Technobubble: Nintendo on making the perfect game, retro revival

If games such as Shovel Knight prove anything, it's that old-school is cool once again in gaming.

It's something that Nintendo understood when it released NES Remix last year and NES Remix 2 earlier this year.

With the recent release of Ultimate NES Remix, the Reno Gazette-Journal held a conversation with Bill Trinen, director of product marketing at Nintendo of America, just before the 2014 Christmas break to talk about retro gaming, region locking and the company's game philosophy.

On the idea behind NES Remix:

NES Remix originally was a side project of Mr. (Koichi) Hayashida and (Nintendo's) EAD Tokyo team. It was something they were sort of working on the side while working on Super Mario 3D Land. Internally, they just have a very big culture of experimentation, even when working on a big game. They'll start as a smaller team doing gameplay experiments and when they come up with a fun exciting game, they grow into a larger team.

On Nintendo's philosophy about game development:

It's just the inherent way they develop teams in Japan. They start with small ideas, flesh those out and have fun experimenting with them. Once they get something that they feel is a strong game, a full team gets together to finalize the idea and develop the game. Captain Toad is a good example from the EAD Tokyo team. It started as a side project for Super Mario 3D World but they had a lot of fun working on it and fans had a lot of fun playing (the Captain Toad) stages so they decided to turn that into a game as well.

On criticism about rehashing existing IP:

Internally, what teams do when working on a new game — even if it's an existing series — is to start out fresh and figure out what the focus will be this time. We don't always put out a new version of an existing series on an annual basis, there's always a big gap. You see that with Super Smash Bros., which has been seven years since it last came out. With Pikmin 3, you saw a big gap as well. Mario games release more frequently but we don't have a new Mario game this year so it's not an annual event. The teams focus on how they can recreate the gameplay experience or introduce new ideas to those games, which is what they did with NES Remix, for example.

On the revival of old-school gaming:

Certainly, in the N64 days, 3D environments were new and people wanted to explore them from a technical standpoint. As a result, that's where a lot of teams put their focus on. Over time, you started to see people getting interested and going back to that traditional type of gameplay like side-scrolling games. It can be something like evolving new gameplay like Nintendo did with Donkey Kong Country Returns by using dynamic cameras with 2D (style gameplay) or something as simple as Yoshi's Wooly World where you have an evolving style of gameplay as well. Then you get into the more indie developers where a lot of them grew up on side-scrolling gameplay and that's where their passion was. It was so great to see that renaissance and the unique ideas from indie developers like Shovel Knight where they're doing something really fun in the 2D space. That's the heart of what the NES Remix games are. It's about having some fun and taking some short moments from classic games and introducing them to people in short bursts. It also introduces younger kids to where games today evolved from.

On the chances other classic franchises will get the Mario Maker treatment:

We have nothing to announce on that now. Mr. (Takashi) Tezuka is working hard on Mario Maker and the game is progressing really nicely. I think it's going to be a lot of fun seeing what people are able to do with the game when it comes out. During E3, we had everyone from moms and kids to longtime Nintendo fans and newer folks who just got into gaming lately just having tons of fun with the way they're able to create stages. Depending on how people react, we'll see if the teams take a similar approach with other franchises.

On taking out region locking on Nintendo systems:

Unfortunately, I'm not the right person to ask about that as I'm not fully involved on the system side of things but more on the gaming side. (Nintendo CEO Satoru) Iwata commented on that recently and acknowledged that from a region locking standpoint, it was originally a solution to a number of challenges on the development and publishing side and we need to find solutions for those to address it.

On the creation of a more unified account system like PSN or Xbox Live:

I don't have a whole lot to say on that.

On the Wii U's prospects:

We're already seeing some positive signs around the Wii U every since E3 really. There's a lot of excitement around (upcoming releases) Splatoon and Mario Maker and we followed that up with the release of Hyrule Warriors and Bayonetta 2, which are really top notch games. If you look at the Wii U's exclusive lineup of software, they're getting rave reviews and you'll see that the Metacritic user score tends to be even higher than the media reviews. So not only is the Wii U the best place to get exclusive content, players are also getting the most fun with it.