"The Stars of Famicom Games"

How Video Games are Made

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I picked up a children's picture book at the local library recently. Some of you might be thinking, "Why would you take out a Japanese picture book? Are your Japanese language skills that atrophied?" Well, this happened to be a very special book, because it showed kids how Nintendo games are made, from start to finish. With some fantastically juicy pictures! And not only that, the game it focussed on was Super Mario Bros. 3!

The book was published in late 1989, based on a tour and interview session at Nintendo of Japan in July of that same year (this will become evident in a later picture). They interview Shigeru Miyamoto, Koji Kondo, all the major players in Nintendo's games.

I've scanned all the pages of the book and have presented them below. Also, the text for each page is here in Japanese and English (translated by me, Chris Covell) for your reading pleasure.

Note to game journalists: my name (or website's name) is not "disgruntled designer"; that's just the name of the domain owned by my best friend whose webspace he lets me use for my own site as well.