NEW YORK – Despite Nintendo's emphasis on accessible gaming for newbies, the upcoming New Super Mario Bros. Wii will be a challenge, says Shigeru Miyamoto.

"I think what we've created this time is in fact pretty difficult," said the legendary game designer, who added that attempting to create a game that would bring in new gamers but still "satisfy the needs of longtime Mario fans" was a taxing task for the development team at Nintendo.

In a Manhattan hotel on Thursday evening, Miyamoto showed off the fruits of the team's labor. Speaking through a translator with a group of journalists including Wired.com, he gave a demonstration of the new Mario, which will be released on Nov. 15.

The full transcript of the event, including a roundtable Q&A session, is below. Among other topics, Miyamoto talks about why the game doesn't include online multiplayer, whether its helpful Super Guide system could be applied to the next Wii Zelda game, the possibility of user-generated Mario levels and the real reason why Princess Peach isn't a playable character in New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Shigeru Miyamoto: I'd like to take advantage of what limited time we have. So I won't be answering any questions about Zelda (laughs).

Miyamoto on Wii Fit Plus

Just to give a little bit of background on Wii Fit Plus, I think it can be said possibly for* Wii Fit Plus*, but for any kind of exercise – most people tend to start very enthusiastically, but then find they have a hard time continuing to maintain it and keep it regularly.

Even myself, when I work out at the gym, I always find that the first five minutes of the workout feels very long. But as you get in your rhythm and keep at it, before you know it, forty minutes or an hour has passed. And of course, I'm sure there are times when you go home at the end of the day and you think, "Man, I'd like to work out, but I've only got 15 minutes, and I don't even know where to start or what to try to squeeze in."

With some of these thoughts in mind, we tried to think of different ways we can make *Wii Fit *a little bit more convenient and easier for people to use.

Even with the original Wii Fit, we tried to streamline the experience as much as possible, even going so far as to build in a *Wii Fit *channel that would reside on your Wii so that you can go in and just weigh yourself anytime you wanted very quickly. But even then, the original Wii Fit still took time: You had to start it up, it took time to choose the individual activities from the menu, so we wanted to try and improve that experience.

We looked at some other areas that we could improve in the software as well. We consulted even with university professors to get some of their feedback on how the software could be used. We included a new system for estimating calories that's based on the metabolic equivalent. And then by calculating the estimated number of calories that you're burning when you're working out, we're also able to equate certain calorie amounts to certain foods, and people can get an idea of what they've burned off during the workout. So it gives you a good idea of how much exercise it takes to burn off a piece of cake.

With *Wii Fit Plus, *we added some more sportslike elements to it, including the golf game that takes into account the balance and movement of your body as you swing your Wii remote golf club on the balance board. And for that, we also consulted with professional golf teams.

And in the process of creating Wii Fit Plus, because it is a game, we also included a few new exercises and yoga activities as well as fun, new balance games such as the ones that have you flapping your arms to fly.

Of course, in my house, we consider our dog a member of the family, so while it wasn't possible to weigh your dog in the previous version, when you saw all the members of your family line up on that main title screen, it always left me kind of sad that there wasn't a dog there to represent my dog, so we added that feature. Also, cats too. But there won't be a Nintencats (laughs).

The idea behind it wasn't so much to create an entire new experience, it was really more about finding ways to improve what had been done with *Wii Fit *but also improve the streamlined experience itself, rather than releasing it as a full sequel. Instead, we looked at it as an upgrade version for people who had already bought the original *Wii Fit *and decided to offer it at a very low price.

That's all I wanted to share with you about *Wii Fit, *and now we can move on to Mario.

Miyamoto on New Super Mario Bros. Wii:

Of course, I talked about* Wii Fit and how we gave a lot of consideration to how a device like that might be used in a living room setting. We actually did the same thing for New Super Mario Bros. Wii. *The premise was that because it's going to be on Wii console, and it's a console for the most part that resides in the living room that everybody in the house interacts with. We needed to design the game in a way that would be appropriate for that.

Now of course the game itself stems from the original Mario Bros., which is the design on my T-shirt today, and interestingly enough, that game was the original concept was that the Mario Bros. games would be games that people always played together.

