09/November/2013
ONM Remembered - #169 - prelude to Miyamoto Week
"Miyamoto: I'm not a nice guy."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 132 (September 2003)
What a cover, eh? You've got a dynamic F-Zero shot, you've
got the True Crime guy trying to shoot you, and some haunting words from Miyamoto.
"I'm not a nice guy."
What could he mean? Is he not the loveable, smiling gentleman he
appears to be? Is he in fact a binge-drinking, chain-smoking, dope-peddling,
cat-smacking hard-case who expresses how not-nice he is by partaking in the
aforementioned activities? PEEPS WANT TO KNOW
Well, it's a good time to have questions, because tomorrow is the start of Miyamoto Week! Interviews, private discussions and gosh knows what else they printed about Mario's daddy will be highlighted throughout the next seven days!
10/November/2013
ONM Remembered - Miyamoto Week, day 1
"He created Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, and he ONLY answers quessies every month in NOM."
Would you believe that Mr. Miyamoto was at the beck and call of
every kid in the United Kingdom, and would answer reader-submitted questions
every month? Given how the man was barred from interviews at one point for fear
of revealing awesome ideas to the competition, it's hard to believe he
was once so accessible. Funny, that!
... and as is the nature of things, for every half-decent question, you've got
some dope asking for exclusive insider scoops on projects that haven't even been
officially announced yet. Get used to it, there's a ton of those in every
column.
11/November/2013
ONM Remembered - Miyamoto Week, day 2
"HONTONI DOMO ARIGATO GOZAIMASHITA MIYAMOTO-SAN!"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 64 (January 1998)
An interview with Miyamoto, spilling the beans on the 64DD and its many nifty features. For 1998, some of the features look really amazing, and sound like the workings of a nifty communal hub for sharing data between Nintendo games. What a pity it never came to be.
The second page doesn't just feature a bemused Miyamoto posing with Dave - it features him posing with a beardless Dave! Clearly a photo worthy of the ONM Remembered memory album.
12/November/2013
ONM Remembered - Miyamoto Week, day 3
"I can't tell you any secrets just yet or I'll get in trouble with my bosses!"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 86 (November 1999)
This multi-page feature about Zelda: The Continuing Saga (an early
name for Majora's Mask) featured little bits of Miyamoto wisdom sprinkled
throughout, though all of it was inane factoids that you could have assumed anyway.
The questions are all about Majora's Mask, so it's not exactly gripping,
personal questions, but it's always intriguing to hear what Miyamoto likes best
about his projects, or how he works.
What's interesting to me is that even as late as the end of 1999, Zelda
on the 64DD was still a possibility? Just how long did they keep that train
wreck on life support
anyway?
13/November/2013
ONM Remembered - Miyamoto Week, day 4
"Sounds like the UK people are better game players than we are!"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 137 (February 2004)
Well, you could consider it an interview with Miyamoto, since he's
one of the four people being queried, but he only answers one question. We don't
even learn who his favourite racers are! WE GOT CONNED
As it stands, it's a remarkably uninspiring interview. "Why isn't the game challenging
enough? Why aren't there oodles of unlockables?" "Well, shit, we didn't know
that's what you wanted." There's one little snippet near the end regarding
content cut from the game, but even that's vague. Sadly unexciting, and doesn't
exactly inspire faith in the developers!
14/November/2013
ONM Remembered - Miyamoto Week, day 5
"I'd love to see a futuristic version of Zelda, where Link and Zelda's descendants battle with a robotic Ganondorf."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 95 (August 2000)
We've got a whole letters page this time! Take a gander at some of the questions poor Shaun and Rich had to put up with every week. As a youngster, the letters page was a good read, but looking at it now I can't help but ponder, "how many times did these unlucky sods have to feign enthusiasm over these kids' ideas?" They're not even fully fledged Spice Games, for god's sake.
Today's range of Miyamoto answers are rather unsatisfying, since half of them basically amount to "my bosses say ixnay on the giving-away-all-our-top-secret plans-nay". His answer to the "what did you want to be as a kid?" question is rather sweet, though, and aptly demonstrates the technological generation gap we had between developers and consumers in this era. Coming into video game development was either a logical path for a keen programmer, or an experimental option for someone simply seeking to entertain.
15/November/2013
ONM Remembered - Miyamoto Week, day 6
"So you think that the link-up play will prove to be successful?" "... I don't."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 132 (September 2003)
An interesting off-the-cuff interview that doesn't play to the
traditional guff you expect to hear from Shisgy. It's not quite the "the games industry is
dogshit and those fuckers will rue the day unless I stop 'em" rant
I want to
hear, but it's nice to hear more from-the-hip remarks.
He makes some interesting remarks, such as the belief that a console should be
defined by its library of games, not its hardware. It's particularly refreshing
to hear even Miyamoto admit that the GBA-to-GameCube
link-up crap just didn't work out. Cool idea, dude, but the sheer cost and
maintenance of
having it set up is ludicrous. It'd be nice to see the concepts revisited with
a less dreadful system. Like the WiiU, if they didn't go out of their way to
deny using it for how everyone expected to be using it. Thanks, lads!
