Support NeoGAF

[Panajev2001a]

Shigeru Miyamoto worked in a Producer/Director role in most of his key games up until Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Miyamoto was a director on Super Mario 64 and had a Producer/Director role on Ocarina of Time.

Sometime between the NES and SNES eras Miyamoto got in trouble for giving himself a "producer" title to the western press because they wouldn't understand the hierarchy of their Japanese development teams. (Meaning "Producer" and "Director" and "Section Chief" might mean something different)

http://web.archive.org/web/20030811223536/http://www.video-fenky.com/features/miyamoto.html

I: So why did you begin calling yourself a producer?

SM: Once we finished Mario and Zelda, the next thing I wanted to do was sequels. I thought Zelda could turn into a new and different game if the game system was more fun and we could switch between maps and things, so... I had people under me do Mario 3 and The Adventure of Link, so I figured, hey, I'm a producer now.

There's also one more reason. To tell the truth, in Nintendo there aren't any official positions called "director" or "producer". Instead you have the kacho/bucho (section chief/department chief) system. The thing is, though, people overseas don't get that system. So when I started dealing with overseas folks, I wanted to sell myself to them, so I just wrote "producer" on my business card. With that title, people from overseas could recognize what I do, and it worked all right. Later I got yelled at from the head office about assigning myself titles, but... (laughs) Those are the two reasons I started calling myself a producer.​

[Takashi Tezuka worked directly with Miyamoto on Mario and Zelda, and Tezuka directed Super Mario Bros. 3, The Lost Levels (Miyamoto was 10% invovled), and Zelda: A Link to the Past. Kensuke Tanabe directed Doki Doki Panic and designed levels on SMB3 while Miyamoto was "Producer" with a director role]
http://www.nintendo.com/nes-classic/super-mari-bros-and-super-mario-bros-3-developer-interview


Miyamoto became directly involved in Twilight Princess towards the end with the young development team being unfocused and after Aonuma had to step in to direct.
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/twilight_princess/0/5

Aonuma I suppose that's true. In any case, it's a fact that if Miyamoto-san thinks of something, he wants to tell you straight away; he can't wait to tell you in person. So a lot of his instructions this time came in the form of e-mail.

Miyamoto Right, it was the first time I have done it through e-mail.

Aonuma When we were working on Wind Waker, he would simply hand me two-page documents with all his comments gathered together, saying: "There you go!"

Miyamoto: In the past I would often gather my comments in one document and hand them to the people in charge. I also used to make a point of avoiding going directly to the development area and to only deal with team leaders. That's because the management of the development team had been entrusted to them. This time round however, there were of course a huge number of people involved as well as a lot of young developers. That's why I thought that rather than all these instructions appearing out of nowhere, it was better if the developers could actually see the process behind these decisions.​

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/twilight_princess/0/4

Iwata: Miyamoto-san, how did you feel when you became fully involved in the development process?

Miyamoto: That's a difficult one. I hope it's okay to speak frankly?

Iwata: By all means.

Miyamoto: Well, I've been involved in developing several prototypes throughout the course of the project, so there weren't any serious problems, but... Firstly, the leaders hadn't been checking the progress of the staff. Many staff members weren't able to properly execute the most fundamental parts of their assignments. They weren't able to play catch yet; in fact, they hadn't even got the gist, such as catching the ball in the middle of the glove... Sloppy work, you might say. That's why I've mostly been helping by explaining to them clearly so they could better understand what they are supposed to do in order to correctly execute their assignments. There's one thing I've been grateful for, and that is the level of motivation these people have. The cause of the sloppiness wasn't due to people's lack of motivation, but more that they were stuck in a rut due to the huge amount of work they had. Iwata I see. You could say they didn't know where to direct their focus? Miyamoto Yes, that's it. Because they were already highly motivated, simply by pointing out what task they should be doing, they were able to make significant progress. And so we've managed to finish in around four months what would have taken around half a year. I was a little concerned at first, but the level of motivation within the development team has really helped.
​

For Super Mario Galaxy Miyamoto worked as Producer and is responsible for the game design of using gravity and spherical worlds. He regularly evaluated Super Mario Galaxy and is also the reason they switched the life balance from 6 life points to 3.