But of course, the Super Mario Bros. series turned into more of a single-player game, and with the launch of the DS hardware and the broad audience of that hardware drew in, one of the things that we tried to achieve with New Super Mario Bros. on the DS was a side-scrolling *Mario *game that had a balance of level difficulty that would be easy for some of the newer gamers that first joined video games on the DS hardware, but would still satisfy the needs of longtime *Mario *fans. But we found in making that game that doing that was actually difficult.

In fact, I remember at the roundtable at E3 this year, somebody asked, "Is *New Super Mario Bros. Wii *going to be as easy as *Super Mario Bros. *was on DS?"

But I think what we've created this time is in fact pretty difficult.

Of course because it has multiplayer, it has some new facets in the sense that more advanced gamers can take care of novice gamers that might be playing with them and carry them through the level.

We've also introduced a guide system that we'll be showing (later in the presentation). We feel that this time around, we've really managed to create a gameplay system that people at very disparate skill levels can easily play together and enjoy.

At E3 we did a simple introduction of the features in* New Super Mario Bros. Wii.* So to do kind of a more detailed introduction to the game: It's a full *Mario *game with a complete story mode that starts at World 1 and goes to World 8. And you can play the story mode single-player all the way through from beginning to end, and at any point along the way, you can add players from the world map and have up to four players cooperate to complete the levels.

And beyond that, there are two dedicated multiplayer modes, one of which is free-for-all, which lets you select the stages from story mode in a menu-based system with images from each stage so you can easily find the stage you like. And then there's also a coin battle mode which is a competitive multiplayer mode, in which you're actually competing for points and you're getting ranked based on how many points you've collected.

The free-for-all mode has kind of a similar feel to something like Mario Kart where you just happen to have four people over and you want to sit down and play a quick match in your favorite level, and so you can use that to jump in.

And the levels that you cleared in the story mode unlock as you work your way through the story mode. I would say that they all become available in free-for-all mode.

The coin battle mode is a different structure. In the free-for-all mode you earn points and collect points, and the points you earn are based on things you stomp and things like that. Coin battle is based strictly on the number of coins that you get. So it's very close to the original concept of the original Mario Bros.

The thing that I think is very interesting about the free-for-all mode is that you can play the same level over and over again, and your experience in that level can vary dramatically depending on which group of people you happen to be playing with.

Of course, in the process of creating a game, we'll often bring people in to test it out and get their feedback, and we did that for both single-player mode and multiplayer mode. And in both cases, people would play the game, fill out the survey, and in both cases everybody said, "Wow, the game is really fun."

But what we noticed in watching people play the game, is when people were playing alone, they had a very serious look on their face, and they were working very hard trying to figure out their way through the level. And it was a very big challenge for them. And as soon as we had multiple people playing the game, their expressions changed dramatically, and all of sudden, they had smiles on their faces, they were talking and jabbering back and forth and having a lot of fun playing the game that way.

Miyamoto demonstrates the map screen of New Super Mario Bros. Wii

So we're about to go into World 1-4. Similar to the system in Mario 3, before we enter the level, you can use an item to power up the players. So here we're going to use the penguin suit because this is an underwater course and the penguin suit is actually well-suited to underwater levels. It helps you swim much easier.

Here we have the ice flower. The penguin suit can also shoot ice balls. Both the ice flower and penguin suit create these ice blocks that float up along the top of the water and you then use as platforms. You can also use the ice blocks to get you to areas you couldn't otherwise reach.

As you can see the game's not easy. So we'll drop out of this level here...

That was a very bad demo. So obviously you can see if you're very good at the game, you can play at a very high skill level, and if you're not very good at the game, you give bad demos. (laughs)

Super Guide

So this is World 1-1, but what you see here is the Super Guide block. As I mentioned before, there is a help mode in the game called Super Guide. And what happens is, after you die eight times in a level, this block will appear (at the beginning of the level). So you're playing at home, and maybe you're not as experienced in Mario games as some people, and you die many times in a level, this block will appear and you can choose to activate the Super Guide.

So the walkthrough is after you die eight times in one level, and then when activated, you see a video of Luigi running through the level that you're on. This is World 1-1, so in this case, the Super Guide is really acting as kind the most basic instruction manual for how to play the game. So here it shows you you can hit the block 10 times to get 10 coins and five more will pop out. It also shows that the shells can be used to pick up coins. Here it shows you how to slide down the slope and find some hidden items.