16/November/2013
ONM Remembered - Miyamoto Week, day 7
"You've created some of the best videogames ever made - and that's a fact!"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 89 (February 2000)
More questions for the mirthful maker of Mario! The GameCube was approaching, and people were curious to dig every tidbit of info they could out of him. Most notably, Shigeru admits that he was sad to move away from cartridges. Aw.
Perhaps even more notably, his favourite Pokémon is Psyduck. Fascinating!
Has anyone ever made a complete
list of every celebrity's favourite Pokémon? I'm not the man to do it, but damn
it, now I'm curious who Judy Dench's favourite Pokemon is. We know who that one
guy from 50.Grind
likes, so surely that's enough of a foundation to start a large-scale
investigation. Get cracking!
... is it the end of Miyamoto Week already? What a bummer! We're back to the regular schedule on Tuesday, though if you're hungry for more Shigeru shenanigans, keep your eyes peeled; a couple more interviews and ask columns may pop up in the following month!
19/November/2013
ONM Remembered - #170
"Be prepared for a rude answer when you ask Rare's Uncle Tusk."
Readers of Official Nintendo Magazine were proper spoilt; not only was Shigeru Miyamoto at their beck and call every month, but they could also have their inane questions answered by... Tusk from Killer Instinct?
Yeah, that was a thing, wasn't it? Uncle Tusk received a delightfully diverse range of questions, from the ever typical "can you tell us anything about game that hasn't been announced?", to "whatever happened to this obscure one-shot character from seven years ago?" You didn't exactly learn much from any of the answers, but the irreverent remarks of Leigh Loveday are always entertaining to read. I wonder if any of this is canonical, though?
"Let's just hope she doesn't lose interest halfway through and decide to go shopping instead..."
It's reassuring to know that long before they were making rape jokes and charging a fiver for each character, Killer Instinct was promoting casual sexism. A beacon of virtue, that franchise.
21/November/2013
ONM Remembered - #171
"Why did Rare drop these wondrous machines of destruction?"
from N64 Magazine issue 10 (December 1997)
In case you didn't know, anything involving prototypes, unreleased games or
removed features always catches my fancy. Yes, in
the first trailers of Blast Corps, there were some really far-out machines in
the game, such as this mecha scorpion and Robotech reject.
To try and maintain a construction vehicle theme, I'm guessing,
they both got dropped. Sure, there's still three giant robots in the finished
game's vehicle roster, but it's just not the same without a giant mechanical
pincer monster to round it out!
(mind you, a giant mecha-scorpion deserves top billing - it'd be wasted playing
second fiddle to a bulldozer and an oversized RC car)
23/November/2013
ONM Remembered - #172
"We're not saying that Rare isn't easy to find, but it's currently being used by the government to conduct experiments on aliens."
from N64 Magazine issue 13 (March 1998)
N64 Magazine performs a review with the chappies at Rare regarding their runaway success, Goldeneye. There's some interesting tidbits of info, like the multi-player maps they had to cut (the Dam would've been great to see in action), but it's all rather plain. Most of this info was already stated in other interviews, and usually with a little more detail or spice.
Also, who exactly are they interviewing? Has Rareware got an incorporeal gestalt entity who speaks on behalf of everyone in the company? I bet it's Rambi.
26/November/2013
ONM Remembered - #173
"KNOW IT FIRST: LINK'S GOT A SISTER"
Look out! Somebody's activated Big Head Mode! And this t-rex is PISSED!
28/November/2013
ONM Remembered - #174
"Although Adon's fast, she's still a girl, so can't take much damage."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 68 (May 1998)
Check out this huge Turok 2 preview! There's not much in the way of text, as if ONM's style, but there's plenty of neat screenshots, concept art and wire-frames - including a rad image of Joshua Fireseed wading through a big heap of raptor corpses. Gnarly stuff.
The cheesecake image of Adon and her PS2 butt just makes me laugh, though. Sharp polygons and mushy textures - just the way Joshua like 'em!
30/November/2013
ONM Remembered - #175
"And also, as he's a dinosaur hunter he could kill mech raptors and triceratopses!"
from N64 Magazine issue 8 (November 1997)
Some great ideas on this one.
The Seiken Densetsu 3: Special Edition reads just like a gamer's wishlist, doesn't it? More expensive features that we don't necessarily need! Zooming and scrolling! Anti-aliasing! Still, I'd like to see the game. It's never reached English shores officially, has it?
Turok 3: In New York is a fantastic title, and a charmingly silly idea, if just for the change of scenery. If nothing else, I love it just for the potential to homage Beastmaster and Masters of the Universe. Tracking down raptors using a VW Beetle would be a novelty in itself.
The Batman idea sounds neat, and being able to play as any of his sidekicks is a unique feature. Have any Batman games actually done that? Properly, I mean? I know the crappy ones have let you play as Batgirl, but surely they'd have rectified that by now.