A little while back Shigesato Itoi, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Satoru Iwata had another one of their discussions about games, creativity, and all that stuff for another installment of “Iwata Asks”. This one is meant to be about the new Zelda Skyward Sword game, but it applies to stuff in general more than anything.

You can check out the discussion in English here.

Thanks to Gill for the tip!

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This time we’re treated to an interview in the January 31, 1997 issue of Famitsu. In it, Shigesato Itoi and Satoru Iwata discuss stuff from the ill-fated Nintendo 64 version of MOTHER 3. Here’s an excerpt:

Nagata Moving on, what’s the deal with the battles that Itoi’s always raving about like a madman?

Itoi How rude! (laughs) I’d like to talk about what it is, but I can’t yet.

Iwata It’s still in the testing stages. For example, MOTHER 2 had the monsters visibly walking around the field map. And when you touched one of the monsters, you entered the battle. So first and foremost we wanted to expand on that. In short, we’d like to allow strategies against the monsters right on the field. Not so battles become obligations, but so it becomes more fun.

Definitely check out the full thing here! And be sure to visit Chewy’s site and cheer her on

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The article discusses (among other things):

• Itoi’s aversion to assigning “themes” to video games
• Itoi’s original intent to make MOTHER 3 in 2-D
• The extent of completion of MOTHER 3 even by the fall of 1996
• Itoi’s inspiration for the story of MOTHER 3 and desire to make a detective novel in game form
• A Mr. Saturn spinoff game!?
• Itoi’s phone calls to his game designer about MOTHER 3 in the middle of the night–before MOTHER 2 was even done
• The origin of the name of the Nintendo 64
• Itoi’s personal relationship with Nintendo

You can check out Chewy’s article translation on her site here. Now give her all your Giygas cookies!

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Translator extraordinaire and resident 1101 expert Chewy has translated an old Shigesato Itoi interview from 1994 – 17 years ago yesterday, in fact.

This particular interview was in a magazine called Hippon Super!, which was a gaming magazine with a more mature twist than conventional gaming magazines at the time. That might be why this particular interview sounds so different from the rest – in fact in some parts it’s hard to even understand what’s being talked about.

But when it comes to hopeless poverty like that, I say live your life only alongside those who are poor. So to all the people who love the rainbow-colored games they’ve bought before, well… all I can do is apologize.

Even so, he covers a variety of topics, including MOTHER 2 design choices, Shigeru Miyamoto, Final Fantasy, beer, sushi, and more. Check out the interview here!

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You might know Hirokazu Tanaka as one of the two lead musicians for the first two MOTHER games – he also did the music programming for both if I recall. He later went on to do other great things, too.

Anyway, 1UP.com has an interesting article up in which Tanaka talks about EarthBound/MOTHER and its fanbase, with quotes like:

“Mother fans are pretty unique. They don’t really overlap with Zelda or Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest fans. So, they don’t bond too much.”

It’s not often that Western media gets to talk to EarthBound’s creators like this, so I gotta hand it to 1UP for this interview! Apparently, the full, super-long interview with him will be posted at a later date, but for now check out the article here.

Thanks to ShirowWolf for the tip!

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Takano: Each character has his or her own role. For example, if you help Peppy the hare, he’ll give you hints here and there, so it works out to your advantage. But if you help Falco the falcon…

Miyamoto: He’s like, “Can’t you go bother someone else?” (laughs)

Takano: That’s what he says, but then he will help out Fox.

Iwata: He’ll help out in a pinch.

Takano: Yeah. And the frog Slippy will show a meter with the bosses’ weaknesses, so if you save your companions, it all comes back to benefit you.

Iwata: That’s a function, too.

Takano: Yes, it is. But it won’t do to emphasize functions too much, so I tried to write lines that are as cool as possible. And I had Mr. Shigesato Itoi look at them once before completion.

Iwata: Oh? What did he say?

Takano: I doubt he remembers it, but I thought he would say, “This is good.” Instead, he said, “It’s like a historical drama.” (laughs)

Iwata: You were trying to make science fiction, but it came out like a historical drama? (laughs)

Takano: Yeah. (laughs) In other words, there were lines like, “Take this with you to Hell!” that everyone would feel comfortable with.

Iwata: Oh, I see. You used set phrases like those in historical dramas.

Takano: Yes. Itoi-san was pointing out how there were a lot of old-fashioned lines like that. But I thought that instead of using completely unfamiliar lines, it would make a bigger impression on the fans to use somewhat tried-and-true lines such as “I’ve been waiting for you!”

“Historical drama” here refers to shows and such set in old samurai days, if it isn’t clear.

Thanks muchly to Tansunn for the tip!

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Shigesato Itoi’s main job nowadays is mostly just chatting with and interviewing all kinds of people, and today I stumbled across a recent multi-part discussion he had with an illustrator and book designer (Ayumi Ohashi), and at one point he briefly brings up some MOTHER stuff.

(context: Ohashi is talking about working with different types of people and how different people will act differently toward design ideas she would propose to them)

Itoi: Yes, I know exactly what you mean. Working with other people in a team is always that way.

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Itoi: That’s how it always is. When we were working on games called “MOTHER”, I decided who I wanted to team up with because one person had said, “Programmers aren’t allowed to say ‘no’.” Basically, that programmers can’t say, “We can’t do that,” to any ideas we would come up with.

After hearing this from one of the programmers – who happens to be the president of Nintendo now – I said, “Oh?! I can just tell you to do whatever I want?” To which he responded, “Of course. That IS your job, after all, Mr. Itoi.”

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Itoi: He told me, “Only at the very end, as a last resort, should one say, ‘We can’t do that.’” Having him say that made everything so much easier on me.

He’s of course talking about Satoru Iwata, who had been brought in to save MOTHER 2 from cancellation with his programming skills. Now that I think about it, Iwata also helped get MOTHER 3 released on the GBA too after the N64 game’s cancellation. He’s like the series’ savior I guess

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Part 1:

Part 2:

It’s all in Japanese, so there probably isn’t much to get out of these videos for most people. Like I said, I already translated most of the good stuff in that other fancier video, but there are a few little things here and there that got left out. I wish I had the time to subtitle the video, but alas, I don’t have the time for it. I’ll write up a summary of the video sometime though!

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I’m a little late to the party, but some weeks back Chewy posted her translation of an interview Shigesato Itoi did months before MOTHER 1′s release in 1989. Check it out here! Here’s a random snippet:

Plans for MOTHER first took shape two years ago, but at that time all I was thinking about was whether I’d be able to have someone make a game for me. I called up a friend and asked if what I had in mind would make a good game. And then later on someone at Nintendo just so happened to call me in regards to some other work. I knew that was my big chance, so I brought them my own proposal as well. So it turned out that my making a Nintendo game was entirely coincidental. (laughs)

Give Chewy your thanks, she’s a translating machine!

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Recently, Roo (the cool dude who made that EarthBound documentary and currently owns an EarthBound Zero prototype) met up with Reid, the co-founder of Starmen.Net and the guy behind Fangamer to talk about EarthBound, the EarthBound community, and all sorts of stuff. Some of the topics include:

• Nintendo Power’s coverage of EarthBound and buying EarthBound on release day
• How Starmen.Net came about
• The many community campaigns
• Nintendo and the community
• Why EarthBound resonates with fans so much, especially over time
• Shigesato Itoi and the EarthBound community
• The MOTHER 3 fan translation’s history and untold stories
• And a bunch more stuff

Check out the video if you get some time, there’s a lot of stuff in there you probably never knew about!

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