Super Mario Maker devs on the updated name, Zelda Maker would be “a challenge to make”, more
New comments about Super Mario Maker have come in from producer Takashi Tezuka and director Yosuke Oshino. Between the two, they talked about the updated name, how the project stemmed from a Mario Paint idea, fly swatting, and the possibility of a Zelda Maker.
Continue on below for some of the interview excerpts. For the full discussion, head on over to Game Informer.
On why it’s now called “Super Mario Maker”…
We have a couple of reasons. The first is that compared to the playable version that we saw at E3 last year, the version we have now is so much more packed with features – we feel like it’s powered up – that it makes sense to call it “Super” so people would know how different it is.
The biggest reason, though, is if we call it just Mario Maker, people might think it’s a tool for making all Mario games and we want people to know it’s really about Super Mario levels in particular, so we thought the name would convey that really well.
On why this type of game hasn’t existed from Nintendo before now…
I first was inspired to create a game like this when I saw the Wii U Gamepad, and I thought it would be perfect for creating a gameplay experience kind of like Mario Paint. While I had a Mario Paint kind of gameplay experience in my head, at the same time we have an internal tools team who is working in creating an editing application for creating side-scrolling courses for our developers, so they were prototyping some different versions, and I saw that. These are tool developers. They’re not creators, so when I saw them having fun with the tool and it was simple enough for them to make courses, I saw the the potential, and when they proposed we make a gameplay experience out of it, I agreed. It was such a great idea.
Our idea of making a Mario Paint experience would have involved drawing, but we thought creating courses directly on the GamePad was so intuitive it was kind of like doing your own artwork there, so we kind of merged the two ideas together to come up with what we have today.
On whether Tezuka was involved with Mario Paint, and if there will be a fly swatting minigame…
No, I wasn’t involved with the original development, but I had a colleague in a different department who was involved in it. And of course you will see the fly swatter!
On whether we could see Zelda Maker if Super Mario Maker is a success…
Zelda Maker might be a challenge to make I think. Personally, making Super Mario Maker that was a challenge in itself, and we hope that it’s a success, so thank you for saying that, but I think that might be a difficult task.
