Blast from the Past - Newly-translated interview reveals how Square struggled with Super Mario RPG

Talk about a time capsule! An interview from all the way back in 1995 features Super Mario RPG director and head of Square Development Section #6, Chihiro Fujioka, talking about how Square was struggling to bring Mario into the world of RPGS.

We had periodic meetings with Miyamoto, and he thought the majority of our ideas were interesting. He would rarely say a certain idea was “bad”; rather, he would point out how if we changed this, or re-arranged that, it would be more interesting, and more “Mario”-like. He gave us a lot of advice like that, which we used to adjust things in the game.

Another thing was that, before we even started making Mario RPG specifically, we had this pre-conception at Square that RPGs==weapons. As our conversations progressed with Miyamoto, however, it became clear that this would be weird for a Mario game, that it didn’t seem to fit. When we realized that, it was a huge change in the direction of the development. We had always imagined the enemies would have weapons though. One thing we did leave in was the hammer, which Miyamoto insisted on having. Personally, I think getting hit with a hammer is more painful than being cut by a sword, but… (laughs)

There's a lot more shared on the game's development process and challenges it presented in the full interview. Check it out here.