Part 12: Sakamoto Says Part 4
Turns out this post was so huge that it broke the character limit. I've cut it into pieces and will post the other parts later.I was originally going to post a Part 3 of Sakamoto Says here, but people in this thread seem to be getting irritated because their disbelief glands are overtaxed. To avoid inciting a text-only riot by continuing to focus on this game's dumb decisions, I'll be doing something different this time. Fair warning: my goal with this particular segment is to educate, not entertain, so there will be marginally less humor than usual this time around. If that ain't your bag, skip this post by all means.
In order to fully understand how Other M came to be, we need to go back in time. Far back to the bygone age of the 1980's, an era of myth and legend only spoken of in hushed whispers and punk rock lyrics.
Such a journey requires some appropriate mood music. Please listen to this immersive audio track while reading for an enhanced quoting experience.
The year is 1982. A 23-year-old man from Nara Prefecture has just graduated from art school and is looking to enter the workforce with a serious, respectable job, so naturally he seeks out a position at Nintendo to work on video games. His name is Yoshio Sakamoto.
Siliconera Translation: Game Staff List Association Interview, 2003 posted:
SAKAMOTO: Prior to me first joining Nintendo, I imagined it would be closer to a regular company. In actuality, however, it was completely different, with the development department being more like a small workshop. That environment really suited me. Everything was on a much smaller scale than now. The development room didn’t even have a photocopier. Every time I went to the finance and accounting department to copy something, I’d see all the employees there working in such an organized manner, and I’d think to myself "So, this is what a company looks like…" [Laughs]
This is a crazy time for Nintendo. Their top-secret NES console, a.k.a. the Famicom in Japan, is nearly finished being developed and will soon conquer the video game industry like a giant grey phalanx. The company has enjoyed greater-than-average success with its arcade games thanks to another weirdo art grad named Shigeru Miyamoto that they hired after he showed them some cool designs for children's toys. Who knew that monkeys on girders could be so popular?
Siliconera Translation: Game Staff List Association Interview, 2003 posted:
SAKAMOTO: One day, however, Shigeru Miyamoto wandered over to our room and asked "Is there anyone here willing to lend us a hand?" That’s how I ended up doing sprite art for Donkey Kong Jr., which turned out to be my first real experience with video games. After that, I worked on the arcade version of Wrecking Crew. At the time, game development was done on a very small scale, so we had a team of five or six people working on everything from the programming to the music. Our development period was about half a year.
Back in the 70’s, another dude named Gunpei Yokoi had made some sweet electronic hand-helds called Game & Watch that printed money for Nintendo, so in 1982 he’s now heading the first of the company's Research and Development divisions. Together, he and his team create the NES controller and its D-Pad, then a few years later start work on the Game Boy. In-between these projects, he gets an order from the management: make some NES games.
Gunpei is a busy guy doing busy things with boxes of electronics, so he cracks his whip at his R&D1 team. They immediately start planning out a couple games that will eventually become Kid Icarus and Metroid. Among the team members is Yoshio Sakamoto.
Wired.com Interview, April 7th 2010 posted:
SAKAMOTO: It’s true that creating pixel art was my first experience in the videogame industry, but one of the stranger experiences I had was an interaction with Gunpei Yokoi, where he said, “If you can make pixel art, you can make a game.” So when Famicom came out, he pulled me and I began to direct titles for that.
WIRED.COM: What was Yokoi like as a boss, as a game designer? How would you contrast him with Miyamoto?
SAKAMOTO: I think that earlier episode, where he said “If you can make pixel art, you can make a game,” was a pretty good illustration. He was the one that was always really pushing us to come up with new and creative ideas. The way that he would constrain us was to say, “All you have to do is come up with a great idea, and give it to a designer. In fact, I don’t want you guys to learn any of the technical stuff. It’s just going to hold you back.”
Whereas Mr. Miyamoto would say, you have to learn the technical side to be able to give 100 percent to the designer. But Mr. Miyamoto was never my boss, so it’s hard to compare them on that scale.
