Interview Translation

7/26/2019 Interview Translation

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Kouji Malta Profile: Programmer for APE, Inc., a company run by president Shigesato Itoi, the scenario directorfor MOTHER 2. Malta is in charge of the data production for the game.

August 26th is the dayMOTHER 2: Giygas Strikes Back finally goes on sale. This weeks issue goes on sale

August 25th. That makes this the day before release! For those who are excited to head out and buy the game,weve asked the two programming directors of MOTHER 2 about the trials and highlights of making the game.

The directors are Iwata from HAL Laboratory and Malta from APE. MOTHER 2 was actually made through thecooperation of those two companies with Nintendo.

That was one rough childbirth, wasnt it? (laughs)

Malta Yes, yes it was. (laughs)

Was it HAL or APE that handled most of the work developing the game?

Iwata APE had more people working on it. We [HAL] worked on some of the overall system, but maps andscenarios take a lot more work than the system when it comes to RPGs.

Malta Yeah. So in that sense you could say it was a bit more work for us [APE].

Iwata But near the end of production we had everyone from APE come to our office in Yamanashi Prefecture.There was equipment only available in our offices at the time, and the scheduling worked out, so

Malta Wed basically camp out there for a week at a time.


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Iwata Our company has a meeting room with a view of Mt. Fuji through the glass panels, and that was theroom that practically turned into a separate branch office for APE.

Malta Wed completely taken over the whole place. (laughs)

So it was produced in a room with a view of Mt. Fuji? That must have felt great.

Malta Yeah. Wed talk about how great itd be to have an office in a place like that.

Iwata A beautiful place like that is a good location for creating something, but life in the city is a lot moreconvenient.

When was the camp-out youre talking about?

Iwata It was from fall of last year [1993] until spring of this year [1994] that they were coming to our officeregularly.

Of course Itoi would go too, as the scenario director?

Iwata Yeah, hed stop by from time to time. It provided some gossip for the neighborhood cafeterias. Oh,isnt that Shigesato Itoi? Whats he doing here? (laughs)

Did people mooch him for autographs?

Iwata Right in front of me, no less. (laughs)

A request that made the programmers cry

When did the game come together as a completed product?

Satoru Iwata Profile: President of HAL Laboratory. Programming Director for MOTHER 2, constructed overall

gaming system. According to Itoi, Iwata is the superman who delivered the game to completion.

Iwata Around mid-April is when we more-or-less had an RPG that wouldnt embarrass us if we released it.But wed already made everyone wait so long for it that we wanted to really see it through to the end, so we

spent the next three months perfecting it. We originally thought itd be ready in two months, though. (laughs)


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The standards really shot up during those last three months, so as a creator, the feeling of accomplishmentchanged.

I hear it turned out like the previous game, with how much freedom you had after the main programming

was all ready. Did that make you devote even more attention to those parts?

Malta We did. It was amazing, like a game for us in its own right. So there were some major final enrichmentsduring those three months. We hadnt yet done a full run-through by the time MOTHER 2 finally took shape, so

we played it together as a staff. Then we found some places that werent going to work, so we made sure topolish it all up.

Iwata Thered be a spot that we joked about how itd be better in such-and-such a way and then two monthslater be set that way. I feel the staff made the game without compromising.

Malta The slot machine in the desert is a perfect example.

Slot machine?

Iwata Its pretty far into the game, but theres a slot machine just plopped right in the desert. We thought itd

be neat if the slots were actually playable, so we made it work.

Malta And to top it off, its not that theres a working machinethere are men in the shape of a slot machine

who move around. Thats the kind of playful imagination youll find in the game.

Isnt it hard to program the system to add things like that after the fact?

Iwata Oh, absolutely. The bicycle near the beginning of the game, for example. We went through a ridiculous

amount of trouble to work that into the system, you know. That was a hell of a hailstorm. We had to build allkinds of special provisions just to manage it. Any normal programmer would turn up their nose at it, though.

But it was like a motto of ours to never do that. (laughs)

Malta In that sense, APE really owes a lot to the team at HAL Lab. Even when we brought up someunreasonable, difficult-to-implement request, they never brushed it off by saying, Wecant do it.

Iwata Once a programmer says they cant do something, future games are done for. What were considering

nowadays are ways for us to avoid that. Instead we think about how we, as producers, can clearly portray ourthoughts and ideas to the recipient customer without saying We cant do that.

What specific parts gave you a hard time?

Malta Id say the delivery man.

Iwata Theres a special system for a delivery man in the game. One comes to bring you items you werentable to carry before, and one is a pizza delivery man. This is something that has to reach the player at any stage

in the game. It was a really reckless ideathe delivery man cant just pass through walls that the player cantwalk through, so we had to make him able to navigate the map for himself.

Malta But the player had been able to play around and run away as soon as the delivery man appeared.

Iwata Until we were able to take care of that part, we were wondering why the heck we were trying so hard.(laughs)


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Words of Celebration on the Completion of MOTHER 2

Asato Izumi: Columnist recently breaking out

into novel-writing. Writes often about videogames.

I think the charm of the first MOTHER lies in its JoeBlow variety of everyday life and the seasons, like

riding the train between towns and arriving at a cold

town to see everyone sneezing. (The backgroundmusic by Keiichi Suzuki had a nostalgic feel to it andprovided an excellent touch.) I look forward to seeing

how MOTHER 2 delivers the flavor of the gameoutside of simple fights and problem-solving.

Congratulations to Shigesato Itoi and all the staff on thecompletion of MOTHER 2. A long time ago, I sent you

the cassette tape of the dramatization of the MOTHERnovel. The woman who played the voice of Loid said she

was really looking forward to the new game, too. Ill domy best to have theMOTHER 2 novelpublished by the

end of the year. I look forward to working together againsomeday!

Saori Kumi: Novelist and writer of the MOTHER

novel. As stated in her passage, will publish theMOTHER 2 novel.

Rika Kayama: Psychiatrist with the famous column"Eyedrops for Your Backside and Suppositories for Your

Eyes". Said to be looking forward to playing MOTHER2.

Im so glad that no matter how much time it took,MOTHER 2 is coming out as promised. Theres a

feel of adult responsibility and pride in that. Im surethe involved parties feel as relieved as if they had a

bone caught in their throat and finally got it out. EvenStar Wars claimed to have nine stories to release over

27 years, but all this time and weve only got three. Inthat regard, Nintendo and Itoi really did a great job.
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Interview Translation