Home > USA Today Interview with Shigeru Miyamoto!
A portion of a USA Today interview with Shigeru Miyamoto...
Q: What is it about Mario that resonates so well with players?
SM: When we create games, the gamer really is the main character. In that regard it may not really matter who the main character is onscreen. But you know, Mario is someone who has become very familiar and I think it is that people are comfortable with becoming Mario. … Mario really has grown and changed and evolved with the evolution of digital technology. The new technology is fresh and exciting and the next thing you know it becomes familiar and Mario follows that. He's a familiar character, but he is also fresh because he is always doing new things based on what the technology allows him to do.
Q: Mario is Italian. Or we assume he is Italian, was there something behind that?
SM: As a kid, I was a big comic fan and I liked foreign comics as well. So I drew some characters that had more western type features with a little bigger noses and what not. Now with Mario, I think with Mario Bros. we had a setting of course that was underground, so I just decided Mario is a plumber. Let's put him in New York and he can be Italian. There was really no other deep thought other than that.
Q: What is your most favorite Mario game and why?
SM: Super Mario World (1993) is something that included of course all the action you saw in Super Mario Bros. but it also had the map features, so it also had that element of players having to think about where they were going and what they were going to do next. I also think that it is a game that developed a large number of staff people who became producers and directors.
Q: So I assume we have not seen the last of Mario. Can you say anything about his future adventures on the Wii or Nintendo 3DS?
SM: Of course, we are working on a Mario product for the Nintendo 3DS, I can tell you that. One of the things we have looked at, you know when you are in a 3D world but on a 2D screen it is difficult sometimes to tell distance, whether an object you are looking at is in the foreground, in the background, is the object above you? Sometimes it's a little bit harder. So it's going to be really exciting for us to make that easier for the player to understand using the Nintendo 3DS technology. And for the first time ever Mario will be on a handheld system with an analog stick for controls. That's new.
Q: And is there anything more you can say about the upcoming Zelda game?
SM: We haven't prepared any press releases since the last one so there is nothing I can reveal that is new other than to say we are working on it and it is going along like gangbusters.
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