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/super_mario_galaxy/3/2

Iwata: For this last interview, I would like to ask Miyamoto-san, the creator of Mario, and the person in charge of game design for Super Mario Galaxy.

Miyamoto: So what I had come up with, was gravity.
Gravity was used a lot in old movies, with things like being able to walk upside-down on the ceiling.
But if you think about it, nobody was really able to do that before in real life, and I though it would be great if I were able to recreate that in a game. People would be able to have a new experience, and it would be so much fun being able to play around in that kind of an environment.
But when I told that to the staff, they became worried, and asked me "Can we really call something like that a game?" So I told them, that if I were to make a game that was not fun, I would much rather make something that was not a game, but everyone would find a lot of fun! (laughs)

Miyamoto: It came down to finding the right idea. With a spherical field, you’re able to create new styles
from a design perspective, and this type of field is also good for the camera angles. So even after experimenting with Mario 128, I wanted to save it for another time.


Iwata: I felt that this was a very difficult project in the way you had participated.
You weren’t the director like in Mario 64, and even though you knew the staff in EAD Tokyo very well, it was about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) away from Kyoto.

Miyamoto: But I think I was able to work in a pleasant environment.
I don’t think we would have been able to make this game if I was the director, getting my feet wet in the development process, but I think it was possible because I was the producer. The development tools we were using were so much better than the ones we used in the past; the computer on my desk was always connected to Tokyo. Iwata: You were connected to them so much, that even in the mornings on days off, you were emailing them! (laughs)

Miyamoto: They were constantly sending me the latest data, so I was able to respond to them immediately.
When I would go to Tokyo in the earlier stages of development,
I took over an entire room and had the development leads come in one by one, and we talked about the game while we were playing.
But then it struck me, "Is this something that I need to be doing all the way in Tokyo!?" (laughs) So I had the same environment created in one of the conference rooms in Kyoto, and I held meetings displaying the game screen using a camera, and talking about how we should change things in the game via video conferencing. So I was able to work as if I were in the Tokyo office.

Iwata: Koizumi-san, the director, referred to you playing the game as if you were sampling their first dishes that they had created.​

Miyamoto on Star Fox Zero on being credited as a director for the first time in years.

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2016/May/Star-Fox-Zero-Dev-Team-Interview-Part-Two-1107887.html

Sao: Listening to you speak, Miyamoto-san, it sounds like you were deeply involved in the development of this game.

Miyamoto: Well, I am credited as both producer and supervising director, and I’d say that what I did was pretty close to working as a director.

Sao: When did you last take on that kind of role?

Miyamoto: On The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which came out in 1998, I was close to being a director, but was credited as a producer. So the last time I was credited as a director would have been before that, on Super Mario 64.​

Thank you .

 

[-Mutsukki-]

Shigeru Miyamoto worked in a Producer/Director role in most of his key games up until Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Miyamoto was a director on Super Mario 64 and had a Producer/Director role on Ocarina of Time.

Sometime between the NES and SNES eras Miyamoto got in trouble for giving himself a "producer" title to the western press because they wouldn't understand the hierarchy of their Japanese development teams. (Meaning "Producer" and "Director" and "Section Chief" might mean something different)

http://web.archive.org/web/20030811223536/http://www.video-fenky.com/features/miyamoto.html

I: So why did you begin calling yourself a producer?

SM: Once we finished Mario and Zelda, the next thing I wanted to do was sequels. I thought Zelda could turn into a new and different game if the game system was more fun and we could switch between maps and things, so... I had people under me do Mario 3 and The Adventure of Link, so I figured, hey, I'm a producer now.