WIRED.COM: When Yokoi said to you, “If you can draw pixel art, you can make a game,” what did you think at that moment?
SAKAMOTO: I remember thinking, “Well, if my boss says so, then maybe I can. But I certainly know that I have to try.” I was also very interested, so I worked hard at it.
Siliconera Translation: Game Staff List Association Interview, 2003 posted:
SAKAMOTO: When making a game, we’d start out by having all the developers gather together to contribute their ideas, with Gunpei Yokoi at the head of the group. Then, using everything we came up with as a base, we work on filling in the blanks. However, good ideas don’t come easy, and if no one could come up with anything worthwhile, Yokoi would actually already have some ideas about what we could do. That’s how I came to admire him. Thinking back on it now, the NES, for Yokoi, was more of a device used for projecting images on a TV than a game system. I believe he was always thinking about what he could do with it in those terms.
...
SAKAMOTO: I think that the benefits of the original [NES] were ubiquitous. We had to ask ourselves how we could give players an emotional gameplay experience using the system’s limited specs and expressive capabilities. The [NES] had a large presence, and developing for the system really forced us to think. If you worked hard at devising tricks, the possibilities became limitless, and the number of games we could have made would have been infinite. Despite the inconvenience, the [NES] was an interesting tool and a fun toy, an entertaining system that tantalized us with its possibilities.
Metroid Database Translation: Nintendo Online Magazine Interview, March 2003 posted:
SAKAMOTO: To tell the truth, Metroid wasn't a game I came up with. At that time, R&D1 was also making new titles for the Disk System. Therefore, production was entrusted to two new guys, and I was making a different game [Wrecking Crew -ed.]. However, I came back to the studio, and there was just an image of a character with incredible physical abilities firing a gun in space-themed level, but it wasn't a finished game. So, all the surrounding staff, including me, began working on it. Although I say this now, since the release date had been decided, I couldn't afford to add any new technical specifications. However, regarding the nature of the game, we had no options other than "jump, run, and shoot". I thought, "With these abilities, what would be best?" and I had everyone design a game about exploring a dungeon looking for power-ups.
Siliconera Translation: Game Staff List Association Interview, 2003 posted:
SAKAMOTO: The original Metroid first came into being as our desire to create a game that took place in a gloopy, alien-like world. In early development, there were only rows of blocks, and the backgrounds didn’t give you the sense that they were alive. The Chozo were also something that resulted from this process. The game was headed up by then-newcomers Hirofumi Matsuoka and Hiroji Kiyotake, but when it came to representing the civilization of an undiscovered planet, I’d hand what I’d written to Matsuoka and tell him "Put this in," and he would. [Laughs]
Metroid Database Translation: Nintendo Dream Interview, 2004 posted:
NINTENDO DREAM: Well, was the title for the "only running and shooting" game fixed from the very beginning?
KIYOTAKE: There was one more staff member, and the two of us decided on it. We attached "android" to the "metro subway" and that's how we got "Metroid".
SAKAMOTO: However, before that, the game was called Space Hunter.
OSAWA: Samus is a "bounty hunter", or perhaps I should say a little before she was created, she was a "space hunter". Wasn't "space hunter" written [to describe her] in the instruction manual? I mean space warrior.
SAKAMOTO: There wasn't enough time to correct it as "bounty hunter" [in the manual]?
OSAWA: Yes, if I remember correctly.
NINTENDO DREAM: Well, although it didn't come out at the conclusion of the last interview, with regards to the naming of Samus Aran, it might have been a reference to the real name of [Edison Arantes do Nascimento, a.k.a. Pelé], the god of soccer...
KIYOTAKE: Ah ha ha ha! That's right. Even the name of the protagonist could be put together in this manner, and if I wanted to give someone a strange name, I could refer to Pelé's name.
