Nintendo, Miyamoto Preview 2004 Releases

Thanks to Cube Europe for its article discussing forthcoming Nintendo products for 2004, including insight from Shigeru Miyamoto on his in-progress games. The information, sourced from Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK, "states that Metroid Prime 2, Geist, Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green will all be released in Europe before the end of the year", meaning a U.S. release for these games are also likely during 2004. Miyamoto is fairly guarded about his current projects, which also include Pikmin 2, and comments on the continued mystery behind the next Mario title: "With Mario 128 I have been challenging many unprecedented things, not found in existing video games... [and] prone to lose their freshness or to be imitated once they go public." Which Nintendo products are you most looking forward to this year?

Starfox was not done by NOJ

[DeadScreenSky]

I am not sure how this rumor got started, but I see it a lot. The original StarFox was created by Argonaut Games. Miyamoto might have consulted on it a little, but he deserves no real credit for making it the great game it was.

He did work on StarFox64, at least as an advisor. Technical attributes aside, I found it to be a much weaker game overall than the original, which was the reason I bought a SNES.

Re:oh boy..

[Anonymous Coward]

The hover idea was present in Rayman and its sequels, and was used for the same purpose. Rayman is pretty old... I first played it on a Jaguar. Even if the Rayman series are not true 3d platformers, the idea is not unique to Sunshine.

Below the Root, 1984

[Anonymous Coward]

Though it was intended as an adventure game, it had limited lives, levels of varying height, jumping puzzles and power-ups of sorts. And the shuba item let you glide to safety after jumps from high places!

Re:Starfox was not done by NOJ

[greentoad]

I was one of the main programmers on SNES Starfox so I can shed some light here.

There were 5 of us from Argonaut; 2 for the raw 3d FX-chip polygon engine back in England, and 3 for the 3d game engine at Nintendo in Japan.

Everything else was done by Nintendo; game planning, sound&music (which was absolutely brilliant IMHO, shame the guy left Nintendo afterwards), graphics and production.

Apart from (admittedly considerable) input from the 3 of us, the game's direction, design and development was controlled by Nintendo, Miyamoto-san and the rest of the Japanese team and Argonaut had nothing to do with it.

Sometimes it feels like being slartibartfast from HHGTTG and his fjords; I have loving memories of designing certain bosses, enemies or effects, but it was the team as a whole that was very strong and made the game what it was, including Miyamoto who I remember spent a lot of time working with Giles on the ship's controls.

Re:I stand corrected...mod my post down...

[greentoad]

yes it is a shame.. I spent a year and a half developing that and because they were dilly-dallying with real 3d roam-anywhere shooting it kind of changed the gameplay and they hadn't quite got 3d-roaming down yet (2 years before Mario 64). However Miyamoto told me recently that a lot of the 3d-roaming techniques we developed for starfox 2 were simply pulled into Mario 64. (in starfox 2 you "roamed" as a robot walker thing and it was primarily a 3d platformer on those levels)

Anyway, we should have simply expanded on the original Starfox theme of flying through set and perfectly crafted stages. Sometimes Nintendo doesn't get it right.. but when it all goes wrong it simply won't release a game. You have to respect that.