Home > Eiji Aonuma Interview; Official Nintendo Magazine!
Here is an excerpt of an interview with Eiji Aonuma:
ONM: How did you manage to release another Zelda adventure on DS so soon after Phantom Hourglass?
Eiji Aonuma: First of all, we have two separate teams, one working on the Wii version of Zelda and one on the DS version of Zelda, so it is not the case that now we have finished the DS game we are moving forward to the Wii version. No, we have already been working on the Wii version for some time and right now at Nintendo in Japan they are doing their very best in order to complete the product as soon as possible.
Talking about Spirit Tracks though, when we completed development of Phantom Hourglass, we decided we liked the touch screen system so much that we wanted to use the same scheme once again. Our mission was to try to launch this new DS Zelda game in a very short time period.
ONM: So even when you were working on Phantom Hourglass you were stockpiling ideas that you wanted to use in Spirit Tracks?
Eiji Aonuma: Yes. In fact, when were developing certain aspects of Phantom Hourglass, such as the wi-fi battle mode where Link is fighting against the phantom character, I thought that kind of system would be able to be used in some additional ways, not just for the battle mode. And that's actually what we did for Spirit Tracks.
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