Sneaking Stories Past Miyamoto

Chris Kohler, editor over at Game|Life, has up a great interview with Super Mario Galaxy director Yoshiaki Koizumi. They discuss the development of the Mario and Zelda games, clarifying Shigeru Miyamoto's tense relationship with stories (and sentences), and discussing the lineage of the Mario titles: "In terms of spiritual successors, I've never found that to be the case. Whereas with the Zelda series, each game seems to follow pretty closely from the last with a few stylistic deviations. But Galaxy really feels like it went back to earlier roots with Super Mario Bros., in terms of trying to find that same tempo, that same feel. But for me, it's a matter of thinking what to do with each next step. There's nothing you really throw away. You think about these ideas and refine them constantly with every iteration of a game series. So for all the camera problems that you may have found in Mario 64 and Sunshine, even though we didn't realize how to fix those problems then, those solutions presented themselves over time and found their way into this game. I feel like you really can't have Galaxy without all of the things we learned from Sunshine."

linearity in galaxies

[kisrael]

In the Gamers Quarter forums, someone (Dessgeega I think) pointed out that while most of the levels in, say, Mario 64 are about exploring the landscape and solving the star problem, each challenge in Galaxies tends to be more or less linear, on many of the worlds you really are guided from place to place (since usually the star-travel is a one way trip.) So in a lot of ways it is more of an update to the more classic left-to-right formula than Mario 64 is.

You have to be a mature enough gamer to realize that linear doesn't always mean worse... and personally I like that they still offer some choice in skipping starts and going back to them later.

EAD defined

[randyest]

If anyone else is curious about what "EAD" stands for, it's Entertainment Analysis and Development. Wikipedia has more info [wikipedia.org]. Maybe I'm just an old man who should know that acronym since everyone else does, but didn't, and I think almost all acronyms should be defined on first use in such articles.

Re:EAD defined

[Dutch Gun]

I was actually more curious about what 'hakoniwa' was. Apparently, it translates to "Sandplay Therapy". Here's a link that describes the overall concept:

http://tcp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/1/93 [sagepub.com]

Re:linearity in galaxies

[SlashdotOgre]

I believe you hit the nail on the head; when I think Mario I want a platformer, not a sandbox game. Mario, like most Nintendo titles, have always seem to done better when sticking to their roots. A classical example of this is the early Zelda series. Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link, an excellent adventure/platformer in its own right, completely diverged from the style of the original Legend of Zelda, and Z2 was met with criticism. Whereas Zelda: A Link To The Past returns to its roots and did much better in terms of fan reception.

While I do believe evolution and experimentation are important, and this applies just as much to music and many other arts, at the same time I believe its critical to understand the heart of the original product and to be able to stay true with it in future iterations.

Re:Tutorial

[LrdDimwit]

Allowed nothing. Word has it that Kojima literally begged them to allow Snake into the game.