NINTENDO DREAM: I want to know if we're mistaken! (Laughs)
SAKAMOTO: Kiyotake, if you check if Pelé’s real name was ‘Samus Arantes,’ that’s a little incorrect. He’s called ‘Something’ Arantes Nascimento, and only ‘Aran’ matches. (Laughs)
KIYOTAKE: In reference to that, I made her name sound like his. Nevertheless, personally, I thought "Samus Aran" would get changed, but how appropriate it was put together in that way. If someone thought to change it partway [through development], then it remained that way and was released [like that]! (Laughs)
SAKAMOTO: Even as regards to true names, among other things, development would move forward! (Laughs)
KIYOTAKE: In addition, "SR388", the planet on which the Metroids were discovered, comes from a bike engine! (Laughs) In Yamaha's bikes, there is a series called SR400, and in those days, while it was called 400cc, you didn't have any choice but 388cc, but it was written like that for the time being, and that's how it came out! (Laughs)
SAKAMOTO: It seems as if we're rapidly diminishing our players' expectations! (Laughs)
Nintendo World Report Translation: Revogamers Interview posted:
REVOGAMERS: You said that Samus was like a daughter to you. How was the heroine born, and how did you come up with such a revolutionary game concept in the 80's?
SAKAMOTO: At the beginning of development Samus didn't have a defined gender. During development, in one of the meetings with the staff someone said that it would be a nice surprise if at the end of the game the player found out that Samus was in fact a woman. We thought it was a good idea so we implemented it. In a way, I had a "daughter" by coincidence.
Regarding Metroid's gameplay system, these are things people don't know about. It wasn't by chance that we came up with the system like that; the case was that when we started development on Metroid we were asked to create a game with gameplay unlike anything else seen before, something completely new in the world of videogames. It was also a decade in which very few games were released, so things were very different back then.
We created an interesting game concept, and before we even knew how the final product would turn out a release date was decided. A time came in which the release date was quickly approaching and the game was unplayable. The original Metroid team was composed of people that had very little experience with game development, and I was one of the few members of the team with experience thanks to working on games like Balloon Fight. We then called for an emergency meeting and we debated how we could solve our problems without adding more to the game; we looked for a way to make it playable.
The decisions made during that emergency meeting were what made Metroid the game it is today, using a labyrinth-like system, upgrades, secret doors, and abilities that would open up new areas. This made the game playable. If I go into further details regarding the game's development, we could be talking all day long!
Metroid was released in 1986 and, thanks to the lack of a publicly-available Internet, made fucktons of money for Nintendo Hotline staffers and strategy guide writers alike. Meanwhile, Gunpei Yokoi had finally perfected the hidden art of turning a game console into a brick and had released his masterpiece, the Game Boy, to the world at large. When the inevitable call came for a sequel, he decided to try making it for the handheld.
GamaSutra Interview, 2010 posted:
SAKAMOTO: When we worked on the very first Metroid game, please keep in mind that was very early in video game history. At that time, no one really paid a whole lot of attention to who made what part of the game; rather, an entire department made a game. It was a collaborative effort. Of course, we did contract out some of the coding on the game to Intelligent Systems at the time. The idea of the design game from the entire department.
Now, once we got into the days of, say, Metroid II, this was on Game Boy. By that time, a lot of people had developed a lot more know-how, and even the programming techniques had improved then, so it was possible to do things with a smaller team. There were even some projects where we did not need to include Intelligent Systems.
I came in again after Metroid II came out, so that was the sort of environment that I came into. I think I may have discussed a little bit in my GDC speech how I was very moved by the last scene in Metroid II, and that stimulus became my motivation and inspiration in creating Super Metroid.
Sakamoto's GDC 2010 Keynote posted:
SAKAMOTO: Actually, I wasn’t involved in [Metroid II]. I was, however, inspired by the scene where the Baby Metroid born in front of Samus’s eyes thinks she is her mother, and this led to the creation of Super Metroid for the SNES. And that is where the Other M story picks up... If Metroid II: Return of Samus had never been created, what followed would most likely have taken a different path. And maybe more importantly, I wouldn’t be standing here today.
Next Time: Super Metroid and the Nintendo 64 years.