Them there’s fighting words, Miyamoto!
Posted by Graham. Filed under G, Interviews, News, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii.
Reading an interview on Wired today, I was suddenly drawn back into the bitter war from the 90’s. No, not the Gulf war, but the war between Sega and Nintendo, the Megadrive vs SNES.
The war was so bitter it wasn’t just fought between the two companies, but it invaded, magazines, media advertising (”Sega does what Nintendon’t” etc…), and our playgrounds. Ultimately it was all for naught as, the next two generations, both companies were beaten down by newcomer Sony. Good times.
Anyway, Wired are currently celebrating their 15th anniversary, and as a result they are interviewing various people from the industry. The interview with Miyamoto is fairly standard, except for the last answer given…
Wired: Nintendo is huge now. How do you maintain quality control?
Miyamoto: I’m always instructing my game designers on the history of the characters and worlds we’ve created. Often we’re in development and I’ll say, “Oh, this looks like a Sega game. We need to make it look more like Mario.”
Now this could all be innocent. Maybe it’s a miss-quote, or just taken out of context, but what the funk?!
I say we take to the streets, throw bricks through plumber’s windows, destroy every mushroom we can find, kidnap a few princesses! Re-live the 90’s!
{Note: Sega Nerds in no way condones any act of violence towards mushrooms, or any other fungi or fauna.}
Perhaps someone should remind Miyamoto that Sega has helped Nintendo make a large sum of cash with their selection of Wii and DS games, especially with Mario & Sonic Olympics.
Nintendo may be doing incredibly well this generation, what with the likes of Wii-Fit selling out everywhere (still can’t get one of those in the UK). But in reality, Nintendo needs support from third party developers, it’s not a good call to insult them when they are helping bring the extra cash in.
What do you guys think? Check out the full interview, here.
[Source: Wired]
[Image from Wired]
Comments on this article
There have been 26 responses to this article.
I think by ‘It looks like a Sega game’ he meant stylish and by ‘make it look like a Mario game’ he meant shit.
George
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 6:17 am.
Miyamoto wasn’t attacking Sega.
What he was implying was that Nintendo games have a particular consistent style… just like Sega games tend to.
Case in point: Virtua Cop, Confidential Mission, and House of The Dead are all rail shooters made by different teams at Sega. While different people work on each game, you notice similarities with each that other rail shooters don’t have.
Miyamoto simply is a good game producer; he can see throughout the development cycle how a game should meet his artistic style, and drives his team accordingly.
And please guys, get a little more proper with the writing style. Sega Nerds is starting to become the kind of site I don’t want to link to, simply because it’s starting to sound like a stereotypical 13 year old is posting on MySpace. And yes, if you read what I posted above, you’ll start to learn how writing style matters.
Christopher Price
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 6:23 am.
Sorry you feel that way Chris.
I hope you realise that all the talk of “Taking to the streets” is meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
I can also understand what Miyamoto was trying to say. But it can easily be taken out of context - which is something pointed out in the article.
I think that a lot of developers/representatives need to watch what they say in interviews these days.
Sega had that whole who-ha with what certain people said last year - and they said less ‘questionable’ things than this.
Graham
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 6:50 am.
Single instances of tongue-in-cheek are one thing, but it seems like Sega Nerds has a requirement to add them to each and every article these days. It gets old, fast. The best thing I can compare it to, is a talk show that uses sound effects constantly. One every few articles is interesting… but making it a constant tunes people out.
As to what Miyamoto was saying, you’re partly forgetting that while Miyamoto does speak English… there’s a language barrier here. He primarily speaks Japanese, where you talk directly about close things on a first-name basis, but colleagues/competitors on a last name basis.
It makes perfect sense that he would refer to Mario, and to Sega’s style by referencing Sega generically. That’s proper for Japanese communication.
Christopher Price
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 7:12 am.
I’m NOT buying the DS I was planning to buy this weekend.
I’ma gettin’ one o’ those Gp2x hehe
Now seriously, is it just me or by that we can interpret that if Sega games had Mario in it, we’d be gettin 9/10’s from Gamespot?
crackdude
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 7:19 am.