There's also one more reason. To tell the truth, in Nintendo there aren't any official positions called "director" or "producer". Instead you have the kacho/bucho (section chief/department chief) system. The thing is, though, people overseas don't get that system. So when I started dealing with overseas folks, I wanted to sell myself to them, so I just wrote "producer" on my business card. With that title, people from overseas could recognize what I do, and it worked all right. Later I got yelled at from the head office about assigning myself titles, but... (laughs) Those are the two reasons I started calling myself a producer.​

[Takashi Tezuka worked directly with Miyamoto on Mario and Zelda, and Tezuka directed Super Mario Bros. 3, The Lost Levels (Miyamoto was 10% invovled), and Zelda: A Link to the Past. Kensuke Tanabe directed Doki Doki Panic and designed levels on SMB3 while Miyamoto was "Producer" with a director role]
http://www.nintendo.com/nes-classic/super-mari-bros-and-super-mario-bros-3-developer-interview


Miyamoto became directly involved in Twilight Princess towards the end with the young development team being unfocused and after Aonuma had to step in to direct.
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/twilight_princess/0/5

Aonuma I suppose that's true. In any case, it's a fact that if Miyamoto-san thinks of something, he wants to tell you straight away; he can't wait to tell you in person. So a lot of his instructions this time came in the form of e-mail.

Miyamoto Right, it was the first time I have done it through e-mail.

Aonuma When we were working on Wind Waker, he would simply hand me two-page documents with all his comments gathered together, saying: "There you go!"

Miyamoto: In the past I would often gather my comments in one document and hand them to the people in charge. I also used to make a point of avoiding going directly to the development area and to only deal with team leaders. That's because the management of the development team had been entrusted to them. This time round however, there were of course a huge number of people involved as well as a lot of young developers. That's why I thought that rather than all these instructions appearing out of nowhere, it was better if the developers could actually see the process behind these decisions.​

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/twilight_princess/0/4

Iwata: Miyamoto-san, how did you feel when you became fully involved in the development process?

Miyamoto: That's a difficult one. I hope it's okay to speak frankly?

Iwata: By all means.

Miyamoto: Well, I've been involved in developing several prototypes throughout the course of the project, so there weren't any serious problems, but... Firstly, the leaders hadn't been checking the progress of the staff. Many staff members weren't able to properly execute the most fundamental parts of their assignments. They weren't able to play catch yet; in fact, they hadn't even got the gist, such as catching the ball in the middle of the glove... Sloppy work, you might say. That's why I've mostly been helping by explaining to them clearly so they could better understand what they are supposed to do in order to correctly execute their assignments. There's one thing I've been grateful for, and that is the level of motivation these people have. The cause of the sloppiness wasn't due to people's lack of motivation, but more that they were stuck in a rut due to the huge amount of work they had. Iwata I see. You could say they didn't know where to direct their focus? Miyamoto Yes, that's it. Because they were already highly motivated, simply by pointing out what task they should be doing, they were able to make significant progress. And so we've managed to finish in around four months what would have taken around half a year. I was a little concerned at first, but the level of motivation within the development team has really helped.
​

For Super Mario Galaxy Miyamoto worked as Producer and is responsible for the game design of using gravity and spherical worlds. He regularly evaluated Super Mario Galaxy and is also the reason they switched the life balance from 6 life points to 3.

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/super_mario_galaxy/3/2

Iwata: For this last interview, I would like to ask Miyamoto-san, the creator of Mario, and the person in charge of game design for Super Mario Galaxy.

Miyamoto: So what I had come up with, was gravity.
Gravity was used a lot in old movies, with things like being able to walk upside-down on the ceiling.
But if you think about it, nobody was really able to do that before in real life, and I though it would be great if I were able to recreate that in a game. People would be able to have a new experience, and it would be so much fun being able to play around in that kind of an environment.
But when I told that to the staff, they became worried, and asked me "Can we really call something like that a game?" So I told them, that if I were to make a game that was not fun, I would much rather make something that was not a game, but everyone would find a lot of fun! (laughs)

Miyamoto: It came down to finding the right idea. With a spherical field, you’re able to create new styles
from a design perspective, and this type of field is also good for the camera angles. So even after experimenting with Mario 128, I wanted to save it for another time.


Iwata: I felt that this was a very difficult project in the way you had participated.
You weren’t the director like in Mario 64, and even though you knew the staff in EAD Tokyo very well, it was about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) away from Kyoto.

