Last week, The Seattle Times put up a few new quotes from Reggie Fils-Aime. The Nintendo of America addressed the company’s performance and talked a bit about sales, high-demand amiibo, and more.

You’ll find a roundup of Reggie’s comments below. You can find The Seattle Times’ full article here.

On whether Nintendo is now on a rebound…

“(Nintendo is) doing better this year than we did last year. The way I would frame it: Our goal is to drive an ongoing positive trajectory. Certainly with the momentum we’re seeing with our hardware, the momentum we’re seeing with our key software titles, that gives us a lot of confidence.”

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Iwata on his “Super Programmer” days, helped get Smash Bros. Melee out on time

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in GameCube, General Nintendo, News | 19 Comments

Satoru Iwata became the president of Nintendo in 2002. Prior to that, however, Iwata worked at HAL Laboratory for many years and helped program a wide array of games.

In an interview with 4Gamer (via StreetsAhead translation), Iwata spoke about his proficiency with programming. One notable thing mentioned: “… I believed things like that I could write better NES code than even Nintendo’s (EAD) engineers or that I could write the fastest, most compact code.”

Iwata also spoke about the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee, which “didn’t look like it was going to make its release date”. He “did the code review, fixed some bugs, read the code and fixed more bugs, read the long bug report from Nintendo, figured out where the problem was and got people to fix those.” Thanks to his efforts, Melee launched on time.

Head past the break for Iwata’s full comments.

More: interview, Satoru Iwata, Super Smash Bros. Melee, top

Additional 2015 teases from Itagaki, Game Freak, Level-5, and more

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 15 Comments

We now have another round of quotes from Japanese developers regarding their plans for 2015 courtesy of an article from Japanese website 4Gamer. These include comments from Devil’s Third creator Tomonobu Itagaki, Tetsuya Watanaba from Game Freak, Level-5 boss Akihiro Hino, and more.

Read their responses below:

Tomonobu Itagaki (Valhalla Game Studios)
Known for: Devil’s Third (Wii U)
“We’re finally coming upon the release of Devil’s Third on the Wii U after six years, two of which were spent conceptualizing the game and four of which were spent on actual development. I know I’ve made my fans wait a long time for this game, but I figure that if I’m going to strike out on my own for this thing, I better do it with a bang, so the game just ended up taking a real life of its own as time went on. Although given that there aren’t necessarily a lot of independent developers that have that sort of luxury with time, maybe it’s a bit hard to relate to in the end. Regardless, the single player content for the game should rank favorably with what we’ve seen in action games until now. And then when it comes to online versus mode stuff, I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised at the breadth and scope of content we’ve manage to make for it. We still don’t have a release date to announce quite yet, but once it’s out, I look forward to playing it with everything. It’s going to be packed full of awesome content!”
Tetsuya Watanaba (Game Freak)
Known for: Pokemon series
“We’re doing a lot of different things with respect to our next project, so right now we’re focusing on getting ready to announce it. We sincerely hope from the bottom of our hearts that it’ll be worth checking out once we get to that point.”

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Iwata on story and modern games, the Internet

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 7 Comments

A couple of more excerpts from 4Gamer’s interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata are now available.

First, Iwata shared the following when it comes to story and modern games:

Iwata: So [modern games] are backed by this huge amount of effort and technology, but it feels like very few people remember them [story moments] or players skip over things within the game.

Kawakami: It certainly feels like there’s too many cut-scenes these days.
Iwata: Of course, you can use them effectively; I’m not trying to dismiss them completely, but I can’t help but wonder what could have been instead done with the energy [time, money, resources] that went into them. Miyamoto has never used many cut-scenes, in his games, but recently I think he has begun to think the same way, too.

Iwata additionally had the following to say regarding the Internet:

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Iwata talks about Miyamoto, says he used to think of him as a rival

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 4 Comments

Another excerpt from 4Gamer’s interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has been translated. This time around, we get to read about Iwata’s thoughts on Miyamoto.

Interestingly enough, when Iwata was first starting out, he determined – in an arbitrary manner – that Miyamoto was his rival. Of course, Iwata had plenty of praise for the creator of Mario and Zelda as well.

Check out the full translation below:

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Iwata Asks is “recharging right now”

Posted on 10 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments

4Gamer has gone live with an interview featuring Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. It’s the final interview in a series done by the Japanese website and Dwango’s Nobuo Kawakami.

One of the earlier parts of the discussion talks about how often Iwata is involved with interviews. Naturally, the chat shifted to the “Iwata Asks” series and what its status is at present. Iwata says that “our customers and even myself grew a little bored with it, so we decided to rest it for a while and it’s recharging right now, so to speak.”

Check out the full interview excerpts below: