Yomuka!

Weekly Famitsu – September 16, 1994

Lindsay — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 23:00:40 +0000

This week’s issue covers the MOTHER 2 Pre-release Party attended by all staff involved in the game. This time the article is not an interview, but a description of the event.

A pre-release party for MOTHER 2 took place on August 24 in a hotel in downtown Tokyo. This, of course, was to celebrate the August 27th release of MOTHER 2: Giygas Strikes Back. Those involved with the production of MOTHER 2, including the scenario director, copywriter Shigesato Itoi, gathered at the hotel for the event.

Itoi was the first to speak. In front of the production staff of 40 he said, “Sorry for the wait, everyone. People have said a lot of things to me over the past five years, but the delay is all the staff’s fault. (laughs) Please show your appreciation today for all their hard work.” His speech was both funny and heartfelt.

Next was Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, who holds the title of MOTHER 2 supervisor.

“These five years passed in the blink of an eye. (laughs) After all, my children were in preschool when we first started working on the game, and now they’re already old enough to understand it. I beat the game together with my daughter; it was the first time I’d ever finished an RPG on my own.”

The party was a standing dinner, so there was a friendly atmosphere the entire time. All kinds of people surrounded Itoi that night–even Chunsoft president Koichi Nakamura went to offer him some congratulatory words.

In any case, MOTHER 2 is finally on store shelves. Itoi should be breathing a sigh of relief right about now!

Pictures from the event

Shigesato Itoi talks about the joy of finishing MOTHER 2. Must have been one difficulty after the next.

HAL Laboratory President Satoru Iwata attended as the Programming Director. He commented that the staff kept a good attitude as production went on.

Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo was a supervisor this time around. Much like a remote control, he provided lots of advice to the production staff.

Itoi's wife Kanako Higuchi joined in as well. She stood out from the crowd as much as you'd expect. We're curious about their conversation that night. Wonder if she's played MOTHER 2?

Even Koichi Nakamura had a chat with Itoi. Maybe they'll be rivals in seeing which becomes more popular: MOTHER 2 or Kamaitachi no Yoru.

Miyamoto and Higuchi right after taking a commemorative photo together. Miyamoto looks so bashful.

Clay figurines of the MOTHER 2 characters were on display in one corner of the room. It seems the team really enjoyed producing the game if they took it so far as to make these.

Everyone in this picture had some kind of role developing MOTHER 2. It was a fairly big crowd of various people from Nintendo, APE, and HAL Laboratory.

Seeing as it was immediately before the release of the game, there were plenty of attendees seeing the game for the first time at the venue.

Weekly Famitsu – September 9, 1994

Lindsay — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:57:23 +0000

This week’s issue introduces the MOTHER 2 Times: a weekly section in the magazine that ran for eight consecutive weeks. Its main feature was the walkthrough, but also included such things as interviews, comics, and behind-the-scenes peeks. I don’t plan on including the game walkthroughs, but I’ll continue to post any particularly interesting sections.

This week’s issue highlights an interview with the two main programmers for MOTHER 2, Kouji Malta from APE and Satoru Iwata from HAL.

Kouji Malta Profile: Programmer for APE, Inc., a company run by president Shigesato Itoi, the scenario director for MOTHER 2. Malta is in charge of the data production for the game.

August 26th is the day MOTHER 2: Giygas Strikes Back finally goes on sale. This week’s issue goes on sale August 25th. That makes this the day before release! For those who are excited to head out and buy the game, we’ve asked the two programming directors of MOTHER 2 about the trials and highlights of making the game. The directors are Iwata from HAL Laboratory and Malta from APE. MOTHER 2 was actually made through the cooperation of those two companies with Nintendo.

— That was one rough childbirth, wasn’t it? (laughs)

Malta Yes, yes it was. (laughs)

— Was it HAL or APE that handled most of the work developing the game?

Iwata APE had more people working on it. We [HAL] worked on some of the overall system, but maps and scenarios take a lot more work than the system when it comes to RPGs.

Malta Yeah. So in that sense you could say it was a bit more work for us [APE].

Iwata But near the end of production we had everyone from APE come to our office in Yamanashi Prefecture. There was equipment only available in our offices at the time, and the scheduling worked out, so…

Malta We’d basically camp out there for a week at a time.

Iwata Our company has a meeting room with a view of Mt. Fuji through the glass panels, and that was the room that practically turned into a separate branch office for APE.

Malta We’d completely taken over the whole place. (laughs)

— So it was produced in a room with a view of Mt. Fuji? That must have felt great.

Malta Yeah. We’d talk about how great it’d be to have an office in a place like that.

Iwata A beautiful place like that is a good location for creating something, but life in the city is a lot more convenient.

— When was the camp-out you’re talking about?

Iwata It was from fall of last year [1993] until spring of this year [1994] that they were coming to our office regularly.

— Of course Itoi would go too, as the scenario director?

Iwata Yeah, he’d stop by from time to time. It provided some gossip for the neighborhood cafeterias. “Oh, isn’t that Shigesato Itoi? What’s he doing here?” (laughs)

— Did people mooch him for autographs?

Iwata Right in front of me, no less. (laughs)

A request that made the programmers cry

— When did the game come together as a completed product?

Satoru Iwata Profile: President of HAL Laboratory. Programming Director for MOTHER 2, constructed overall gaming system. According to Itoi, Iwata is the superman who delivered the game to completion.

Iwata Around mid-April is when we more-or-less had an RPG that wouldn’t embarrass us if we released it. But we’d already made everyone wait so long for it that we wanted to really see it through to the end, so we spent the next three months perfecting it. We originally thought it’d be ready in two months, though. (laughs) The standards really shot up during those last three months, so as a creator, the feeling of accomplishment changed.