Miyamoto: But I think I was able to work in a pleasant environment.
I don’t think we would have been able to make this game if I was the director, getting my feet wet in the development process, but I think it was possible because I was the producer. The development tools we were using were so much better than the ones we used in the past; the computer on my desk was always connected to Tokyo. Iwata: You were connected to them so much, that even in the mornings on days off, you were emailing them! (laughs)

Miyamoto: They were constantly sending me the latest data, so I was able to respond to them immediately.
When I would go to Tokyo in the earlier stages of development,
I took over an entire room and had the development leads come in one by one, and we talked about the game while we were playing.
But then it struck me, "Is this something that I need to be doing all the way in Tokyo!?" (laughs) So I had the same environment created in one of the conference rooms in Kyoto, and I held meetings displaying the game screen using a camera, and talking about how we should change things in the game via video conferencing. So I was able to work as if I were in the Tokyo office.

Iwata: Koizumi-san, the director, referred to you playing the game as if you were sampling their first dishes that they had created.​

Miyamoto on Star Fox Zero on being credited as a director for the first time in years.

http://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2016/May/Star-Fox-Zero-Dev-Team-Interview-Part-Two-1107887.html

Sao: Listening to you speak, Miyamoto-san, it sounds like you were deeply involved in the development of this game.

Miyamoto: Well, I am credited as both producer and supervising director, and I’d say that what I did was pretty close to working as a director.

Sao: When did you last take on that kind of role?

Miyamoto: On The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which came out in 1998, I was close to being a director, but was credited as a producer. So the last time I was credited as a director would have been before that, on Super Mario 64.​

Thank you, this clears a lot of stuff. I said Miyamoto wasn't much involved with Galaxy because he wasn't physically there, but I guess he did contribute a great deal to it in ideas

 

[boiled goose]

It's worth noting the Argonaut guy invited Miyamoto to his wedding long after this supposed 'feud' took place, I think it's just case of business being business.

Body Harvest was delayed because it kept failing approval, can't blame Nintendo for not releasing a 6fps game (Waverace PAL version came close mind you).

Back when I was at Rare we would argue with Nintendo over many things, but I can't recall a single time Miyamoto 'sabotaged' any of the projects we had on. Allowing us to work with his IPs was quite the blessing, plus his criticisms were quite helpful at times (if completely insane at others). He wasn't involved at all in most of the titles we produced.

Would still buy him a pint.

Remember any insane or helpful comments?

 

[FyreWulff]

Miyamoto didn't kill F-Zero. The horrible sales for the games after F-Zero X did.

For all the praise GX gets nowadays, no one bought the damn thing when it came out.

This is a problem with some diehard fans. They think F-Zero and Metroid are cornerstone franchises when both don't sell anymore.

 

[Schopenhauerian]

An outline of some of what is wrong with this video, from earlier in the thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=227392252#post227392252

Coming back to one of the subjects that was previously addressed:

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-As...Kyoto-/1-I-Want-to-Work-in-Kyoto--220778.html
Dylan Cuthbert: ... I'm director of Star Fox 64 3D [released in July of 2011]. Before that, I made Star Fox Command [released in August of 2006]...
Satoru Iwata: Going back a bit, you were also involved in development of the original Star Fox for the Super Famicom.
Cuthbert: That's right. Going even further back, about 20 years ago, I came to Japan from England for the first time.
Miyamoto: That was 1990. You came to lend support as a programmer for Star Fox...

Argonaut didn't make Star Fox 2. Nintendo contracted Argonaut to develop the FX technology. Nintendo additionally contracted 5 programmers from Argonaut to work inside Nintendo and help develop games using the technology. Those programmers were paid as contractors directly by Nintendo.

The entire Star Fox 2 development team (Nintendo EAD and the additional 3 contract game programmers) were paid for their work. Argonaut specifically didn't see any technology royalties because the FX chip wasn't manufactured since the game wasn't officially released.

Argonaut doesn't own any game code because Dylan Cuthbert, Kristen Wombell, Giles Goddard and Colin Reed were all contract employees working for Nintendo. Goddard and Reed even stayed working full time for Nintendo for several years after, while Cuthbert and Wombell found new ventures.

