Captain Toad devs on Miyamoto’s influence, making Toadette playable, more
IGN published a new interview with Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker producer Koichi Hayashida and director Shinya Hiratake. The two commented on various topics, such as Shigeru Miyamoto’s influence on the game’s development, how Toadette was made playable, and plenty more.
Head past the break for a few noteworthy interview excerpts. Be sure to check out IGN’s full piece here as well.
On how the jumping mechanic was initially tested with the team’s idea for small worlds…
“We introduced a character with the ability to jump. But one thing we discovered right away was that if we played these levels with a character that could jump, we would have to make these stages very, very big, because jumping allows the character to go wherever they want.” By taking away this element of mobility, the designers could focus on making levels much more compact.
On how Miyamoto’s interest in the Rubik cube helped inspire Captain Toad…
“He’s a fan of the Rubik cube. And at one point he was thinking about implementing a Rubik cube-style of gameplay into a video game.” When Miyamoto saw what the team accomplished, he suggested they make Captain Toad into its own video game.
On Miyamoto’s influence on the Dragadaan battle…
“He explained it with the image of the Dragon enemy as if it were in a huge bathtub full of lava. Captain Toad accidentally pulls the plug at the bottom of the tub, and all the lava drains out. And the dragon is naked and gets embarrassed. That sort of conversation took place.”
On how Toadette made it into the game…
– Captain Toad was initially the only playable character
– Toadette would have only appeared at the start before a giant bird takes her away
– During the course of development, this approach changed as the game shifted to an episodic format
– The team decided to experiment by changing the playable character at some point in the adventure to see how it would feel
On how including Toadette wasn’t because of a trend within Nintendo to present more female characters in its video games…
“I don’t know that we really thought about it in that way. How can we create some different rhythms in the gameplay? We need characters with different abilities than the characters we’d been using. OK, then let’s look at the characters we have not had as playable to date. It just so happens a lot of those characters are female.”
On the challenge of making Captain Toad…
“We worked on the Mario games and, of course, Mario is the epitome of the strong hero. He jumps, avoids attacks, and defeats all comers. He doesn’t flinch from battle at all. For us to then go and create levels for a character like Captain Toad, who is the antithesis of that, was a big challenge for us.”
