Hayashida Since we were making a full-fledged sequel, we couldn't just have a new character show up. We needed something to serve as a completely new axis for the game to revolve around. At first, that was the concept of "more," but later we focused on the concept of "switching."
Iwata What's "switching"?
Hayashida That's when you do something like push a button, the surrounding world suddenly changes.
Iwata Oh, I see. The button changes the environmentand not just a little, but in a big, dynamic way.
Hayashida Right.
Iwata Why did you decide on that?
Hayakawa I thought we needed something that would make a significantly different impression than the first game. At first, when we had the idea of using the engine from the first game as a foundation, I think everyone thought of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
Koizumi When we made The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask after The Legend of Zelda:Ocarina of Time, we adopted the "three-day system."11 That's a system that suddenly changes the game world.
Iwata Oh, so for Super Mario Galaxy 2 as well, you tried to think of a system whereby you could change the whole game world.
Hayashida Right. But when we actually tried to do it, it was hard and just wouldn't come together.
Koizumi I knew from all the trouble we had with the Zelda series that you have to get all the various elements to fit. Sometimes you have to give up on things you've made up to that point.
Iwata You lose a lot a lot of different things.
Koizumi I was afraid of that, so I decided we shouldn't get too hung up on creating a new axis for the whole game to revolve around and I told Hayashida-san that all we needed to do was dedicate ourselves to making interesting contents.