Argonaut only has ties to developing the FX technology chip that powered the technology. All the FX technology games that's Argonaut tried to develop on their own and pitch to Nintendo were rejected.

https://twitter.com/johntv/status/354773277962534912
John Ricciardi ‏@johntv (09 Jul 2013)
My fav is the one where he [Jez San] tries to suggest he gave Miyamoto the idea for Mario 64...

https://twitter.com/dylancuthbert/status/354860305903386626
Dylan Cuthbert @dylancuthbert (10 Jul 2013)
@johntv yes that's a bit of a stretch [by Jez San], although we did 3d platforming tests while making Starfox 2

https://twitter.com/dylancuthbert/status/357534836304527360
Dylan Cuthbert @dylancuthbert (17 Jul 2013)
@davidmoron we did 3d platforming tests (with an animated character in 3rd person) during the development of starfox 2 in 1993

I came across the interview with Giles Goddard (formerly of Argonaut, as noted above by Shikamaru Ninja) in which Goddard describes the early stages of Mario 64's development. This interview has not yet been mentioned in the thread.

It's certainly worth reading in full. The excerpts below constitute less than 20% of the full text of the interview:

http://pixelatron.com/blog/the-making-of-super-mario-64-full-giles-goddard-interview-ngc/
Mark Green: So did Miyamoto start with Mario running around on his screen?

Giles Goddard: Usually that's the first thing to go in, some kind of map system where the characters can figure out what height they are, the camera can figure out what it can see and how much it can see, figure out how to split up the scenery so it only draws as much as it needs to draw. That was the first thing, we were just playing around with Mario. He was wandering around a simple grid to start with, just picking stuff up, dropping stuff...

Mark Green: The camera system was revolutionary for the time.

Giles Goddard: One of the reasons for that was the Miyamoto didn't know how to extend the Super Mario Bros from the SNES. Wasn't really sure how to give that same sort of Mario Bros feeling in 3D. Quite a few months were spent around just playing around with different camera views, animations, ways of looking at the map. At some point, the game had a fixed path, almost like an isometric type of look. That didn't represent that much of a jump from the original 2D Mario. There was a lot of criticism of the camera originally. At the time, Miyamoto thought the camera was really good – the way it tried to avoid the scenery. It was very well done – it was done by [Takumi] Kawagoe [of Nintendo], who worked on Starfox 2 for the SNES, which got canned. He was a very very good programmer. I think his only job was the camera, so quite a major thing to do. He was there on the entire project – the whole time...

Mark Green: Your name is on some Nintendo patents.

Giles Goddard: There was a lot of stuff being patented... Half the patents that come out have been techniques that people have been using for years. The software patents just don't work. This was about the time that Sega patented using different 3D camera views in games. So, suddenly, halfway through the Super Mario 64 project, one of the people from downstairs came up and said you realise Sega has the patent on being able to switch cameras. Jaws dropped. We investigated whether we could use them and whether anything would happen. But there was also a patent on putting a 3D object on a bitmapped plane from a coin-op about 15-20 years ago...

Mark Green: How much thought went into Mario's movement?

Giles Goddard: 99% of the game is concerned with that. most of Miyamoto's time is spent on that, and the movement of the camera. The majority of the other characters and animation are done with Yamada-san and [inaudible], these design the movement of the bosses and the levels and so on, whereas Miyamoto just stands in the background, obviously making suggestions. But his main job is to sit down with the programmers and play with controls and camera and shape the way that the way the game *feels*. That is fundamental to the entire game.

Mark Green: Was the camera system a lot of work?

Giles Goddard: I think [the camera system] probably went through 1000s of different systems – having it locked, having it moving, having it locked again, player could control it 100%, etc. That was one of the problems – Miyamoto wasn't sure how to control the camera in 3D as he hadn't worked with them before, so it went through with various stages, being controlled by the different stages...

 

[Rodney McKay]

This is a problem with some diehard fans. They think F-Zero and Metroid are cornerstone franchises when both don't sell anymore.

They sell plenty to justify their continued existence, Nintendo just needs to manage budgets of the franchises that just aren't mega high sellers, or else fans will eventually take the challenge on themselves and fill the void Nintendo is leaving.

I don't even need a new 2D Metroid from Nintendo because of how many great ones are being made outsode of Nintendo (Axiom Verge, especially).

Sadly, I don't feel like there's a non-Nintendo game that nails the amazing look and feel of F-Zero GX yet, but Im fairly confident it's only a matter of time.