shmuplations.com

Having just finished Tunic for the first time I very much agree! I also remember fumbling through DQV as a teenager when I was first learning Japanese, and how "mystical" that game was to me then. That was back when you had to break the plastic tabs off your SNES to play imports, haha...

Miyamoto should've done more interviews in 1989 because this is like reading a wizard talk. This snippet distills why playing games in another language has always been so appealing to me. (And also reminds me why Tunic is such a masterpiece.)

I love the poetry of this exchange, and it certainly presages Nintendo's increasingly open-world game design from the 90s onwards. shmuplations.com/itoimiyamoto/

nice! that will be a huge help for researchers/translators, i know how tedious that work is. there was one jp site, now defunct i believe, that did a similar indexing for all of Gamest.

the feeling is mutual! i can't imagine how much work+money it must have taken to archive all these (actually, i've read your blog posts so I have some idea, haha!) Game PIA, Gamejin, and gM are full of wonderful interviews too.

This interview is an absolute goldmine of Miyamoto and Itoi quotes, and I could practically snip the entire thing. Here's Miyamoto conjuring up visions of Animal Crossing... in 1989!
shmuplations.com/itoimiyamoto/

This interview comes from Gamer Handbook which I scanned last year! Be sure to check it out, I was quite chuffed to come across it

archive.org/details/Game...

Their preservation work is invaluable and has been filling in gaps that I couldn't find even at the Tokyo Diet Library. Please follow and support their work!

I have to give MAJOR props to @thestacks.ca and @gamingalexandria.bsky.social, who in recent months have made this (Gamer Handbook) and several other rarities available on archive.org.

I've translated over 500 interviews for shmuplations now (!), and I would personally put this in the top 5. It was certainly the most difficult thing I've translated in recent memory. Itoi is always a challenge, but Miyamoto matches him pound-for-pound here.

Shigeru Miyamoto x Shigesato Itoi – 1989 Interview - shmuplations.com This lengthy interview captures a high-level meeting of the minds between Shigesato Itoi, Shigeru Miyamoto, and author Seiko Itou.

Today we have an amazing interview from 1989 with Shigeru Miyamoto and Shigesato Itoi. Conducted shortly after the release of Mother, it's full of deep musings about realism, creative exhaustion, the moral panic over kids & gaming, and prescient visions of the future. shmuplations.com/itoimiyamoto/

The Two Weeks When Luigi Died Last timestamp of a file (gfxmain.c) that has Luigi's code active as part of the program: February 6, 1996 Earliest timestamp of a file (shade.c) that has Luigi's code commented out, signifying he is no longer being developed: February 20, 1996 This means that the idea of including Luigi in Super Mario 64 was abandoned in these two weeks. -By the way, what happened to Luigi? Miyamoto: Well... until February, he was in the game. (laughs) This is also completely consistent with a statement by Shigeru Miyamoto in a June 1996 interview. Source: x.com user @Alieneer_TF2, shmuplations.com/mario64

According to internal files and interviews, Luigi has been part of Super Mario 64 for 85% of its development time. New insights from development data allow us to narrow down when exactly he was abandoned, being the two weeks between February 6, 1996 and February 20, 1996.

A screenshot of a mock-up used to promote the then-in-development Final Fantasy IV for the Famicom, taken from https://shmuplations.com/ffiv/

I just learned that there was a Final Fantasy IV in development for the Famicom at the same time as Final Fantasy V for the Super Famicom. This "IV" was canceled, and the "V" in development became the FFIV we know now. The lost "IV" may have been as close as 80% complete?!

shmuplations.com/ffiv/

"Corporate programmers are like factory chickens." shmuplations.com/endoitoi/

It can be helpful for targeted research too, as it works in conjunction with the search bar--you can filter by our most recently translated Nintendo, Sega, Treasure, etc interviews and sort to see if there's anything you've missed over the months/years.

In other news, I've added a long-requested feature to our archive, the ability to sort interviews by the date we translated them. The front page highlights our most recent ~2 months worth of work, but if you're wanting to catch up further this is a convenient tool. shmuplations.com/archive/

Here's a fun drawing the LOGiN editors added to illustrated Itoi's cheeky ramblings about women being the downfall of the new generation.

Masanobu Endo x Shigesato Itoi – 1985 Interview - shmuplations.com In this vintage interview from the 12/85 issue of LOGiN magazine, Shigesato Itoi and Masanobu Endo discuss the formation of Game Studio.

For our final translation this month, we have a vintage interview with Masanobu Endo and Shigesato Itoi from 1985, shortly after Endo departed Namco and founded Game Studio. This is a "friendly banter" style interview with lots of witty, provocative assertions from Itoi. shmuplations.com/endoitoi/

Someone please investigate what the "Dark Souls of Business Software" was.

shmuplations.com/kingsfield/
Interview translated by @shmuplations.bsky.social

Nishida on the challenge of maintaining atmosphere in King's Field as the graphics fidelity/techniques got better. This is a contrast that most Western players haven't experienced, since the very first King's Field was never localized.

No problem, thanks for checking! I have been working on some backend stuff lately so it wasn't improbable. 😅

Hmm, not that I know of? It loads ok here on several different computers, caches cleared etc, but maybe siteground was down earlier...?

Sony telling FromSoftware to "deal with it" after changing a library that broke their fog effect 😆 Not surprising since FromSoftware was an unproven newcomer then.

Some neat insights from Nishida, about the desolate atmosphere of the first King's Field being intentional.

Patrons had requested King's Field for awhile, but the previous interview we had translated (shmuplations.com/fromsoftware/) with Naotoshi Jin, while an excellent read in its own right, was more focused on FromSoftware as a whole. So I was very glad to find this something deeper!

King’s Field – 2001 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com This rare King's Field interview with Shinichiro Nishida originally appeared in the King's Field Verdite Trilogy Perfect Guide in 2001.

This week we have a rare King's Field interview from 2001 with FromSoftware producer Shinichiro Nishida! Taken from the Verdite Trilogy Perfect Guide, it covers the development of the first three PlayStation games. shmuplations.com/kingsfield/

Here's another cool bit of concept art from early in Esprade's development, when it was still called "ESP Drive" (Inoue explains the story behind the change in the interview). The two characters on the left, "Ryuichi Ezo" and "Kotomi Yamato" were part of the original six player characters.

This Esprade interview came from a rare Esprade/Guwange artbook, btw, and I'll be translating the equally interesting Guwange interview next month.

As I mentioned recently, we're getting back to weekly updates! Next week we'll be sharing a long-requested King's Field interview, and after that, a cool conversation from 1985 between Masanobu Endo and Shigesato Itoi.

Check out the incredible concept art: that's an early version of Ms. Garra on the right, from when she was conceived as a player character (Esprade was originally going to have 6 characters, like Batsugun). I translated the handwritten notes by Inoue too!