C&VG have interviewed Miyamoto during E3. Come insider to read the massive interview!

We decided to post extracts from both parts of C&VG's interview with Shigeru Miyamoto for your reading pleasure. It can be found below, our thanks go to Paul Davies who conducted the interview. The two parts can be found here; part one, part two.

About the Pac-Man game, could you tell us what elements of the original game you most admire, that you felt would make a new version of Pac-Man a fun game?

Miyamoto:

Well the best part about games from a long time ago is that they were very simple, and it's these very simple elements to the gameplay that allowed large amounts of people to start playing these games. Back then when I was making games, we put a lot of focus into that and thought it was very important that people knew what it was that they needed to do, and that it was very clear what they had achieved and what it was they had failed to do.

So that was how we made games back then. But gradually over the years, very simple gameplay and very simple rules like that weren't enough to keep gamers satisfied, and so the games got more complicated. With the evolution in hardware and graphics the worlds got more complicated and the graphics got more incredible, and so in one sense the games got better, but at the same time they got less simplistic and so fewer people were really able to get in and play them.

With Pac-Man I think that, even with the same gameplay, it's still fun. To some people it might seem kind of boring because it's not as extravagant as a lot of games now, but there's still that core element of fun in it. By adding this new connectivity structure to the game you're able to take something that many people have played and are very familiar with - Pac-Man - and add new elements and new experiences to it that you've never been able to have before.

You're able to recapture some of that simplistic fun, and yet at the same time still provide freshness, such as not just playing Pac-Man but actually being the ghost and going after Pac-Man. At Nintendo, what we want to do with connectivity is show to other developers and our third-party partners that you don't have to just make games more complicated or more beautiful, you can actually take something that's as simple as a connectivity system and apply it to a game and have very simple gameplay that will be fun and very exciting for people.

So actually we focussed on trying not to change - we didn't look for what was good about the original Pac-Man and what was bad about it, we really focussed on trying not to change the original concept but instead build in this connectivity idea to recapture some of the fun that people originally felt with that game. I guess the only change that we really did make was that the GameCube portion on the TV is 3D. There are a lot of other options we could consider with that idea, but those are all secret at this point!

You said that one of Nintendo's challenges is to come up with a game as interesting and intriguing as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but without the violence. Can you elaborate or give us any specific ideas?

Miyamoto:

This year the focus of our show is connectivity and showing off the features and the possibilities that it provides - so I guess in that sense we haven't really shown titles that we hope to stand against Grand Theft Auto, something like that we might try to show next year or sometime after. This year we're showing titles that have their own unique gameplay with connectivity, something that can only be achieved with that title, and for that reason we think we'll gather user interest and appeal.

Actually I think Pikmin 2 this year is going to end up being one of our most fun games - we've actually removed the time limit, that was in the original Pikmin, so there's going to be a much greater degree of freedom within the game. Obviously Pikmin is a very different concept to Grand Theft Auto, but the underlying idea of being free to do what you want is there and I think that's going to be a very popular game for us.

Microsoft has showed a very strong focus on online gaming this year. What is the reason why Nintendo isn't taking part in that area of the business and what's your personal opinion about online gaming for consoles.

Miyamoto:

Nintendo isn't saying that we're not interested in doing anything online and myself as a games creator, certainly I'm not saying that I don't want to do anything online. What's we're saying is that as a business, online is not viable right now and we don't want to go into online unless we make a viable business from that.

Until we reach that point, we're not going to go in that direction. But we have Mario Kart on the showfloor this year with a local area network and we've got eight GameCubes hooked up together. And although we're not showing it on the showfloor, Kirby Air Ride is another game that will be linkable via network cables. And we're doing experiments with Animal Crossing in Japan where you'll be able to use SD memory cards and actually transfer data over the standard Internet.

Entertainment is kind of interesting - Rubik's Cube is probably the best example of this - the thing about entertainment is that you can put it in a store and someone walking by can see it in the window and say "Oh, that looks fun and that looks entertaining". They can walk in and they can buy it, pay 20 dollars or whatever and take it home and play it, and it's accessible to everybody.

But the thing about the Internet is that its not accessible to everybody, there are still a lot of people who do not have Internet access and I think the most important thing for entertainment is that it has to remain something that it available to everybody. Because of that I think that Nintendo's main focus will never to limit their base to one certain group.

Recently we've seen the GBA being mainly a platform for re-releases of old games, even if they're tweaked and improved. How is Nintendo planning on finding ways to bring games to the GBA that are more original and less retro?

Miyamoto:

I think we've put out quite a number of rather original titles. The most recent and I think the best example of all of them would be Wario Ware, which we're releasing soon in the US and Europe. I think on the showfloor you'll also be able to see a game called Mario and Luigi RPG, which is a brand-new title with brand-new ideas to it. The Golden Sun series has been brand-new on Game Boy Advance, and has done quite well. We're getting to the point where there's not a lot left from the SNES era for us to convert to the GBA anyway, and you're going to be seeing a lot more original titles and a lot more innovation with connectivity I think.

About Mario Kart now. At the start of the project, what did the designers decide they wanted to do - which elements did they want to keep and which did they want to most change, and why?

Miyamoto:

We had a lot of long discussions about what to do with Mario Kart early on, and what we decided was that we didn't really need to change the game because in its simplicity it has some very strong gameplay that's a lot of fun. So it was really about finding a way to keep that simplicity and move forward.

But for example, they don't drive actual Karts any more

Miyamoto:

(laughs) Well yeah, that's true!

What do you consider are the differences between the Japanese and the two Western markets, especially regarding consumer behaviour?

Why hasn't that [Animal Crossing] come out in Europe?

Miyamoto:

Localising that game for Europe would be extremely difficult [laughs]. Every country in Europe has different events and different holidays in their calendar. If Europe would be happy with the events in the American game then there might be some possibility in doing that. Would that be okay with people in England? [laughs] Maybe we'll do it!

If you left the company what kind of legacy would you like to leave?

Miyamoto:

I've been working with a lot of my directors and designers for many years now, and we always talk about my philosophies on creativity and creating new ideas and things like that. In that sense I think there isn't anything particular I would like to focus on trying to create as a legacy... So long as there's still something I can pass on to them that I think will be positive in terms of the products that we're putting out, it would still be too early for me to retire. If on the other hand I get to point where my input is no longer of any use then I guess that's when I've overstayed my welcome!

What do you think are the biggest problems in gaming? Do you see any?

Miyamoto:

It's hard to say there's really one major problem but I guess that the fact that we're seeing that the overall number of software sales seems to be declining is an issue. I think we've reached an era that's almost a dream come true for gamers because they're able to buy these high powered games console - for some people at less than cost - which is something that we didn't do in the past.

It's obviously not good for the companies that are doing it because they're bleeding money and it's going to raise questions as to whether or not they can survive as a business in the industry doing that, but obviously for consumers that's a good thing. Another big issue is that when companies try to create these vast games that consumers really want, or if they try and use every last bit of technology to create really incredible games, the development cost is going to be so high for a game like that that they'll never be able to recoup it from sales. That's another major issue that's facing the industry.