Home > Zelda Dev Team on the Creation of Divided Heart Containers!
Nakago: Tezuka-san, do you remember the discussion we had about dividing the heart containers into quarters?
Tezuka: Umm… No, I can't recall that one.
Nakago: (laughs) With Zelda, the number of items you could collect was very small which presented us with a real headache. I recall a time when I discussed this issue with Tezuka-san for a whole day, all the while playing a puzzle game.
Iwata: So you held discussions about increasing the number of items while playing a puzzle game? (laughs)
Nakago: Right. Then Miyamoto-san went home without saying a word. When he got to work the next morning, he said out of the blue: "I can see exactly what the result of your work yesterday was."
Iwata: Did he mean it ironically, because you'd spent the whole day playing a puzzle game?
Nakago: No, no, it wasn't like that. While playing the puzzle game, we had actually drawn a heart divided into quarters on the white board. When Miyamoto-san saw that, he was able to grasp that image of the pieces of heart without us having to explain it to him.
Iwata: Ah, I see. So by dividing the hearts into quarters, you could make up for the shortage of items.
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