A new Ask Iwata reveals that Steel Diver was being developed for DSiWare originally.

The recently released Steel Diver has had an interesting history. After being shown as a tech demo for the original DS back in 2004 it disappeared off the radar, only to be shown again at last year's E3 as a 3DS title. However, it was being developed for DSiWare for some time before Nintendo decided it should be a retail release. It was eventually shifted to the 3DS and released this month.

A new Ask Iwata reveals that the game's director wanted Steel Diver to be bigger as well but this was rejected by Shigeru Miyamoto. Mr. Miyamoto explains that creating something simple but effective is as challenging as creating something vast and they wanted Steel Diver to be about depth rather than volume.

"Making something concentrated requires a lot of work, like making something big and gorgeous. For example, making a single ring�even though it's small�is as hard as making the kind of fancy dress with lots of ornamentation that you might wear to a ball...So this time, we ruled out getting by with making lots of submarines or courses and instead focused on something limited that you could play again and again."

Any Western gamers hoping to land a job at Nintendo may want to read the full interview to learn how Giles Goddard, a British developer, started working with Nintendo on Star Fox without knowing a word of Japanese at the time. As it turns out circus skills can be very useful in job hunting.