— Just like the previous game, people were really excited about the freedom in the game post-ending. Did you pay a lot of attention to that part?

Malta We did. It was a huge focus this time around, as a certain kind of game in its own right. And there were some major final enrichments during those three months. We hadn’t yet done a full run-through by the time MOTHER 2 finally took shape, so we played it together as a staff. Then we found some places that weren’t going to work, so we made sure to polish it all up.

Iwata There’d be a spot that we joked about how it’d be better in such-and-such a way and then two months later be set that way. I feel the staff made the game without compromising.

Malta The slot machine in the desert is a perfect example.

— Slot machine?

Iwata It’s pretty far into the game, but there’s a slot machine just plopped right in the desert. We thought it’d be neat if the slots were actually playable, so we made it work.

Malta And to top it off, it’s not that there’s a working machine—there are men in the shape of a slot machine who move around. That’s the kind of playful imagination you’ll find in the game.

— Isn’t it hard to program the system to add things like that after the fact?

Iwata Oh, absolutely. The bicycle near the beginning of the game, for example. We went through a ridiculous amount of trouble to work that into the system, you know. That was a hell of a hailstorm. We had to build all kinds of special provisions just to manage it. Any normal programmer would turn up their nose at it, though. But it was like a motto of ours to never do that. (laughs)

Malta In that sense, APE really owes a lot to the team at HAL Lab. Even when we brought up some unreasonable, difficult-to-implement request, they never brushed it off by saying, “We can’t do it.”

Iwata Once a programmer says they can’t do something, future games are done for. What we’re considering nowadays are ways for us to avoid that. Instead we think about how we, as producers, can clearly portray our thoughts and ideas to the recipient customer without saying “We can’t do that.”

— What specific parts gave you a hard time?

Malta I’d say the delivery man.

Iwata There’s a special system for a delivery man in the game. One comes to bring you items you weren’t able to carry before, and one is a pizza delivery man. This is something that has to reach the player at any stage in the game. It was a really reckless idea—the delivery man can’t just pass through walls that the player can’t walk through, so we had to make him able to navigate the map for himself.

Malta But the player had been able to play around and run away as soon as the delivery man appeared.

Iwata Until we were able to take care of that part, we were wondering why the heck we were trying so hard. (laughs)

Words of Celebration on the Completion of MOTHER 2

Asato Izumi: Columnist recently breaking out into novel-writing. Writes often about video games.	I think the charm of the first MOTHER lies in its “Joe Blow” variety of everyday life and the seasons, like riding the train between towns and arriving at a cold town to see everyone sneezing. (The background music by Keiichi Suzuki had a nostalgic feel to it and provided an excellent touch.) I look forward to seeing how MOTHER 2 delivers the “flavor” of the game outside of simple fights and problem-solving.
Congratulations to Shigesato Itoi and all the staff on the completion of MOTHER 2. A long time ago, I sent you the cassette tape of the dramatization of the MOTHER novel. The woman who played the voice of Loid said she was really looking forward to the new game, too. I’ll do my best to have the MOTHER 2 novel published by the end of the year. I look forward to working together again someday!	Saori Kumi: Novelist and writer of the MOTHER novel. As stated in her passage, will publish the MOTHER 2 novel.
Rika Kayama: Psychiatrist with the famous column "Eyedrops for Your Backside and Suppositories for Your Eyes". Said to be looking forward to playing MOTHER 2.	I’m so glad that no matter how much time it took, MOTHER 2 is coming out as promised. There’s a feel of adult responsibility and pride in that. I’m sure the involved parties feel as relieved as if they had a bone caught in their throat and finally got it out. Even Star Wars claimed to have nine stories to release over 27 years, but all this time and we’ve only got three. In that regard, Nintendo and Itoi really did a great job.

MOTHER 1 Review by Pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri

Lindsay — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:44:22 +0000

In the late 1980′s, before founding Game Freak and hitting the jackpot with his sensational product of grueling labor, Satoshi Tajiri was a freelance writer for gaming magazine Famicom Hisshou Hon. He ran a column in the magazine and covered the newly-released MOTHER in its October 20, 1989 issue. His review offers some interesting criticisms of the game.

I went to the movies recently for the first time in forever. Lately the only movie-watching I do is through rental videos, but this time around I just knew I had to see it on the big screen: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

It was a genuinely cinematic movie that thoroughly entertained me and lived up to everything I hoped it would be. Sometimes I’ll be watching a video on my 14-inch TV set at home and catch a scene that makes me really disappointed for not having seen it on the jumbo theater screen. But Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was made for watching in a movie theater; seeing it on a TV screen isn’t going to get across the full impact of the action-packed adventure.

You can’t properly experience the fun and enjoyment of a movie on a TV. Within it are dreams and lies that can only form within the special confines of movie. The same goes for video games. Shigesato Itoi’s MOTHER is an RPG with storytelling reminiscent of Spielberg. Of course there’s a handful of cinematic methods scattered throughout the game, but I’d rather avoid explaining them in detail—it’d be rude of me to spoil the game for those who haven’t played yet.

The draw of MOTHER is in its sense of cinematic camerawork, its music, and the scenarios Itoi put so much thought into. However, the game itself—the game design, I mean—presents several flimsy areas.

Take, for example, the oversized map. The map is realistically proportionate with the size of the main characters, and it apparently dazzled a lot of people. In my opinion, a video game is not something that should make its player uncomfortable. There’s no doubt that Itoi intended to portray the towns and forests realistically, but it was so spread out that people found it hard to navigate. If there’s a chance it places a meaningless burden on the player, realism needs to be toned down into a caricature. That’s one lie that’s forgiven in video games.

