Q-Games boss Dylan Cuthbert recently took part in a Reddit AMA where he spoke about a range of subjects, including his thoughts on the recent Wii U title Star Fox Zero - a game which will be of particular interest as he worked on both the SNES original and its cancelled sequel.
Another topic covered during the AMA was a mishap involving top secret documents relating to the N64, a drunken night out and two developers on a single bike.
We'll let Cuthbert take it from here:
I remember one from my Nintendo days where Giles (Goddard, fellow coder on StarFox) and I had been drinking with the Nintendo staff, this was towards the end of StarFox 2 and Giles had just got the loose leaf documentation (several hundred pages) for the very early prototype of the N64... anyway, I didn't have my bicycle so I hitched a lift on the back of Giles' (it had two metal pegs attached to the back wheel that you could stand on, and this kind of "double riding" was often seen in Japan in the 80s and 90s) ... anyway, we get back to town and we're crossing a busy road when Giles hits a pothole or something and we go flying, but so do the 100s of loose leaf pages, all over the road in central Kyoto... and the walk light blinked to red so we were laughing our heads off, completely drunk, frantically scrambling around picking up all this top secret documentation, jamming up the traffic. It took a while.
We don't know about you, but the mental image of two slightly merry Brits scrambling around a busy section of road attempting to pick up hundreds of sheets of paper is quite amusing, and makes for a particularly good anecdote. Cuthbert isn't short of those, either.
If you're interested in more Dylan Cuthbert tales, don't forget to check out our making of Star Fox and Star Fox 2, as well as the true story behind the confusing name change the series had to endure in Europe.
[source reddit.com]
Comments 46
Had Nintendo known about this back then, they would probably have been fired or at the very least harshly reprimanded.
Funny story, sure, but also kind of foolish, to say the least.
Lol, that's entertaining, but that could have so easily been a serious leak
Glad Nintendo didn't find out about that back then. Probably would have given them fifty lashes and delayed Star Fox.
Their tongues will shortly be issued with a cease and desist order.
It's like the Mafia, when they send you a fish.
Quick! Someone get Reggie a bicycle and the finest bottle of Bourbon available!
Even if those documents got out... very few people would have ever heard about it back then...
Drunk driving is never a good thing
boys will be boys
Why can't NX be accidentally leaked like this?
Funny story though.
We didn't really have net 2.0 back in 1994/1995 anyways, so this could have easily been covered up. Nevertheless, I'm glad they survived the formidable traffic of a scramble crossing!
Do you want leaks?
This is how you get leaks!
@HappyMaskedGuy That'a almost as powerful a message as 'The Blank'.
Lol, those darn Brits!!
@ThanosReXXX You must be a HOOT at parties.
LOL! It would've been weirder if this happened to a Japanese developer...
@Damo You could say that I actually am, but at the very least I'm always entertaining. And on a personal note I can certainly see the humor in it, especially imagining two men flying through the air with a bunch of papers snowing down around them.
But that doesn't take away that the business man in me (I have my own business) doesn't think this is funny at all, being drunk and careless with company papers/documents.
Back then, the damage might have been relatively small because of the lack of internet, but still: scattering official documents across the street, by accident or not, is hardly something to applaud or laugh about.
I'd dare to wager a bet that even they themselves can now recall that event and have a laugh about it only because they were able to contain the damage. Had they not, then it would have been an entirely different story...
Hah Hah! Imagine if this happened with the NX! It'd be hilarious.
@AlexOlney Why would anyone have a wicker toilet anyway??
@ThanosReXXX What if it happened to a rival business?
@PlywoodStick Then I would probably do my worst Dr. Evil laughing impression...
On the one hand, it's nice that, since we all have foolish moments, to be lucky enough to have them in a way you can look back at them and laugh because all's well that ends well. However, you know that your boss would fire you on the spot for something like that if he witnessed it. Anecdotes like this are why we should all be less focused on perfectionism and more on the highs, less fuss about the low moments, if you get my drift.
Well, at least this would be true in a lot of general business settings; you want perfectionism out of people running hospitals and building bridges, of course, lol. You wouldn't want your surgeon to be like, "oh, so funny story, I left a sponge in you, hahaha. I should cut out the drinking but at least we can all laugh about it because I can take that out in a jiffy. Hmm? Malpractice? Pshhaw, come on...it's just a sponge, bro."
@ThanosReXXX They picked all those papers right up, right? Endangering their lives in process. And right after being bruised from the fall. It's not something that deserves a good spanking, almost every businessman has had their papers fly off with the wind in a public place at least once.
@AlexSora89 You sir, are a genius.
@Smash_kirby If somebody said I found a piece of paper detailing the NX on the floor, would you believe them? Probably has happened lol.
@LemonSlice Yeah, you're right, let's give 'em a medal for their commendable behavior and bravery...
Seriously man, no company would look at it positively if they found out, so it's not even a discussion (besides the fact that I just gave my opinion as a manager, even though as a person I actually did find it funny) and the only reason they could laugh about it afterwards is because it ended the way it did, without any damage except for a few bruises, but if they would have been sober and had the same accident, they probably wouldn't have scrambled across a busy road to gather those papers, so that was only due to them being drunk/inebriated. No person in his right mind would normally do that, so that was just a bit of "liquid courage".
@PorllM "You're right, people who have completely unavoidable and unpredictable accidents are fools!"
Removing a comment here doesn't remove it from my inbox...