And at any point in watching the video, you can also pause the game and take control. So now I am in control of Luigi. What the Super Guide isn't showing is the secret areas or how to get the star coins and things like that. It's really just showing the most basic way for novice players to try to get through each level. The other elements you still have to find yourself. So then on your own, you can explore some of these other hidden areas.

So after, say, you've let the entire video play, it will give you the option to then clear the level on your own or if you just wanted to use the video to get past the hardest parts, then you can use that and simply continue on to the next level.

Then you can see that there's a little Toad icon here. In these levels, there's actually a Toad here in the level and you can try to carry him through the level, so there are additional bonuses beyond simply playing the game itself.

I mentioned that if you die eight times in one level, the Super Guide block will appear, I found that when I play and when it does appear, I somehow feel regretful and guilty that I let that happen. (laughs) So I've found that when that happens, it kind of inspires me: "I've already done this bad, now I definitely have to do this level on my own."

People who clear every level without ever having a Super Guide block appear will get a little something special on the title screen of the game. There are different stars that you can receive on the title screen depending on what you've done in the game, and that's one of them.

As long as we're talking about things that you can unlock: As you go through the game there are three star coins in every level. As you collect the star points, you can then use the star coins to unlock additional movies that are also created using a system similar to the Super Guide system. These are called Hint Movies. And these Hint Movies will show the highest level of gameplay that our own internal testers and developers have been able to achieve in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. And they show things like super skills and infinite one-ups and secret goals as well as the locations of star coins and things like that.

So we actually have a video that's pieced together from these Hint Movies showing some of the super play of our own testers and developers that we'd like to show.

(Miyamoto narrates as the movie plays)

This is Mini-Mario. As you can see, Mini-Mario is spinning through the level without touching the ground.

This one is two players never stopping (jumping on countless Bullet Bills). They make it look like it's so easy. (laughs)

So the super players on our test team put a lot of these together. The idea is, when you go through and you unlock all of these Hint Movies, they'll give you ideas about what you might want to try in the game, and might inspire you to become a super player yourself.

And now we're going to show you one of my personal favorites. This is a level that features Yoshi. As you can see here, Luigi is pretty much doing nothing and the other three players are supporting him in his effort to do nothing but reach the end of the level. Luigi somehow manages to get all the special items. (laughs) You can also see he started with four lives and now he has five already.

As you can see, there are a lot of different ways you can play Super Mario Bros Wii.

The American version of New Super Mario Bros.

Coin Battle Mode

Coin Battle does use the levels from the Story mode as well, but it also has five dedicated levels that are exclusive to that mode. In Coin Battle, the levels from the story mode do have different coin placement. Elsewhere in the game, if you've played a bunch, you may have encountered these outlined coins that you have to pass through the outline once before the coin appears.

The Coin Battle mode uses those quite a bit, which means that being first and running through the level isn't necessarily the best thing because oftentimes you'll run through them all and the person behind you will get them. So you can do Coin Battle in all 80 levels of the game, but you also have these five dedicated levels only in the Coin Battle mode.

I think it's a* Mario* game that offers a variety of different ways to play it, and I think it's one for any skill level so hopefully all of you will be able to get a chance to spend some time with it and enjoy it.

This is the packaging that we're showing here today for the first time. As you can see, it's the first all-red Wii case. And the American version has a nice special foil stamp over the Wii logo. In Japan, it's just white (laughs). We do have this nice special box for you so we hope you all take advantage of it, and rush out and buy the game.

Q&A

Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra: So we have a couple of decades of evolution and iteration on the Mario series, but this is the first one in as long as I can remember that looks so much like the original. So I wanted to know why you thought it was important to the series' roots and develop a Mario game that was a modern one and that looks like the ones that I grew up with.

__Miyamoto: __That's probably two things, and one is we wanted the game to really appeal to and be accessible to as wide an audience as possible. And the second was because we wanted to make it multiplayer, we really felt that the original concept for *Mario Bros. *was the one best suited to do that.

