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Shigefumi Hino

Pikmin origins concept art N64

The original developers behind Pikmin have discussed the game’s origins, including how it was originally being developed for the N64.

Masamichi Abe, who was director at the time, said in a new interview published today that “discussion of this project started during the transition from Super NES to Nintendo 64, so we had a strong aspiration to utilize its ability to display a large number of characters on screen.” Shigefumi Hino, who also was director, added that it was originally “envisioned a game that would control a lot of characters with AI.” The interview includes a number of concept art / images as well, and character designer Junji Morii talked about being inspired by Tim Burton.

Nintendo has translated the full Super Mario World / Yoshi’s Island interview we saw snippets of in Japanese earlier this week. Out of all of Nintendo’s interviews for the SNES Classic Edition thus far, this one might be the most interesting.

Takashi Tezuka, Shigefumi Hino, and Hisashi Nogami were all present to talk about the SNES games. They chatted about how Yoshi came to be, how he ended up getting a starring role in his own title, the visual style for Yoshi’s Island, and a bunch more. We also have the official translation about the original plan to have Mario hitting Yoshi when his tongue sticks out.

Continue on below for the full interview with Tezuka, Hino, and Nogami.


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