Another problem is the balance of enemy range. There’s a hierarchy to the ecosystem of animals, and the law of nature states that, in general, small creatures are weak and large creatures are strong. We instinctively understand things in this manner, so when a little pile of slime shows up on the screen, we assume it’s weak. When an enormous demon shows up, we stagger back at how strong it looks. In MOTHER, it might be due to the game’s setting in modern America, but the hierarchy of enemies isn’t that clear. The smaller-sized rope enemy is stronger than the Mad Car or Psycho Car, and the Mad Truck and Psycho Truck aren’t as strong as the smaller-sized bear, etc. That makes the map feel as if it has a relatively disorganized distribution.

Then there’s the inadequacy of the information the game provides to the player. Dialogue in an RPG consists of two things: Hints to aid progress in the game, or entertaining lines that add to the game’s color. I hear that the developers ran out of memory halfway through production, so lots of the colorful lines were spared while they chipped despairingly at the hinting ones. Throwing away the hints and keeping the entertainment was Itoi’s clear decision—it makes the game stand out, but without them we’re left with a game that is, in reality, simply not very kind.

These are the kinds of things that bothered me. The scenario is obviously the work of a professional writer, but I feel MOTHER might be better suited for a novel or a movie. When it comes to these difficult issues in game design, though, Itoi doesn’t seem to regard them as critical. He stated it himself: “I dared to break the ten commandments of video game design.”

It’s not very believable, though, that modern video games contain whatever ten commandments Itoi was referring to. If you look at all the games on the market today, there’s a huge disparity between good games and bad games. Even with the unique production know-how of each maker, there are no apparent common traits across the spectrum.

Before makers were understanding and following the ten commandments of game design, there were no ten commandments. Not even ten years have passed since video game culture brought up the new concept, so that’s basically a given. The ten commandments have yet to be created. You cannot break something that does not yet exist; it’s something we’ll make from here on out.

But the fact that games don’t have ten commandments might actually be a wonderful thing. We’re still in a happenstance of witnessing the genesis of chaotic video game culture. Isn’t it exciting to think about the future of video games and all the limitless opportunities they hold with each new development?

Status Update

Lindsay — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:15:52 +0000

Just a quick note that while most of my NaNoTraMo translations are done (all old magazine interviews about the MOTHER series), I’m going to hold off on posting them until I follow through with a lead I have on magazine scans. It’d be better to post the interviews along with article pictures from the beginning, instead of editing it after everyone has already read the article and tucked it away.

In the meantime, it’s always a pleasant treat when Itoi’s interviews and works are already translated into English. Here’s a blog entry of an American marketing professional who recently interviewed Itoi via mail. There’s some interesting insight into how Itoi chooses to run his company and website.

Shigesato Itoi’s Office Tour

Lindsay — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:00:28 +0000

This week, Japanese celebrity photo journalist Yoichi Watanabe visited Itoi’s Hobo Nichi headquarters for an interview. Watanabe is famous for his relaxing speaking style and… well, for being a photo journalist in a country where people become mainstream celebrities for being a specialist in a field and wearing the same outfit all the time.

One of the main activities of Itoi’s company is celebrity interviews. There’s an endless list of people Itoi has interviewed in his office, but this time it’s especially interesting because we are treated to an in-depth tour of Itoi’s Tokyo office with Watanabe in full Photo-Journalist Mode.

You can see the gorgeous and unorthodox layout of the winding hallways, all-wood interior design (complete with natural fresh wood scent), and the office chock-full of oversized Macs. These are all extremely rare in a country full of outdated Windows computers still equipped with floppy drives and interior decorating that looks like a run-down hospital full of men in stuffy business suits.

Halfway through the video you even get to see Itoi’s personal office! There are mini figurines of his dog Buillon, a Mr. Saturn plushie, a trophy from a fishing tournament he won a long time ago, and a fossilized dinosaur egg. Watanabe paused at Itoi’s desk for a minute because he was moved at how the flashlight on the desk was the same heavy-duty kind they used in Afghanistan.

Incognito Saturn gets his own incognito nook!

Weekly Famitsu – January 31, 1997

Lindsay — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:07:54 +0000

[No images available. Please contact me if you have information on this issue.]

This is a dialogue showcased in a section featured once every few months in Weekly Famitsu. One of the editors, Yasuhiro Nagata, conducted several interviews with Itoi during his time with the magazine. Nagata later went into freelancing for a few years before eventually working for Itoi’s company, where he is now.

This dialogue is different from other interviews in that it has a very casual tone to it and is less focused on the nitty gritty. It feels more like you’re eavesdropping on three Japanese men at the bar who just happen to be talking about Nintendo 64 games.

Let the wackiness begin!

Special MOTHER 3 Course

Teach us, Itoi and Iwata Sensei!

Interview with Editor Nagata

Nagata What, you were gonna have some dog or kid handle the interview with Itoi?! No! Which is why I took the 7 AM bullet train to Kyoto, and here I am. Good moooorniiing!

Itoi, Iwata Good morning~

Nagata I guess we’ve only got 40 minutes for our interview so let’s get rolling. Starting with the usual question. Is the game really coming out this year?!

Itoi (laughs) Here we go again. Today we have the director here with us, though. Tell him how it is!

Iwata We would like to release it sometime this year.

Nagata That again!?

Itoi We truly hope for its release!

Nagata I dunno, man.

Itoi But we’ve got Iwata! Iwata! Once he joined MOTHER 2, the thing spontaneously finished, after all.

Nagata Ah, that’s reassuring!

Itoi Right? So now the readers are going to wonder. “What, so Iwata made that game?” (roaring laughter)

Nagata So, I see the names of the characters have been announced.

Itoi I named them.

Nagata One would assume.

Itoi They’re good, right? The person from this village is… huh? Who is this?!

