Miyamoto talks Wii

Written by Ryan Garside

May 30, 2006 | 18:07

Tags: #mario #miyamoto #mtv #wii #zelda

Companies: #nintendo

Legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto has spoken to MTV news about the upcoming Wii title, Mario Galaxy, as well as what he thinks about the Wii controller and the image of gamers worldwide.

Mario Galaxy was unveiled at E3 and it would seem the Japanese designer of both the Zelda and Mario series is particularly excited about the new direction the famous plumber is taking:

“Our biggest focus with "Super Mario Galaxy" is having different spheres or planets Mario can visit, with the idea being if the planet gets very, very large the scenery will look more like he's running across a plane. But if the planet is very small it almost looks like he's running around a ball. You can essentially run over the spheres almost endlessly. But when you do that you're moving in a 3-D space but without the typical camera issues that we've had in 3-D games in the past. What that allows us to do is take a game like "Mario" that has been a very jump-based game in the past, and turn it into a game that is more [about] Mario running around a lot and going to different places and kind of enjoying that. [The game will also] take advantage of the Wii remote's pointing capabilities to allow you to directly interact with things on the screen by pointing at them or clicking on something to get Mario to go exactly where you want to go. In that sense, I think it's going to allow for a much more intuitive camera system and much more intuitive control scheme that will allow people who have never played a 3-D "Mario" game before to feel comfortable enjoying "Super Mario Galaxy."

When asked what he wanted the image of the modern gamer to be he had this to say:

“It would be similar to some of the photos we're showing of people playing the Wii here at the show — which is people of all ages kind of standing up, having a lot of fun and moving around. It's a very active and fun-looking image and that's the type of image I would like to see video gaming viewed as.”

He also gave us some insight into why the Wii controller has been made the way it has, discussing how the speaker feature on the control will be implemented into games like Zelda:

“We thought by adding the speaker we could continue to give the player more feedback. With "Zelda" you can hear the sound of the bowstring draw back [from the controller]. It gets kind of a [string-tightening] sound and as you release [an arrow], you hear the "thwip." And then you hear the sound travel to the TV. And so depth of sound is another way to give the user the feeling that their actions are having a direct response in the game.”

An interesting interview for anyone anticipating the Wii. Let us know your thoughts about Miyamoto’s comments over in the forum.
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