Miyamoto on being called a creator, involvement in Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Run, gaming for the family, Iwata's ethos, and more

Miyamoto's massive interview with Famitsu is still bringing us all sorts of juicy details. Check out yet another massive round of tidbits below, as translated by BlackKite/JapaneseNintendo.

Being called creators/making creations

- Shigesato Itoi had once said “[Being called] Creators or Creations are absurd.”
- Itoi said God is the only creator, and everyone else is editing
- Miyamoto agrees with this and considers himself an Editor
- for Miyamoto, making games is like the sensation of throwing a dart with your own style while ignoring angles and stances

Miyamoto’s involvement in Breath of the Wild

- Miyamoto was most fixated on controls
- he was also involved in the game's conception, as well as nailing the first 30 minutes

Miyamoto's involvement in Mario titles

- Miyamoto sets the basis of ‘what’s okay for Mario to do’ and checks in during development
- Miyamoto sets the basis because no one else has taken on the job
- “Rather than only myself, if nobody decides on it, ‘then I should do it to the best of my ability.’ As we repeated this, it gradually became like that. Well, I should at least get the privilege to say ‘I don’t want to’ (laughs).”
- Miyamoto only works on Mario games closely or briefly
- in the case of Super Mario Run, Miyamoto worked on it closely
- “[…] When I had Yoichi Kotabe draw a picture of Mario, I think I said a point that ‘Mario does not kill people’. When I think about it now, that basis may also be easy to understand. But it doesn’t mean ‘he doesn’t trample insects underfoot either’. That’s the moderate sense of Mario. Such a basis has also pretty much permeated on everyone even now.”
- some people got worried about Mario’s appearance in Smash Bros., asking if it was okay to show him punching
- Miyamoto said, “Well, Mario also did things like pulling a turtle out of its shell…”
- the sound effects for Mario punching were also made cuter to make the idea more palatable

Miyamoto drawing Bambi

- when Miyamoto joined Nintendo, the company worked on a remake of Disney Home Games board game set
- Miyamoto had a set in his own house from his childhood, and he didn’t realize until then that the set was made by Nintendo
- Miyamoto had to draw pictures of Bambi and others, and then visit Disney Japan to have them approved

Gaming for the family

- Miyamoto and the whole company really hoped families would pull out and play Nintendo games in the living room
- this was the image Nintendo had during the board game/playing card era, and they wanted this to continue with video games
- Miyamoto’s development team had a direction of making the Nintendo Switch “an item that wouldn’t look weird at the center of a family”

N64 having more proficient interfaces than its competitors

- “During Nintendo 64’s times, when I look at other companies’ hardware, I got to think once again that ‘we’re the most proficient in the interfaces.’ And during Wii’s times, we became able to clearly say it’s a ‘tool at the center of a family’.”

Satoru Iwata wanting to bring back the “Anything goes” ethos

- there was a period where anyone could enjoy games in their own ways regardless of the game's intended presentations
- games around the Gamecube era had hardly anything like that
- this lead Satoru Iwata to saying he wanted to bring back that “Anything goes” feeling