Nagata (roaring laughter) Hey, now!

Itoi I’ve never seen this before!!

Iwata Yes you have. I showed you before but it’s been a little more processed since then.

Itoi Oh! I get it. But… hey! What kind of business are you running!?

(All laugh)

Nagata Is it alright to assume this boy is the main character?

Iwata This time around there are twice as many characters as previous games; that’s because MOTHER 3 is arranged into chapters. It’s not an omnibus, but it’s split into chapters and the main character changes depending on the chapter.

Itoi Ahh you finally said it. Now I can relax. I’ve been holding that in this whole time. (laughs)

Nagata So eight people?

Iwata Over eight.

Itoi But it’s more fun to be in the dark.

Nagata Yeah, it really is!! In a way it’s really tough to cover a game that I really like.

Itoi Right?

Nagata To be honest, I just wanna ask when it’ll come out and then go home.

Iwata Now that would make people angry.

Nagata And the show goes on. How’s the 64DD been treating you?

Itoi Damn. You’re good.

Iwata It’s all about the ability to overwrite. There are things I want to put an end to with the creation of MOTHER 3—doing the same kind of adventures in all the same ways all over Japan.

Nagata So, you’re not making it purely multi-scenario?

Itoi Not a chance!! I hate that! Multi-scenarios are the worst. That’s just abandoning the rights and duties of the writer.

Iwata Yeah. We’d rather make the games we leave behind in this world really stick around. We’re always throwing things out or leaving them around, right? We scratch things up, and that stays.

Itoi If you go on a trip when your place is messy, it’s going to be just as messy when you get back.

Iwata Yeah, that’s what I mean. So at that point the writeable hardware of the DD is perfect.

Nagata I see. 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.

Itoi Something that makes you happily squeal, “I wonder if I can get a battle!” (laughs)

Iwata We’re testing various things.

Nagata Like what? Like what??

Itoi You’re a persistent one.

Nagata It’s cuz I wake up at six in the morning.

Itoi So do I. Well, today my alarm didn’t go off, so…

Nagata Um…

Iwata So? What time did you wake up?

Itoi By the time I took my pajamas off it was 7:15…

Nagata Morning habits aside, let’s get back to the battles…

Itoi And my Shinkansen seat was 17A.

Nagata Uh-huh, uh-huh… But, look, we’ve only got 15 minutes left…

Itoi And I was torn whether to buy a lunch box, but I ended up settling for a sandwich.

Hongo (Nintendo PR employee) Oh! You ate a sandwich?

Nagata Hongo, don’t encourage him.

Hongo No, it’s just that we’ve prepared lunch boxes already, so…

Itoi Hey have you heard Hongo sing Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi?

Nagata Ohhhh dammit all!

Iwata I will say this. We’re thinking of incorporating sound into the battle scenes.

Nagata Iwata-san you are too kind.

Itoi Well, if I were to blurt it out it’s all quite simple. So when you press a button on the controller, there’s a sound, right? A little blip or something. And if you make it so you can create all kinds of sounds, the controller becomes a pretty solid instrument. So we’re going to include that instrument in MOTHER 3.

Nagata Hoho!

Itoi And if you get good at playing that instrument, you’ll fight battles more efficiently.

Nagata That sounds really fun! Maybe you’re doing better than I thought!

Itoi Well, things might change. We’re still in testing, after all. I tend to play and putz with it at the very last minute.

Iwata Oh, but, once it reaches a certain level of playability, Itoi really steps up to the plate.

Nagata So in other words, before it’s where you can play it, he’s bumming around the bench. (laughs)

Iwata Right. Even if you hand him specifications—nothing. (roaring laughter) Is that going too far?

Nagata Dangit, we’re outta time. Alright, can we at least get a special Famitsu-exclusive scoop before we finish?

Itoi Umm—is Famitsu like, a Shonen-Jump kinda thing?

Nagata Ohhhh dammit all!!! (laughs)

Itoi …Alright, I’ll tell you! When this aligator gets mad, he stands up!

Nagata That’s written in this handout.

(All roaring laugh)

Nagata Ok we’re seriously out of time! Uhh, uhh, closing statement!

Itoi Hiiii everybody! Did you have a good new yeeears?

Nagata That’s not closing anything!!!

The 64DREAM – November 1996

Lindsay — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 12:08:39 +0000

[No images available. Please contact me if you have information on this issue.]

This is the first ever official issue of The 64DREAM (currently “Nindori”), but Volume #2 after an initial unofficial release in June. It treats us with a treasure trove of juicy insights into the creation of MOTHER 3 for the Nintendo 64. Itoi’s team had an impressive amount of the game finished even by 1996, which really accentuates the troubles they went through and how looong it had dragged on. It’s amazing to think about how the project was scrapped even after taking years and years of their time!

In interviews and statements over the past five years or so, it seems clear that Itoi thoroughly enjoyed his game-making experiences but sees it as a closed chapter of his life. We can see this in interviews like this one from 2009.

Itoi: [...] Games demand many more lines of dialogue despite the fact that the main characters don’t talk, so I couldn’t keep making them. That’s why I felt deep down after making three of them, “Well, that was a neat experience.”

Shiraiwa: So you’re done with them?

Itoi: Yes, that’s right.

In the nineties, however, when Itoi was at the height of his video game endeavors, it was clear in interviews at the time that he was so passionate about making video games, he’d be brewing with ideas for new ones before his current game was even close to completion. (Earthbound 64 had been the same way; he was well into the brainstorming stage by the time they were still putting together the puzzle pieces of Earthbound programming.)

The fact that this interview takes place in the early stages of MOTHER 3 development means the game was still in the process of being programmed for the Nintendo 64DD.