Jamin Brophy-Warren, Wall Street Journal: When I played this at E3, I played with a guy who was really mean the entire time. He kept jumping on my head as I jumped over pits and over enemies. I wanted to know, were you ever frustrated when you played the game with people who didn't play the game the "fair" way?

Miyamoto: I didn't really encounter any frustrating experiences like that because I found that even in levels that were particularly difficult, when somebody did that to me, then I could just float along in the bubble and basically let them guide me through the level. Particularly, if someone's a novice player, they can still get to see the level that way and maybe get out of the bubble at the end, and essentially finish the level. So it didn't really frustrate me all that much.

Andrew Yoon, Joystiq: So multiplayer is obviously very important in this, but there's no online multiplayer at all. I was wondering if... do you have an interest in pursuing the Internet in any way in gameplay or something new in the future?

Miyamoto: Well, of course, we have made games like Smash Bros. and Mario Kart, we do have an interest in... taking advantage of network devices. I think that particularly with this kind of a Mario game, we really wanted to focus on the living room experience. We could have made an online multiplayer *Mario *game, but if you do that, the effort and resources you devote to putting a game like that online will then result in you essentially balancing out the resources. That means you're going to have to sacrifice something somewhere else in the game in order to include an element like that. This time, we really wanted to focus on the living room element and people playing together.

As I mentioned before, from our focus testing we found that when people were playing alone, they were very serious, and when they were playing together in the same room, they all had smiles on their faces and were talking back and forth. We felt that this type of experience was just better suited to a same room, face-to-face multiplayer experience, rather than over the Internet. That being said, of course, in the future there's definitely a possibility for exploring what can be done with remote connected gameplay.

Craig Harris, IGN: Is there any particular reason why you went the retail route for *New Super Mario Bros. Wii *and not a digital download on WiiWare?

Miyamoto: My perspective right now is that the business overall is still very much a package-based business. And personally, for me, I'm the kind of person who likes to have a physical object rather than a digital product. I prefer to have something physical that I can hold in my hand, particularly when it's a nice red package like this. (laughs)

Chris Grant, Joystiq: The Star system you mentioned... it sounds a lot like what the other guys are doing with Achievements and Trophies. So a) do you think they're similar, and b) do you have any interest in platform-wide Achievements or Trophies or Stars on Wii and what do you think of that kind of Achievement system in general?

Miyamoto: The first thing I have to say is that I'm not particularly well-versed in the Xbox 360 Achievement system, as I spend most of my time working on my own games. I don't have a lot of time to look at what other people are doing.

In this particular case, I mean the idea of playing the game in a particular way and having that result in kind of a special prize or something that rewards you, is something that we've been doing for years with the* Mario* games. So this to me just felt like an extension of that. I don't necessarily think that we would require people to apply that system to every game that is made, but it just seems like something we've been doing for the last 15 or 20 years.

N'Gai Croal, Fast Company: Where were you when you heard Captain Lou Albano passed away and what was your reaction?

Miyamoto: You're the one who just told me (group laughs).

Following the Q&A, journalists played

Chris Buffa, AOL GameDaily: So it always seems like you have your hand in so many projects at once. How do you make sure that all the stuff gets done on time, and what are some of your work philosophies, but also bad habits?

Miyamoto: As far as what I do to make sure that titles don't get behind schedule, essentially, all my titles end up getting behind schedule at some point so there's really nothing I can say about that (laughs).

But what I can say that we do with our development is... as the technologies advance, the graphics have become obviously much more beautiful than they used to be. And the sound in games is much more advanced than it used to be. And both of those are elements that require a great deal of resources to create. I think a lot of times people will try to put all of the graphics in and put all of the sound into a game, and then evaluate the game at that point.

What we really try to focus on is the framework or the skeleton of the game. If there are elements that absolutely have to have sound in order for us to make a determination as to whether or not they affect the gameplay elements, we will include the sound in those elements. If there are elements that absolutely have to have the graphics, we will include those graphics, but we won't complete the sound or the graphics for the entire game.

Instead, what we do is we look strictly at the skeleton framework of what the interactive experience is. And it's when we run into issues with the specific framework or the specific skeleton that forms the core of the game. When we find that that's not going to be a compelling experience, that's when I tend to upend the tea table. And so that generally happens before all of the effort has been put in on the graphics and the sound. That's the one thing that we do that I feel is important to help us keep on track.

