John Carmack playing through Super Paper Mario, really respects Nintendo, but doesn't think id will make a game for Wii

A portion of a TomsGames interview with John Carmack…

TG: During the id press conference, you mentioned that you and your son Ryan spend a lot of time playing the Wii Nintendo E3 2008 Announcements . What games are you playing with him?

JOHN CARMACK: Right now we’re on Super Paper Mario, and we have two more pure hearts to go. We’ve played a lot of Mario games, and it’s been great. I even went out and bought an old 8-bit Nintendo to play the original Super Mario in its original form. It’s wonderful what Nintendo is doing where you can still get that old game on the Wii or DS and its much nicer with cooler graphics. I so wanted to do that with our games and do kind of a Quake II remix or something.

TG: Do you guys play the DS as well?

JOHN CARMACK: We play a lot of Mario Kart and Super Mario Brothers, but he usually has me play the hard levels.

TG: Do you see yourself doing a game for the Wii anytime soon?

JOHN CARMACK: Well, id Tech 5 will not work on the Wii. About twice a year someone brings up doing a Commander Keen title or port, but it’s probably not going to be happening. The Wii is one of those markets where Nintendo owns both the hardware and the software, but part of that is because they make such damn good products. So it’s the toughest platform for third party developers. We don’t have a software or content base ideally suited for it. So it doesn’t really play to our strengths and we’re pretty busy with other stuff right now. I’m thrilled that Nintendo has had this kind of success because they took some risky bets, and it’s always nice some bold thinking pay off for them. But I don’t think we’ll be on the platform.

Carmack seems to be such an honest, nice, genuine guy. The more I hear from him, the more I like. Good luck on getting the rest of those pure hearts! Click here for the full interview