote itself and Wii MotionPlus, what we've been able to do is introduce an interface that is both I think appealing and at the right price for a broad audience," Miyamoto said. "And while we don't have any concrete plans for what we'll be doing with hardware in the future, what I can say is that, my guess is that because we found this interface to be so interesting, I think it would be likely that we would try to make that same functionality perhaps more compact and perhaps even more cost-efficient."

This could result in a single unit that combines the base Wiimote functionality with the extra accelerometer of the MotionPlus, which makes sense. Or, more excitingly, Miyamoto could be talking about the system being more "compact" and "cost-efficient." Either way, it's starting to look less and less likely that the Wii 2 will be just like its competitors, but with Mario games on it.

In much more important news, Miyamoto said that he'd never heard of The Wizard. Bill Trinen's got a night of translating horrible Fred Savage dialogue ahead of him!