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Iwata Asks tidbits - Pokemon Snap didn't originally have Pokemon, Mario could star in an Epic Yarn-like game
The following tidbits come from the Kirby’s Epic Yarn Iwata Asks feature that we linked up last week…
On Pokemon Snap: “Originally, Pokémon Snap for the Nintendo 64 system wasn’t a Pokémon game, but rather a normal game in which you took photos, but the motivation for playing the game wasn’t clear. We wondered what players would enjoy taking pictures of, and later on we made a somewhat forced switch to taking pictures of Pokémon. - Iwata
“I was involved as a designer, so when characters other than the ones we had designed were used, I had a slightly negative reaction to it. But listening to your discussion with the developers from Good-Feel (Kirby’s Epic Yarn developers), I learned that they were lost early on in development, which was the same as with us before. That time, adopting the Pokémon world clarified what we should do and the direction we should head, and I came to like Pokémon, so I felt like that had saved us. So this time, while I could understand how everyone at Good-Feel felt, I started thinking about how I could get them to like Kirby.” - Hal’s Masanobu Yamamoto
On the yarn idea going to other games: “When I first saw them (the game’s visuals), I thought they were perfect for Kirby. I think there’s a lot of potential for expanding this style to other series, like making a game called Mario’s Epic Yarn. That’s how well I thought the foundation had been laid, so I was really happy that from among all the characters available it was Kirby who was chosen. I also thought, “Aw man!” Envy as a creator that we hadn’t thought of it first followed my initial joy.” - Takashi Ikegami, manager at Hal