Interesting points in the article include:

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

On to the good stuff!

Shigesato Itoi Spills All on MOTHER 3

Mr. Saturn and Pokey are back! It’s been two years since MOTHER 2 came out and caused waves in the gaming scene. Itoi-san may have seemed caught up in his fishing obsession, but he’s actually been diligently molding MOTHER 3 into shape.

The Message Within the Title

— So what exactly is the meaning behind the title of MOTHER?

Itoi The game this time is extremely father-centric. The sons are sort of in a position to navigate through their father’s trap. So I wanted to come up with something that had a maternal aura. For example, there’s a flying saucer in the first screen. That’s a “Mothership”. There’s also a mother–I wanted to include motherly components. On top of that, we are a creation of our mothers. I think there are very few people out there who were created by their fathers.

— How about consistent themes throughout the series?

Itoi Oh, there are none. (laughs) Games are meant to be played, so you can’t just go around and make every game revolve around a theme.

Say a ball is falling. What can you do to that ball to turn it into a game? If there’s someone to catch and someone to throw, you can play catch. If someone has a bat, you can play something else. So if you wanna know what the theme is, it’s “there was a ball”. (laughs)

But young developers would be mocked if they said they didn’t have a theme, so they can’t really say that.

How Far Are You?

— And now for the long-awaited MOTHER 3. Is it going to be 3D since it’s on the Nintendo 64?

Itoi I’ve had thoughts about making it 2D, but much to my chagrin, players have this idea that if a game isn’t 3D, then it’s not a Nintendo 64 game. I thought about going through with it anyway, though.

— How much of it is done?

Itoi The supporting scripts haven’t been written yet, but all the scenarios are done. The map is done; all that’s left is bringing the characters to life in it. So here on out are the details. But–in games, details are everything. As long as those steps aren’t cleared, there’s no difference between a completion rate of 60% or 20%.

— Are the heroes the same as before?

Itoi No, they’re new. Even the worldview is entirely different. It’s already assumed that I’m going to defy expectations anyway. Plus, the concept came from MOTHER 2 and I wanted to hurry up and start on 3. First I wanted to turn a hard-boiled detective novel into a video game. That led me to another idea, and putting the two together made MOTHER 3. I’d call up my game designer in the middle of the night while we were still swamped with MOTHER 2 work, and I’d bug him about all these ideas I had for MOTHER 3. You know what he said? “This is not the time for that.” (laughs)

— Hmm, the worldview, huh? That’s intriguing.

Itoi I can’t say anything about it, though. Even releasing a graphic would spoil everything…

Does Mr. Saturn Show Up?

— In the final scene in MOTHER 2, Pokey leaves that cliffhanger message. Does that mean he shows up?

Itoi Yep. I’ve become entirely dependent on Pokey in order to go on. I’m nothing without him. (laughs) And, well, I love those Mr. Saturns. They’re in 3, too. It’d be too lonely without them, don’t you think?

The development team calls Mr. Saturn “Mr. Stupid”, but I wanted to make a Mr. Saturn action puzzle game.

— Are you considering it for one of the next consoles?

Itoi We’re still experimenting with the battle scenes. I had this wacky idea–a battle idea that, alone, would be enough to make an entirely new game. If that works out, then it’s probably a go. The character designs and artists would probably end up changing to something entirely different.

When’s It Coming Out?

— There are so, so many people looking forward to MOTHER 3.

Itoi The players are nothing if not wonderful. Even the four-year-olds. (laughs) Even the 78-year-olds. I get the feeling that if I met someone who likes MOTHER, we’d hit it off with all kinds of other things, too. So from that standpoint, they’re all such wonderful people.

— Is the release date set for next spring*?

[t/n: This would be Spring 1997. Looking back, you'd think there's not a chance of completing it that quickly, but at the time of this interview, that was the pace they were going at. By the time Spring '97 rolled around, it was obvious to fans that they'd need to prepare for the inevitable--that it would likely take even longer than the delay of MOTHER 2. Little did they know.]

Itoi If I confirm that, it’s just going to turn into me lying all over again. (laughs)

— Then could we please have a word for all the fans waiting for MOTHER 3?

Itoi I’m sorry. Please wait a little longer. Read a book or something. Books are good. Reading is really important. I mean, someone poured their heart and soul into writing that thing. You can hold in your very hands a thought that took an entire lifetime to form. Yessiree, books really are something.

The Name of the Nintendo 64

— So, about you coming up with the name of the Nintendo 64.

Itoi Well there were a lot of other potential names for it, but I didn’t want it to sound like a proper noun. Meaning-wise, anyway. Plus–during the Gulf War, the commander of the coalition forces would say, “War is not Nintendo.” Apparently a lot of people had Gameboys at the time, and people would just refer to the console as a Nintendo. I found that pretty amazing. Instead of rashly trying to envision the near future or the next generation, I was hoping to name it something that would pull a sumo move and just force its opponent out of the ring head-on.

When naming cars and coming up with “sedans” or whatever, in time you can’t even keep track anymore. “Super Excellent Sedan”. It’s disgraceful. So I made it the most orthodox name there is. But it took courage to go with something so utterly usual. (laughs) It’s a name that sounds like it didn’t take any thought to come up with, so it was tough getting payment for it. (laughs)

I’m the Uncle.

— So you do advertising work for Nintendo, too–you’ve got an attachment with them, don’t you?

Itoi How can I describe it… To me, Nintendo is like a relative. A company akin to family living in Kyoto, and I’m the uncle who live in Tokyo. I mean–the President of Nintendo is the only company president who would come out to meet me and say in this thick Kyoto accent, “Oh, Itoi-san, you’re here!” So our interactions are pretty bizarre. But I’d come up with an even weirder Nintendo 64 advertisement that got rejected, so the Pres isn’t doing anything for me out of obligation. (laughs)

[t/n: I'm curious about what this weird ad was. The Japanese N64 ads ended up being extremely plain, which fueled a lot of criticism of Nintendo commercials. Wonder how his would have been!]