But the same goes for you, and I wasn't blaming them for the accident, since stumbling upon a pothole could also have happened if they were sober.
I'm simply saying that they were being irresponsible with company documents, and things could have ended much worse, both for the company and themselves for doing that crazy stunt running around on a busy road to gather up all the papers.
Could have ended in a hardware concept lost and two people in the hospital or worse. Now tell me again how that is not foolish...
@dronesplitter Well, at least someone understands...
@AlexSora89 He doesn't just write song lyrics, he's funny too...
@ThanosReXXX I replied to your original comment without reading the rest of the conversation, then immediately deleted it when I saw your explanation. Since you explained what you meant further down my comment was unnecessary.
I am well aware that deleting a comment doesn't remove it from your inbox, but it does make it clear that the comment was a mistake, so continuing to reply to it with a snarky comment is a massive as***le move that serves zero purpose.
And my only original point was literally anybody could fall off a bike, drunk or not. These are the days when email was rare and most documentation would be moved this way, especially in Japan.
@PorllM Fair enough, but you removing that comment didn't make that clear to me since I can't read into people's intentions from text alone, so when a message is removed, that could be because of a number of reasons, and I couldn't possibly have guessed that it was because of the reason you now gave.
Anyways, the snarky comment was made in jest, hence the smiley, so it certainly wasn't intended as an a*hole move and like I also said: I wasn't blaming them for the accident, that would be ridiculous, but they were acting irresponsibly with company documents, no matter which way you look at it, and it also doesn't matter that we might know of other people that have done silly things like that or maybe even we ourselves.
Still doesn't make it right or something to applaud, as some people seem to think I must do...
And they could have put the documents in a binder or in a backpack/suitcase, so that all the loose papers wouldn't have gone flying everywhere. Something along the lines of "company documents - handle with care"...
@PorllM It was mostly a joke, I just find this situation described rather humorous.
nintendo needs more of these type of employee`s you know the one`s that get drunk and spill the beans about the NX
@Smash_kirby @ThanosReXXX Oh yeah I wasn't being completely serious either lol, sorry for coming off that way (same reply applies to both of you - definitely need to work on my humour lmao)
@ThanosReXXX Agreed. Why are you carrying top secret documentation around if you are about to go out drinking? Either leave the papers at work or take them home and then go back out to meet up with friends...this isn't hard.
Disclaimer: I don't drink at all so yes that may come off as judgemental, but this is common sense.
@Ryu_Niiyama Exactly. I do drink, but still agreed that this is common sense. It probably wasn't the only copy of the document, but still...
@ThanosReXXX
With documents of that importance, "kind of foolish" is a massive understatement.
Just think of the massive consequences everyone could have gotten sucked into. It would've been utterly catastrophic. Thank God that Cuthbert and Goddard were quick on their feet.
I'm probably taking this too far... Aren't I.
@iGen I was trying to be nice...
@ThanosReXXX
So was I...
@ThanosReXXX "Removing a comment here doesn't remove it from my inbox... "
But it is made clear that the person changed their mind about making the post, which everyone is entitled to do. What was that supposed to be, public shaming of PorllM? Cause it failed.
Take this from another jerk: you sure can be a jerk sometimes, Thanos.
@LemonSlice You must have missed comment nr. #30...
And you're free to think whatever you want from me, but I'm anything but a jerk. I'm probably one of the most social persons you'll ever meet. I'm also slightly crazy, passionate, logic-loving and professional and if that translates to being a jerk, well... then so be it.
I can sleep peacefully knowing that I'm not...
@ThanosReXXX I can sleep peacefully knowing that I am, so I see no reason why you should be lying to yourself. Also, the way you give yourself compliments makes you look a bit self-involved. I would be scared if I thought of myself as not having faults, since I wouldn't be much of a human being if so.
@Jayronauron
@ThanosReXXX
You guys are way too kind.
@LemonSlice Calling myself slightly crazy is hardly a compliment, but it is true that I'm slightly nuts at times. But I'm not an evil person and I'm certainly not a jerk. As for being self-involved: wrong again. I was brought up learning to be proud of who I am and what my good qualities are, and later in life, I also learned to emphasize my good qualities for professional purposes: I work in sales & marketing and focusing on what I am not or on what I can't do isn't very beneficial to my work.
Doesn't mean I don't have any bad ones. Everybody has some lesser traits or qualities, it's what makes us human. I also think a lot of the reading into or misunderstandings come from a lot of people here coming from different countries and having different views on life. I myself am an American, but I life in Amsterdam, Netherlands, but before that, I have lived and worked in various countries in Europe, so I have gotten some impressions of all the various people I've met there which makes me come to this conclusion of the different views.
But besides all that, I honestly don't care much for other's opinions of me. They're welcome to it, but it's only myself that I have to life with and look in the mirror at. Nothing to confess here, fellow NLife member.
I think you are reading WAY too much into some of my comments. Most of them are either in jest or tongue in cheek, but never ambiguous, so I mean what I say and I say what I mean, and there's really no reading between the lines.
@AlexSora89 Well, that's at least one guy that doesn't think I'm a jerk...
@ThanosReXXX
Which you're not!
@AlexSora89 I'm fine with Thanos not being a jerk as long as you don't say that I'm not a jerk. Cause that would really hurt my self-image as the world's biggest jerk.
Yes, I watched the US presidential debate. Call me egotistical but they don't compare.
@LemonSlice
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