A newly resurfaced MTV News interview from nearly twenty years ago, highlighted this week by GamesRadar, shows how cautious Satoru Iwata was about Nintendo leaning too heavily on major franchises like Mario and Zelda.
Stephen Totilo, who continued to interview Iwata over the years, made sure to capture how Iwata viewed barriers between players and non‑players. He expressed that the Revolution could break those walls down, just as the Nintendo DS had done with Nintendogs and Brain Training. He talked about playing Brain Training daily until his “brain age” dropped to twenty‑seven. It was a small detail, but it showed how much he tested the work his teams were doing.
Iwata, almost always dressed sharply from head to toe, also spoke calmly about the Wii’s purpose. “Our primary focus has been to create a system that can do things the other systems can’t,” he said through a translator. He hinted at features that would be revealed at E3, but he never wavered from the idea that Nintendo’s strength came from innovative ideas rather than horsepower. Even as Sony showcased PS3 demos at that same event, Nintendo kept its console behind glass. Iwata was content to let the symbolism of the upcoming hardware speak for itself.
Looking at Nintendo today, it is clearly living out dreams that Iwata helped set in motion. Super Nintendo World has turned Shigeru Miyamoto into something close to a modern Disney Imagineer, shaping theme park spaces with the creativity he brought to game worlds. The Illumination Mario films have become box‑office giants, with the upcoming Zelda movie positioned to follow that momentum. And the Nintendo Switch, now one of the most successful consoles ever made, transformed the company’s reputation and financial trajectory.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-president-satoru-iwata-against-too-many-zelda-mario-sequels/