— How was the analog stick?

Itoi I’ve been thinking up games that could use it. And well–I sort of touched on this earlier, but I’m absolutely stoked when I think of how I can make games that weren’t even possible before. Especially with that secret N64 game I’m working on. [t/n: This is probably Cabbage.] Anyway, it’s amazing how the analog stick can transfer feelings all the way to your fingertips. So now I get all irritated that the Super Famicom controller doesn’t have one. (laughs)

[t/n: This is referring to Itoi Shigesato Bass Fishing No. 1 which was scheduled for release February 1997, three months after this interview.]

— Have you played Super Mario 64 yet?

Itoi Man, action games are hard. I’m no good at them, so the only one I’ve beat is Super Mario World. But Kyon-Kyon and her husband got forty-some stars in a week. I can’t get pure enjoyment out of it as a player. Since I’m so close with the side that’s making it, I start getting distracted by looking at all the really impressive aspects of the game. But I can see Miyamoto’s smug grin behind my shoulder. (laughs)

Hippon Super! – November 3, 1994

Lindsay — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:28:06 +0000

Hippon Super is a gaming magazine with a slightly different tone than that of the more mainstream Weekly Famitsu. There are a couple adult games featured in the magazine, and even the interview with Shigesato Itoi has a different tone than usual. There isn’t much new information in this interview, but there are some really bizarre metaphors and confusing meta-speak.

I remember Itoi mentioning in another interview how he was careful with all the details, right down to the pauses in the script and text scrolling. In this interview, he states that the sound guy was so particular that he even had a fit about those small details. Perhaps Itoi wasn’t the only one polishing it up after all…?

This interview takes places soon after the release of MOTHER 2 and two months after the informative Weekly Famitsu interview.

From the Eyes of MOTHER 2;
All Eyes on MOTHER 2

“MOTHER could be my miniature garden.”

— When we hear the impressions of players who’ve finished MOTHER 2, there’s been a great response overall. We check online game forums pretty often, and there’s a lot of good things written.

Itoi I’m so glad to hear that. Since the internet is a closed-in area, people can really run their mouths off, y’know? When MOTHER came out, a lot of people were picking apart all its faults. I almost thought, well, I’m already a goner to these people–but since MOTHER 2 was so well-received, I’m satisfied that I’ve finally gotten across what I wanted to.

— The only thing that was hard was when it would start lagging and everything slowed down.

Itoi Yeah, the over-processing.

— But I’m sure that means you absolutely insisted on keeping the rest, even if it weighed down that aspect of it.

Itoi If I hadn’t cared so much I wouldn’t have been allocating everything with such horrible balance, with the limitless character counts and eight megabits [out of 24] of sound alone (laughs).

— Your attention to the sound is amazing. How much of a say did you have in it?

Itoi It’s all because of the people who had far more of a read on it than I ever could. [Music: Keiichi Suzuki, Hirokazu Tanaka] They basically put it together and told me okay, here’s the intro music. Then the person in charge of the sound was extremely particular on the text scrolling speed and the length of the pauses put between lines and such. I started wondering if we were running into programming bugs because he kept sending stuff back to me. I’d just pause and blurt out, “sooo……?” (laughs)

— That was a first, huh?

Itoi I got hounded on for some sound being really outdated or the text windows looking really shabby! I’d start wondering what the heck he was talking about. If the words within it weren’t interesting, then it’d be pointless.

For example, say there’s a tap faucet, and its “water” is video games. People are going to sell that water in all kinds of ways, with one guy saying it produces rainbow-colored water, another guy claiming red water, and still another saying it’s mint-flavored. At that point, aren’t they basically selling “hardware-in-software”? But all I want to drink is safe, delicious, plain old water. I mean, it’s tap water. You can drink as much as you want and not get sick of it, and if you’re presumably going to be drinking the next day, too, then it’s better off without colors. That’s the kind of approach I had going into it.

But if modern games are pieces of art, then they’re quickly evolving into realism. If looking like a photograph is the standard for what is highly esteemed, then it’s no different from some lady praising a wall calendar from some bank.

Look at Chibi Maruko-chan. She doesn’t take that long to draw, but it sells because it’s interesting, right? But if that series came to the Famicom, are people gonna complain the graphics are too tiny? Yes, they are. (laughs) 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. (laughs)

— When I was playing the game and reached the end, I was so upset that it was almost over. But I suppose there are people who were dissatisfied with MOTHER 2 because it makes you feel that way.

Itoi Well, with that–children, for example, get really excited when you say hey, we’re going out for sushi! But even with sushi, there are yummy ones and bad-tasting ones. Adults are the ones that are particular about which sushi they eat, but it’s hard to get a kid to see how delicious a sushi is when he’s still ecstatic about getting to eat it in the first place. When they want three pieces instead of five, then all you can say is “Hey! You can go get your own dang sushi!” I’m not some kind of merchant. I know I can’t bring myself to sell something just by doing what it takes to please everyone. So I’d just tell people who want sushi and don’t care what it is to go and eat whatever, then. Oh, but–my sushi might end up just being a little ball of rice. I’m going for simplicity, after all.

— Did you have a drive to make a game that adults can enjoy?

Itoi Yeah, of course. I mean, there are less and less adults playing the Final Fantasy series. Plus, kids who play the Famicom are being called dorks by kids who don’t play the Famicom. Just like kids who like manga are told “So you go to Comiket, huh?” and suddenly aren’t popular anymore. So it’s kind of my dream for kids who play the Famicom to become popular.

— A Famicom that popular kids play, too?

Itoi Yeah, that! I think it’s really critical.

— It really is getting bad, isn’t it?

Itoi Like how band members are immediately popular just from being band members.

— I see where you’re coming from. Some stuffy artist out there will hear the music from MOTHER 2 and say hey, that’s pretty good, and that’ll be one way of getting into the game.

Itoi Yeah, like, “Whoa, that’s a fretless bass!” So I want it to be like a game made by a group of friends who grew up in the same culture. It’s not always about finding records that are awesome for having been pumped out by the production equipment of [Japanese record company conglomerate] Being, Inc.

— But what’s interesting is the kids who listen to music like that are the only ones that aren’t even aware of structures like Being.

Itoi If so, I’d like them to at least get a taste of the aura of Flipper’s Guitar, or something.

— It is about the aura, isn’t it? So which parts of MOTHER 2 were you particularly careful about regarding aura?

Itoi I’d say… all of it. The story, but the script was the main focus. I’ve got characters with a vivid reality to them, but the script lines that didn’t seem very realistic were very frustrating.

— There are a lot of tricks in the script and other areas that are borderline breaking the unwritten “standards” of games.

Itoi That’s not true–I’m following the rules. (laughs)

— Well, on top of having kept the standards, then.

Itoi Yeah… For example, the adults in MOTHER 2 tell lies. Telling a lie in a game means that the functionality of direction leading a player through the game becomes increasingly unreliable. Even though everything would be fine if they’d just said “go that way”, saying something like “If… if you go that way… you won’t like it” puts the game functionality in a tough spot. But realistically speaking, we’re surrounded every day of our lives by people who aren’t entirely honest or straightforward. That means it’d only make sense for someone like that to show up in a game–I see it as a given. The people who say it “fits” are the ones that get it.

— Going back to the script, there are quite a few lines that make the player acutely aware of their world outside the game. Was that intentional?

Itoi It was intentional. There’s no way I could express every little thing in a game. Its world isn’t exactly one of actual realism, so I’m barely able to maintain that intention along with the standards of what is “just a game”. If you don’t let out some of the hot air once in a while, it’s going to become really obvious how suspicious it is. Then people will really say, well, it’s just a game.

— MOTHER 2 is generally about “fated heroes”. Thanks to that, the gap between fantasy and reality is filled in strategically enough to quell any suspicions.

Itoi I don’t think there was any other way to do it.

— I had a feeling the cameraman was sort of serving that same purpose.

Itoi Well, someone else had come up with new logic that made it an entirely natural occurrence. I was really impressed by that. (laughs)

— Like you can’t bring yourself to accept a “meta” world. (laughs)

Itoi Yeah, it’s not meta. I didn’t know what it would take to let that cameraman be a part of that world. It’s actually more childish to do it that way; it’s more pleasant to just leave it as meta.

— So it’s the thought that you can’t accept?

Itoi I guess.

— Final Fantasy is a world that flatly refuses this meta perspective, but even so, everyone’s fine with it because it parallels with another time. Were there any reservations in using this same tactic with MOTHER 2?

Itoi That’s like having to choose whether it’s more fun to be required to follow a certain rhythm and chase things in order, or pull everything together all at once and carry it onward to wherever feels right.

— It’s clear that you at least kept things short.

Itoi I wanted to. I think there were more techniques I could have chosen from, though. We were five years late, but if it’d taken ten years, then there would have been even more to it. For example, if we could watch the things we’d done on a TV in a hotel room, that’d be fascinating. If we had an unlimited supply of time and manpower, we’d want to. But what I’d really like to try is something I was happy that [Satoshi] Tajiri mentioned: “When I reached my first battle scene I finally remembered that this was an RPG I’m playing.” Which means both the tone of the scenes and the controls are that of an action game.

— Oh, I get it. The controls are pretty similar.

Itoi Yeah. And I think it’d be most interesting if it could all pass as that. After all, action games are really luxurious; they don’t have set standards. So a great deal of MOTHER 2′s framework is based on how fun I think it would be if Super Mario could turn into an RPG with the graphics as-is.

— And it’s that desire that resulted in the game’s battle-entry method.

Itoi If it’s a really slow enemy, you can just run away. That part of the game-play is an action game. Whether that can be applied to the whole thing, well… RPGs aren’t fun when the player with the best manipulation of the controller wins. …There’s still a lot to figure out.

But we’re still talking about games in the context of what we know as “games”, so I think we need to take a closer look at it; if we remove the quirks and essences and things that make it a “game”, stripped bare it is just programming within a ROM to be played. It might be a bit of an adventure to get to that point, but if its visitor hasn’t abandoned it yet, then the world inside that ROM will only get more interesting. In America the Famicom is called “Nintendo Entertainment System”, right? It doesn’t say one word about games. I’d like to apply that logic.

–I don’t quite get exactly what that would entail, but do you mean it would be interactive in a way?

Itoi Yes.

–I figured.

Itoi Miyamoto-san always hated RPGs, you know. He’d question whether battle scenes were really all that necessary. “Why can’t they just do rock paper scissors?” So I told him that without it, the game would be over in the blink of an eye. It’d be really passive, and without battles there would be no stress. There’d be no feeling of accomplishment when moving forward.

— So that’s what that “essence” of the game is.

Itoi And to make it feel more firsthand, I put in the rolling HP meter, involved chase scenes with monsters before entering battles, things like that. Even then, he questioned whether battles were necessary.

— That’s because he was sick of the battles, and the first Dragon Quest had battles as a major part of the game.

Itoi If you go to a beer factory, there’s beer that’s still not ready, called “young beer”. The alcohol content is low and it smells really strongly of barley. Everyone says it’s really good if you drink it cold, and marvels at how it’s the starting point of a good beer. (laughs) They just rant and rave about it. But if you turned that young beer into a product and sold it, there’s no way it would actually sell. (laughs) You can’t drink as much orange juice as you can beer, right? That’s the downfall of young beer, which is basically barley juice.

To make a long story short, I don’t think I’d play a finished ROM without battles if I knew the rest of the story and all that benefits it. But if you tell me to make one that you’ll play, I’ll do my best! That’s my goal! So it’s a question of what stressor could replace that of the battles.

— Also, the feeling that time has passed from the beginning of the game to the end is because of the battles up until that point.

Itoi Right? I’ve been thinking about that. It’s a part of MOTHER 2. Not just extending play time, but accentuating how important every moment is. When you put the Zombie Paper in the tent, you’ve got to spend a night, right? It takes time for it to work, and I’m not talking just a few moments. It needs to go through a process. It was my dream for people to see that as enjoyable. I don’t think it’s impossible for games to have a sense of speed come across through methods like that. So I’ll do my best to master that. I’ll focus really hard on pulling it off well in 3.

NaNoTraMo 2011

Lindsay — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 03:41:00 +0000

As someone who has all the inklings potential writers do regarding ideas floating around my head, I know I need to just jump onto them with a violent tackle and tame them onto paper. Floating isn’t doing anyone any good.

I tried to do NaNoWriMo last year, but only made it about a fourth of the way through and ran dry of ideas. Really dry. A barren desert of formless potential.

So my original story is back on the shelf. (Literally. I write better in notebooks.) I’ve always loved writing. I hear the cliched–but true–phrase being thrown around by artists that they’ve been drawing every since they could hold a pencil. Well I can apply that to my story-writing. I’ve been making stories ever since I could hold a pencil. (I didn’t use a pencil, I just, you know, had developed the motor skills to hold a pencil by that point.) I used to read stories to my younger sister, but she was two years younger than me and couldn’t read yet so I ignored all the words on the page and would make up stories to go with the pictures. She was none the wiser, but once she could read she’d yell at me to stick to the story on the pages. Then at night I’d recite stories aloud off the top of my head, but a few years later that got old to her too and I lost my audience. That’s about the time we got some ghetto IBM with a blue screen and white text and I dove into the new world of word processors. Which is unfortunate, because I have no record of any story I’d made/written in my active 15 year time span of a flourishing storytelling childhood.

But despite my vaguely antisocial self growing up completely engrossed in storytelling, once I hit college I stopped writing, and started studying Japanese. I completely lost my ability to come up with new, fresh material, and my bubbling imagination seemed to entirely fizzle out. Even now it’s incredibly vexing, but once I got into fiction translation, I rediscovered the passion I had for writing. Even if I lost my fountain of ideas, translating fiction is extremely difficult. Well, anyone with language ability can translate fiction; it takes a true writer to translate fiction well. To make it sound like it’s always been in English, and yet keep the nuances that the original novel based its story development on. Every novel translation is riddled with fine lines, and there’s something thrilling about walking that tightrope.

Recently, my translation projects have been collecting dust because I’ve been preoccupied with working towards publication. (As an end goal, I need to make sure not to lose sight of this while treading water in all my beloved volunteer projects.) This also includes the reason that I will not be posting my Shigesato Itoi short-shorts online, but details on this will come to light when all is said and done.

So with all my previous projects starting to face neglect, I’ve decided to go back to NaNoWriMo. But I beat up the novel-writing, punched it out big time, kicked its butt, bit its head off, spit in its eyes, and made it wet its pants. Then I replaced it with translation.

I’m sure that come 2012 I’ll have a full-on novel to devote to my newly-formed NaNoTraMo (National Novel Translating Month), but seeing as I already have a pile of things in my personal In-Box, I’m going to spend this November cleaning house.

So my plan is to finish the entirety of Let’s Meet in a Dream once and for all. But there are limitations to what I can post online from this, and surely it doesn’t fit NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 word count goal. So after that I’m going to turn to non-novels and focus on the collection of Shigesato Itoi interviews in gaming magazines; there are quite a lot. I’m a collector at heart, but I don’t actually collect anything; recently however I’ve found myself scavenging Japanese Geocities websites from 1997 and going to used bookstores to find old Japanese gaming magazines from the mid-90′s. I’ve got a good collection gathered, but now my queue of interview translations is pretty big. So now is the time to finally sit down and churn out English versions to post online.

I’m not good at word counts and I don’t know what 50,000 words is going to mean for any of this, but at least I have a goal thanks to the heart of the NaNoWriMo concept. Let’s see where this ends up in a month.

Wikitravel Page for Akihabara

Lindsay — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:11:31 +0000

Here is my excerpt for the Wikitravel page for Akihabara, Japan, telling visitors how to stay safe in the world-famous Electric Town, mecca for anime otaku everywhere.

(Parody of the page for Mogadishu, Somalia: the most lawless and dangerous city on Earth.)

The safest way through Akihabara (known to seasoned locals as Akiba) is escorted by maid cafe peacekeeping forces; however, uniformed maids are a target for the otakus and may come under attack. Independent travel is suicidal. Unpredictable conflicts among rival otakus are prevalent in and around Akihabara and can flare up with little or no warning. Lines of control for gaming systems in Akihabara are unclear and frequently shift, making movement within the city extremely hazardous. When being escorted by armed security maids, it is best to be in an anime-deco car. Card-game fans are highly likely to get engaged in street battles, and an anime-deco vehicle can provide far better protection against most threats. A Wii gun is a must-have for self-protection in Akihabara. Again, the easiest way of staying safe is to order your anime goods online unless vitally necessary.