And then I generally get very deeply involved in individual projects in the later stages as they're really refining the level design and polishing the game. And in terms of my bad habits in development, I would say that it's probably commonly considered within Nintendo that my bad habit, even when the programmers are telling me, "We can't change the program anymore, we have to stop," I keep telling them to make changes to make things better (laughs).

So my job is really to seduce the programmers into doing what I want them to do (laughs).

Joystiq: I don't know if you've had a chance to play LittleBigPlanet, but lots of people make* Mario* levels in that game. So there's an obvious interest for users to make their own *Mario *levels. Do you see maybe opening up a creation tool to the community in the future?

Miyamoto: That is an area that I have a lot of interest in and I think that the side-scrolling Mario games in particular are very well-suited for that type of thing.

So of course the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series is one that's made in North America by (Nintendo Software Technology), but it's one I've been involved in. And from early on, we did have a lot of discussions about how enable that type of level creation. And of course, more recently on the DSi we have* Flipnote Studio*, which is another utility or tool type of software that lets users create and share with others. And I think that those types of interactive experiences are going to continue to broaden and we'll see a lot more user-generated content moving forward. And I've always had an interest in those types of creative tools so I'd definitely be open to that sometime in the future.

Chris Plante, UGO: The game has many references to a lot of the previous* Mario* games. The coin collect mode actually reminds me of the GameBoy Color Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, the King Koopa design from the SNES and the coin collect mode that we saw from the original Mario Bros. I was curious if this was sort of a Best of Mario or Mario's Greatest Hits for you, and also if there are references that you haven't shown yet that you'd like to talk about.

Miyamoto: We've actually collected a lot of different elements from a lot of different *Mario *games and one of the things that we like to do is – obviously, there are a lot of fans out there that have a lot of favorite elements in Mario games, and we want to try and make them happy and bring back some of the favorites from the past.

But I don't know everything that we have and haven't shown at this point, so it's hard for me to think as to whether or not there are any more in there that we can share. But as you pointed out, the Coin Battle mode is definitely an homage back to the original two-player Mario Bros. game, and there are a lot of elements that we've brought together from the past games. The main feature, of course, this time is the multiplayer and trying to really use that while taking advantage of some of the older features and really having the multiplayer element play them up in new ways.

I guess there are two things, one that I can talk about and one that I can't go into detail on. One of the five Coin Battle stages is kind of a parody slash almost alternate reality, I guess, of the original Mario 1-1 world. If you've played a Mario game and you think you know what that World will look like, when you play it in the coin battle game, you will be very surprised.

And then another one, I'm not supposed to talk about, is the final boss at the end of World 8, I think is something that will feel fresh and new but at the same time feel very much like a parody of a past game.

James Brightman, IndustryGamers: I was wondering, obviously everyone expects this game to do well here, but the Japanese video game industry has been on the decline in the past couple of years. Does that concern you at all? And what do you think the main problem is for the Japanese market?

Miyamoto: I think it's not simply a matter of nothing is selling in Japan anymore, particularly if you look at* New Super Mario Bros. *on the DS. I think we sold through about five million copies of that game in the Japanese market alone, and in fact, the Japanese sell-through had been stronger than the sell-through in both North America and Europe until very recently. And that was part of the factor of how strong the DS business was in Japan at that time.

I think another really good example that's really more recent is* Dragon Quest IX* on the DS in Japan, which probably at this point has already sold through, I would guess, more than three million in a short period of time. So I think what we're seeing in the Japanese market is not that the market as a whole is suffering. We're still seeing that high-quality titles are still doing very well. But I think perhaps what's changed is, while in the past other titles would perform adequately, now some of the other titles are maybe not performing as well.

Scott Stein, C|NET: As you said, this is the first time you've, for a home console, explored side-scrolling *Mario *game after some 3-D work that you've done. You had some ideas of things that you wanted to incorporate, but were there any revelations or surprises that you didn't expect in approaching that type of game design again?

Miyamoto: It's kind of hard for me to remember, but one of the big surprises was probably the multiplayer. And particularly, we found in focus testing that there are players out there who when they're playing multiplayer *Mario *with other people, can have a really good time without really doing much of anything. I can't think of any other examples right now.

