Bits and pieces are being translated as we speak. I'll update the thread on my own time, but here is the NeoGAF thread where the interview is being translated
Iwata: In my years as a student in high school and college, I would make games on a Hewlett-Packard HP-67 calculator.
*Programmable pocket calculator sold in 1976. Programs were stored on a magnetic card.
Mr. Kawakami: What sort of CPU was in that?
Iwata: That information was never published, so I can't say for sure what CPU was in there. It was very crude and primitive, not really made for computers (?). However, thanks to the ease with which it could handle Indirect Addressing and Data Entry Flagging, I was able to make games in the middle of class and show it to my friend who sat next to me.
Mr. Kawakami: You're truly a natural programmer!
Iwata: The manual wasn't very easy to understand, it read as though it had been directly (roughly) translated from English. But in those days (some stuff I can't understand) Back then, I considered myself the 'number one master' of calculators in Japan! (Laughs)
Everybody: (Laughs)
Iwata: Back then, I made a Star-Trek themed game by myself. I managed to get over the calculator's restriction of only allowing 224 steps per program by using 6 different magnetic cards. It was a masterpiece of calculator programming! The people at Hewlett Packard's Japanese Agency were really surprised. It was a ton of data to send. By that point, I was no longer worried about the HP-67's documentation.
Now I want a stone throwing/bird hitting minigame in Zelda U
Iwata: Thank you very much for your invitation today. I couldn't refuse when Mr. Kawakami told me wanted me to appear as the 'final boss' in his series.
Kawakami & 4Gamer: Thank you!
4Gamer: It is quite rare for you to have an interview or long-form discussion, though, isn't it, Mr. Iwata? At least, I feel like I haven't seen one recently...
Iwata: Ah, that's probably true. I've always been the one 'asking', so it has been quite a while since I have been 'asked' anything (laughs). Of course, I do a number of short interviews each year, but it has been quite a while since I've done this sort of long form interview.
Kawakami: Is you not doing many interviews a company policy?
Iwata: No, it's usual for the boss to be asked questions. But doing the usual thing is not interesting. I started the 'Iwata Asks' project when I thought, 'It's unusual for the boss to ask questions, so doing it that way might be interesting'. I actually didn't think it would continue for this long though...
4Gamer: The 'Iwata Asks' articles are something that the media could never write, don't you think?
Iwata: Well, there are a lot of interesting stories that happen internally, and I definitely thought you'd never be able to get the developers talking about some of them if you didn't make games yourself.
So, when we started, I had a good time, the readers seemed to enjoy it, and the people I interviewed said it was a very good way to wrap up their projects. Through speaking to developers, you can also create new possibilities, discover hints, and evaluate problems together so for me it's like killing five birds with one stone.
Kawakami: Five birds with one stone (laughs)
Iwata: But of course, doing it for a long time, 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.
Kawakami: But I find it really, really interesting and want to read more.
Iwata: We counted up all the interviews just the other day and there were over 200. Even I was surprised.
Iwata thought of Miyamoto as what?!
Iwata: So, I have this strange sense of duty regarding the codifying of the 'Miyamoto Methodology', because I feel like it would be useful to the game industry if you could put it into words. I started up a project similar to 'Iwata Asks' for that purpose. And, of course, wanted to see it put into words so I could understand it too, because back when I was just starting out, I sort of arbitrarily decided that Miyamoto was my rival, though that's embarrassing to admit now.
Kawakami: Your rival? Mr. Miyamoto?
Iwata: Yes. Would you believe that for a long time I'd just decided within myself, completely arbitrarily and not at all reciprocated, that he was my rival and I wanted to do something to just give him hell.
Kawakami: Well fair enough, but in the end did you ever manage to give him hell?
Iwata: Umm, well, maybe a little (wry laugh)
All: (Laughs)
Iwata: Miyamoto is, as you'd expect, an amazing person and without a doubt posseses a methodology that I don't have. And I always felt it was a waste that it wasn't verbalized.
Kawakami: It caused a buzz online, but Mr. Miyamoto's definition of a good idea* is quite remarkable.
*"A good idea is something that does not solve just one single problem, but rather can solve multiple problems at once."
Iwata: Yes, that one's great. I thought 'Yes, that's a great quote! It'll be popular with people', so I went and spread it around as much as I could and it's become quite well known (laughs).
Kawakami: Yes, it has. It's like, to put it another way, realizing that killing two birds with one stone was about ideas too! (laughs)
Iwata: Yes. It's the perspective that solving multiple problems with one solution is what an idea is.
Kawakami: But when people say 'I got it!' or 'That's it!', it's usually like that. So, I think from a cognitive point of view, it's the correct definition.
Iwata: It's probably the same as the 'A-ha!' moment that they talk about in neuroscience. Things that, at first glance, didn't appear connected actually are and you can say 'if I just do this to this thing and that thing, I can solve all these problems in one go and everything will work beautifully.' That's the 'I got it!' moment.
Kawakami: Yes.
Iwata: Miyamoto also says that when a problem just can't be solved no matter what, someone is lying.
4Gamer: Lying?
Iwata: Yes. He doesn't mean lying in a bad way, but that the person's thought-process is mistaken, or they're looking at the problem the wrong way.
Miyamoto is like, how do I put this, he's a genius at creating perception changes. Explaining the value of changing one's perception in an easily understood manner makes people happy, so it's a very interesting skill (laughs).
I sort of arbitrarily decided that Miyamoto was my rival, though that's embarrassing to admit now.
Kawakami: Your rival? Mr. Miyamoto?
Iwata: Yes. Would you believe that for a long time I'd just decided within myself, completely arbitrarily and not at all reciprocated, that he was my rival and I wanted to do something to just give him hell.
Kawakami: Well fair enough, but in the end did you ever manage to give him hell?
Iwata: Umm, well, maybe a little (wry laugh)
So does this make Miyamoto Red, and Iwata Blue? At least Blue got to be champion for a moment
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.
3 quotes on the internet
Iwata: The internet makes a variety of things transparent and allows information to be shared quickly. Therefore, in a way, you can no longer hand-wave stuff as you once could, but on the other hand it’s created a platform for a variety of interesting things.
I don’t think it’s more difficult now [to do business] with the internet around. In fact, for certain genres and demographics, the internet is better at spreading information for us than, say, TV is.
For example, we posted a Tweet [on the NCL account] saying that we were remaking The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and we had over 16,000 retweets within one day. Looking at those numbers, it’s hard to feel that the market is becoming more segmented.
Iwata: Indeed, we see the trend of, as the middle of the market disappears, the big hits only become bigger. For example, there’s been four 2 million sellers released on the 3DS [in Japan] in the last five months.
We checked and that’s never happened before in the Japanese game market. So, in the middle of people saying ‘packaged software doesn’t sell anymore’ and ‘dedicated game consoles are dead’, we have this happening.
Kawakami: Just this year, we had Frozen released in Japan and be a huge hit. People are saying no one goes to movie theaters any more and then we have one of the highest grossing movies ever recorded in Japan.
Iwata: It’s segmentation and over-concentration. This bipolarity is just a feature of the market in recent years.
The mega hits get bigger, so to speak.
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Topic: Long interview with Satoru Iwata by 4Gamer (Status of Iwata Asks, Thoughts on Miyamoto, and more)
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