Nintendo believes you will be able to select items in Zelda: Skyward Sword without looking at the screen
In most Zelda games, players would need enter an item screen and assign an object to a button before the tool could be used. Skyward Sword handles things very differently.
A circular inventory appears on the screen, and you can select an item by tilting your arm. Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Nintendo president Satoru Iwata believe that you’ll learn the location of each item on the menu and, thanks to the simple tilt control, will be able to choose an item without even looking at the screen.
Iwata: Wii MotionPlus allows you complete control over Link’s sword, and you can stop that sword in mid-swing, fire a sword beam, and dash up using the A Button, but another big point is the big change from previous games in the UI for choosing an item.
Aonuma: That’s right. As alluded to earlier, in The Legend of Zelda games you have to be able to switch items in a flash.
Iwata: Yes. Aonuma: Until now, you had to open the item screen and choose the Bow or a bomb, disrupting the flow of the game. And that didn’t seem right even to me. But the director Fujibayashi-san and Tanaka-san in charge of UI totally resolved that big problem.
Iwata: Fujibayashi-san, how did you do that?
Fujibayashi: We were using Wii MotionPlus, so I wanted to do something revolutionary even for switching items, and what I came up with was quickly switching items without having to look at an item screen.
Iwata: Item selection without looking at the screen. That truly is revolutionary.
Fujibayashi: Yes. I thought it might be possible with Wii MotionPlus, so after I had a rough idea of it, I talked to Tanaka-san and asked for the impossible. I explained it using gestures, like, “If you do this, then this happens.” (laughs)
Iwata: After he laid that on you, Tanaka-san, how did you approach it?
Tanaka: When using the Wii Remote, the most common solution is to choose items with the pointer. But this time, we wanted to select items without using the pointer.
Iwata: That way you make use of Wii MotionPlus accessory’s features.
Tanaka: That’s right. We tested arranging the items on the screen in a circle, and you twist the Wii Remote Plus like a rotary switch to select an item.
Iwata: You thought of selecting items the way you used to turn a dial to select television channels.
Tanaka: Exactly. But when we tried it out, you can only turn your wrist about 120 degrees, so when choosing one item from about eight, you end up selecting the wrong one a lot. Then we realized that turning your wrist wasn’t the right way to go and tried tilting the Wii Remote Plus with your arm.
Fujibayashi: That way, even if you don’t look at the screen, the items are at certain angles and you can select them by tilting the Wii Remote Plus. As you play, you remember that, for example, the bow is at the top and your bombs are on the right.
Tanaka: For example, you remember with your body that if you tilt down, you switch to the Slingshot.
Iwata: So you can do it without looking at the screen. I think it was around the time you had just made that system, I remember very well that Miyamoto-san really bragged about it. He said, “Once you get used to it, you can select items with unprecedented speed and without interrupting the flow of the game. It’s quite unique.”
Fujibayashi: That was the first time Miyamoto-san ever praised me. (laughs)
Aonuma: Huh? The very first time? (laughs)
Fujibayashi: I’d never had that experience before, so I was overjoyed.
Tanaka: Yes. We were giving each other high-fives.
Iwata: (laughs)
Tanaka: That’s how happy we were. We were like, “We finally did it!”
Iwata: He even mentioned it to me before it was even finished, so it must have really struck a chord with him.
Aonuma: I suppose so.
