Iwata: The original theme we were going for was a major-league MOTHER product set free from any restrictions. Our defining concept was to make something without any boundaries.
Itoi: Like we were invincible.
Iwata: The hardware for the N64 was like a dream come true with all the new possibilities it opened up—it wasn’t immune to limits, though. There was still only so much we could do. When Miyamoto and all of us try to overcome those limitations, it may look like we’re gracefully swimming across the water, but underneath the surface we’re desperately paddling for our lives.
Itoi: We don’t look graceful! (laughs)
Iwata: It may not seem that way to those of us who know what’s happening on the inside, but it looks graceful to those who only see the final product. All they think is, “Wow!” Even though we’re flapping like wild fish underneath.
Miyamoto: You could say the staff had us in a choke-hold.
Iwata: More than half of our production time is spent on the uncreative parts of the game as we struggle within all the hardware constraints to make the game handle well—not look showy. But the fact that this is a product that Itoi and I are collaborating on creates some kind of enormous, inscrutable, vague power that makes us start it on the premise of creating something without anything holding us back. We should have known better halfway through, but once we get moving, we can’t get ourselves to tone it down, because it turns into an obligation to throw away things that we’ve made up to that point. If we’d toned it down two years ago, we’d have had two years’ worth to go back over, so the game would probably be out by now. But to throw away parts while the thing’s in motion takes tremendous courage that we didn’t have. We were in a role that required us to do that, though.