Photo courtesy JesseAngelo.com

Wired.com: What do you say to people who think the Super Guide is sort of cheating, and do you think the Super Guide can be applied to different types of Nintendo games, like* Zelda* for instance?

Miyamoto: I think that a lot of times people will buy a video game and if they can play through the end, they'll play through the end but some people will buy a strategy guide or go online. And what we've done here is essentially try to include some of those features within the game itself, but I think with a feature like this, we were able to create it for* New Super Mario Bros. Wii* because from the outset, we intended to try to develop this type of system and include it in this game.

Depending on what the priorities are for other titles, it may or may not be included. We can't really promise if it's going to be a part of every game moving forward. But at the same time, I also think that there are some types of gameplay that are suited to a system like Super Guide that can potentially help people through the game. And there are some types of gameplay that really aren't. So we'll probably evaluate each title individually and try to determine which ones are best suited for the system.

And of course, even just using a game like* Legend of Zelda* as an example of trying to apply a system like this, it brings up a Pandora's Box of questions in terms of, do we show people how to solve the puzzles? How much of the puzzle do we show them solved in order to help them understand the puzzle? Or are there puzzles in the game where they have to show the entire solution to in order for some people to understand it? So it can be a difficult system to apply to some games. But we do see some value in it, and we'll look at different titles individually to see how it can be applied.

Nick Chester, Destructoid: Something like *Wii Fit *is very successful, but when it was first introduced, I think people were scratching their heads, and ultimately it was this huge success. But were there any products that you've designed internally at Nintendo that you released and were surprised by the reaction, whether it be negative or positive?

Miyamoto: I don't really remember if there's anything that truly surprised me with the reactions, but one thing I do think that there will still be some possibility with is Wii Music.

Chester: You think in the future you may do something to iterate on that to maybe make it more successful than it was?

Miyamoto: I think that the development team members on* Wii Music* were maybe a little bit shocked by the reaction and hoped that it would get a better response than it did. So I think if we were to do anything it would be a matter of getting back together with them and trying to understand what their expectations were and where the gap was between their expectations and what the resulting product was. And we've talked about it, but it isn't anything that's concrete at this point.

The thing that's interesting about Wii Music is that there are people who are very versed in music and they play the game, and the evaluation of it very high, but at the same time there are a lot of people who play it and they don't have a very good opinion of it. So the gap between the positives and the negatives seems to be pretty big, which is interesting.

Jason Cipriano, mtvU: Mario 64 pretty much revolutionized 3-D gaming and changed the direction of many games that came after it. Do you think that there's been sort of a 2-D renaissance lately, particularly on the Wii, led by* New Super Mario Bros.*? And if so, do you think it's the developers working within the capabilities of the Wii or is it driven by the players who want a 2-D style game?

Miyamoto: I don't think everything necessarily needs to be in 3-D, or that just because we're seeing more 2-D games now (that) everything's necessarily going to suddenly shift and go back to 2-D. Instead, I think maybe what's going on is people are realizing the benefits of a 3-D game, and I think at the same time, I think people are remembering what the benefits of a 2-D game were. And in particular, with a game like* New Super Mario Bros. Wii*, I think when you're looking at the multiplayer in this game, the multiplayer platforming I think is much better suited to a 2-D environment than a 3-D one. I think that people probably going forward, at least on the development side, look at what their objectives of their games are and make the decisions based on the experience they have now and what the benefits are of each style.

But I think to really make the decision to go 2-D, you have to have the courage to not be so attached to the visual appearance of the game. And really be kind of pursuing more the gameplay experience. Because if you're concerned about how the game will be viewed because of its visual appearance, then obviously everybody's going to go more into 3-D and a more graphically impressive type of project. So you do have to have the courage to determine what your priorities are and where you want to put your focus.

Elise Vogel, Crispy Gamer: The words that come up when you talk about this game and also with Wii Music and Wii Fit are "interactive experience," as opposed to just a traditional game, the response of people playing in the room together as opposed to the different gameplay elements that are creating that experience. And I'm wondering if the games are maybe being received differently because we have a different perception of what games or interactive experiences should be, and if you created this game with the experience of people all together in a room in mind, and brought it to Super Mario Bros. or if you thought, "I've got *Super Mario Bros. *and I want to create this experience"? It's a complicated question.

