Ever wondered what the head of Nintendo talks about while he’s eating his sashimi? Well, a dinner table discussion between Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and Shigesato Itoi, the noted Japanese writer and designer of Nintendo’s legendary Mother RPGs, is being published (in English, yep) on Itoi’s personal website. So you need wonder no more.

First up for consideration is Shigeru Miyamoto’s concept of The Idea, and Iwata-san notes that “There’s always the dilemma of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ when creating something.” Quite.

The talk then turns to Miyamoto’s methodology — he likes to look over people’s shoulders as they play his games for the first time: “He watches them play and checks in detail how they respond, playing without any previous knowledge. He finds out what they don’t understand, what they let pass, which triggers they miss… There’s tons you can find out from the view from behind.”

Fascinating stuff, no? New passages of the discussion are scheduled to air each day this week, including a chapter tomorrow called ‘Something special about Miyamoto’ (which may or may not pertain to his banjo-playing antics), so you might like to bookmark that reference page.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 4:17 am by WiiWii
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