Hisashi Nogami touches a bit on what it was like to make a game like Splatoon from scratch

Engadget recently held an interview with Hisashi Nogami in which they discussed all things from his beginnings with Nintendo, his success with Animal Crossing, and what it was like to come up with an idea for Splatoon. Lots of interesting tidbits in the article that you should check out, but we’ve grabbed an excerpt you can read below where he explains a bit about new IP with Nintendo, in this case Splatoon.

In a recent Iwata Asks interview with the Splatoon team at Nintendo EAD, you explained that after finishing your work on the Wii U, you set out to make a game that didn’t fit into any established genre. You wanted to make something that wasn’t a Super Mario Bros. or Legend of Zelda. What’s the biggest challenge in making something totally new at Nintendo?

Rather than setting out to make something that didn’t fit into any genre, I would say that we didn’t want to get caught up in the idea of genre. In making the game, we started out by reconsidering our experiences making and playing games as well as our experiences in life. The sort of things we enjoyed doing while growing up. We wanted to make something that captured those past experiences.

I think it’s true that, with Nintendo, in an established franchise like the Mario series, there are challenges and new things that need to be done with each new title. I think it’s really true that in creating a game like Splatoon, we were basically starting from scratch and there were many more fundamental ideas and decisions that we needed to set in place before we could get going with the rest of development. That was what I considered to be the largest challenge we faced.

You can read more of this insightful interview with Hisashi Nogami here