Miyamoto: It is a complicated question. I think that probably a good way to describe it is particularly with this title, (we) asked ourselves: Understanding the Wii hardware and who interacts with the Wii hardware, what type of a Mario game should we make for the Wii console? And the answer to that question: We have our ideas of what a Wii game should be. And when it came to the* Mario* universe, we really had two answers. One was Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, and the other one was* New Super Mario Bros. Wii*.

We had a team in Tokyo and a team in Kyoto that both started working on these games, and obviously, the two games have very different visions, in terms of what they are, and what they were from the outset. But ultimately, they're both different answers to the question of "What should a Mario game be on the Wii console?"

Tom Holoien, Nintendo Power: What elements would you say a Mario game has to have whether it's 2-D or 3-D, and for you personally, what makes a *Mario *game a Mario game besides the characters?

Miyamoto: So to me, what's really important about a Mario game is that it be simple to control and easy to understand. And that when you as the player is playing the game, the physics in the game are understandable to you, so that when you hold the controller, you play it in a way that you understand what you're supposed to do, you understand the environment, and then you begin to unleash your own gameplay creativity. You try different things. The response that you get from the environment into what you attempted to do in the world feels natural to you, and ultimately the game itself becomes kind of a back and forth between us the developers in trying to expect what types of creative things you might try to do as a player and you the player in terms of the response that you're expecting to get in the game. And to me, a Mario game is really unleashing the player's creativity within the world that you've created.

As we showed you in the game, there's this ice flower and the penguin suit and both of those shoot ice balls. And so, in developing the game, it's easy to say, "Okay, we want the ice balls to freeze enemies." But as soon as you make that decision, a number of different questions come up.

If you freeze the enemy, what happens to it then?

If the enemy is in the air, does the ice hang in the air or does it fall out of the air?

If it falls out of the air, what happens when it hits the ground?

Does it rest on the ground?

How long should it take before it falls out of the air after you've frozen it?

If it's sitting in the air, can we jump on it?

Should you be able to jump on it before it falls?

When it falls from a certain height, should it just land or should it break?

When you're in the water and you freeze an enemy, as we showed in the demo today, the expectation is that, well you've just turned something into ice, doesn't ice float?

Shouldn't ice float up?

And then that brings the question, if the ice floats, how high does it float?

Does it float all the way to the top?

If it floats to the top, can Mario stand on it?

If he can stand on it, can he slip?

Can he slip when he's on that ice or does he grip that ice?

And what happens when he jumps off the ice?

It opens up a lot of different questions, and to me, what's important about a Mario game is that the expectation that the user has in response to the action that they've done is something that we're able to answer. We're able to create the world in a way that it feels real, based on what the user would expect out of that type of world and that type of action.

Brightman: Three years ago when the Wii launched, HDTV penetration was not that high and now we have, probably in both Japan and America, higher ownership rates of HDTVs. Do you feel that your games would benefit from HD graphics or that gamers want to see their games in HD?

Miyamoto: I don't think there's anything wrong with pretty graphics. If I'm a consumer and I have a TV that has nice graphics at home, I would want to be able to play my games with nice graphics too. And I think that, of course, as we've seen the penetration rates increase, we're going to see video games and Nintendo's games move along in step with the progression of technology. But what I don't think is necessarily true is that the graphics are something that are going to make the gameplay experience itself better. While I don't have anything against pretty graphics, I also think that we're certainly going to focus on the gameplay and take advantage of the technology as it comes out. But right now, this is what we offer.

Wired.com: Why isn't Princess Peach a playable character in New Super Mario Bros. Wii?

Miyamoto: Well, originally I thought it would be nice to have Princess Peach in there as a playable character, but in fact, the Toad characters have a physique that's a little bit closer to Mario and Luigi. And in particular if we had one character out of the four that wore a dress, we would have to have a special programming to handle how the skirt is handled in the gameplay (laughs).

And that's the only reason that Princess Peach is not there. Of course, if we had Wario in there, we'd have to program him to fart.

Photos courtesy JesseAngelo.com

See Also: