shmuplations.com

I saw someone describe the tone as "unguarded" and I thought that was perfect. It's really one of the advantages of reading these old interviews; Japanese speakers self-censor a lot if they are afraid of being misunderstood.

Well, that wraps up the first "Saturday Shmuplations" thread! Tune in later this week for our newest translated interview, Cave's Guwange!

I've actually got a couple more Bushido Blade interviews left to translate... looking forward to that! Our backlog of untranslated material is indexed here, by the way: shmuplations.com/patreonlist/

Did you know Bushido Blade used motion capture, inspired by historical Japanese dramas? (jidaigeki)

Bushido Blade – 1997 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com In these Bushido Blade interviews, the devs discuss their ideas about fighting games, the challenges of designing arena maps, and some surprising influences.

One last lookback: Bushido Blade! Released on March 14th, 1997 in Japan, there has never been a fighting game like it since. In these two interviews director Kunihiko Nakata explains the reasoning behind all those unique design choices.
shmuplations.com/bushidoblade/

Lots of neat insights within, here's two: director Chihiro Fujioka describes a mushroom idea that got abandoned and Nintendo's policy on weapons.

Super Mario RPG – 1995 Developer Interviews - shmuplations.com Super Mario RPG – 1995 Developer Interviews This October ’95 interview with Super Mario RPG director and then-Square employee Chihiro Fujioka sheds some light on the collaborative process and the divi...

The big event this week, of course, is Super Mario RPG's 30th anniversary. These four interviews remain the only contemporary account of SMRPG's development and are well-worth reading!
shmuplations.com/supermariorpg/

I was listening to a jp podcast years ago, and a woman was describing her husband's gaming life: "he plays Chrono Trigger, then a few months later, he plays Chrono Trigger again. Sometimes I see him taking forever to decide what to play, and when I come back he's just playing Chrono Trigger again."

Chrono Trigger – 1994/95 Developer Interviews - shmuplations.com These Chrono Trigger interviews were found at the GSLA. The first interview, from 1994, comes before Chrono Trigger was released and contains an interesting description of a more free-form event syste...

Our other big Chrono Trigger interview looks more at the battle system mechanics, and includes some nostalgic reminiscing with Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yoshinori Kitase.
shmuplations.com/chronotrigger/

Chrono Trigger – 1995 Developer Interviews - shmuplations.com This is a collection of Chrono Trigger interviews from early 1995, originally featured in Japanese magazines Famicon Tsuushin, Dengeki SFC, and Haou. Because they feature very similar questions and an...

March 11th marks the 31st anniversary of Chrono Trigger, and shmuplations has a good spread of content for Square's timeless classic. This collection of pre-release interviews covers the story, characters, gameplay, and graphics in equal turn. shmuplations.com/chronotrigge...

I'll be choosing interviews that line up with this week's upcoming release anniversaries, developer birthdays, and other important events. Without further ado then...

Today I'm starting a new weekly tradition called "Saturday Shmuplations" to highlight some of the greatest hits from our archive of over 500 translated interviews. The weekend is the perfect time to relax and revisit these long-form, deep-dive slices of gaming history!

"MIYAMOTO SAYS GAME SECRETS ARE PORNOGRAPHY"

Glad to see everyone enjoying the Miyamoto and Itoi interview! I honestly thought all the "big" early Miyamoto interviews had been found, so it was quite the discovery. Also nice to see most of the engagement hasn't been too click-baity, hehe

Attention all Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness fans! With thanks to @shmuplations.bsky.social you can now enjoy English story mode translations of the console exclusive characters. Have closed captions turned on. First up, Shade:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lue...

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.