I thought it was nice of him to even acknowledge
Sega as a competitor personally.
jon
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 7:41 am.
Writting style is fine for what it is, SEGAnerds if neither a formal blog nor run by professionals. The name “SEGAnerds” instead of something like “SEGA News Blog” should have also given a indication of the light type of humour that is used by the blog.
As for Miyamoto, his been misquoted and translated incorrectly many times before, so oh well.
Aki-at
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 9:23 am.
lol, the bastard.
nuckles87
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 10:04 am.
@Christopher: Haha, but yeah, you might be right. Probably taken out of context, as many Japanese quotes often are it seems. But you can bet that a lot of people around here are going to act as if Miyamoto shot their loving grandmother. Should be fun :D.
nuckles87
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 10:11 am.
lol, gotta love it when that context is broken, looots of red faces follow the next day at the office lol
@Chris, dude, haha, jsut like Aki-at said, the name of the blog should give an indication of what your in for.
These guys have been doing sega updates for years now, constantly and 99% without fail on time, and ive come to love the tongue-in-cheek humor, as most editors in this day and age use it to make the articles more interesting to read, and maintains a certain light-heartedness.
What are you expecting? Remember: The Internet is NOT really Serious Business :p
Kyle
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 10:24 am.
Well it doesn’t matter in the end, Miyamoto’s personally game of the year is going to be by SEGA.
Hey, he is a big fan of Samba De Amigo after all!
Aki-at
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 10:25 am.
He means the games need to be gayed up with childish crap.
Kogen
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 10:26 am.
On a different note,What’s up with the forums? Is it down or something? It was like that yesterday too.
ROJM
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 10:42 am.
@ROJM - I believe TOGGI has had some fairly serious problems with the servers. So right now the forums are down - yeah.
It’s annoying, but not much we can do about it right now.
Apologies.
Graham
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 10:51 am.
Thanks for the info. Any idea when it will be back on?
ROJM
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 11:16 am.
@Christopher Price
In Grahams defense, he is a 13 year old avid myspace user.
George
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 12:13 pm.
I agree with Christopher in that Miyamoto was talking about the style and flavor of the game that nearly all Nintendo games are instilled with.
He really wasn’t meaning it as a slap in the face of Sega. However, it is fun to poke a jab at Nintendo, which Graham was doing light-heartedly, from time to time.
Also Christopher, Sega Nerds isn’t a straight news site, it’s a blog, which I believe offers us the opportunity to freely express our opinions along with providing our readers the pertinent information they come to get.
From all the feedback we receive, we’re never asked to stop writing opinionated posts and to adopt a straight news policy, which would be pretty silly if we did.
As for whether we’re professionals, I think there’s different levels of what a professional can be. I’m a military journalist and do Public Relations for the Air Force … does that make me a professional and one who’s capable of blogging about video games?
Nathan, Hudson, James and George are all at different points in their college career … a few have graduated and some are nearly there. Does that make them professionals who are blogging capable?
Graham is English, jobless, lives with his parents and plays video games all day long. I think that probably makes him more capable of blogging about video games more than anyone on the site.
We know you love us, and we do appreciate any feedback we get. Keep ‘em coming, gents!
Chris
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 4:22 pm.
I actually think that SEGA’s franchises and characters are cooler and more stylish than Nintendo’s.
Nintendo just makes their characters bland, generic, and babyish.
SEGA’s characters are more unique and are more appealing. They have great designs and look like a lot of care was put into them.
Dr. SEGA Monkey
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 7:11 pm.
I understand what he’s saying, but it’s times like these I remember that Nintendo is overrated crap. Honestly, for my Wii, I only own one Nintendo game. The rest are Sega games. Why? Because the Mario games since Mario 64 have sucked out loud.
Gamerschoice
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 9:31 pm.
How unclassy Miyamoto, spit on the enterprise which’s actually getting amazing games done for your substandard console and it’s steadily climbing up the ladder of good selling. NiGHTS flopped but Mario&Sonic hit the big spot along with Sonic and the Secret Rings; Superstar Tennis, Sonic Riders had acceptable sells and next we’ll have Madworld, Samba de Amigo (something actually different to do with the wiimote) and arguably (there’s a lot of skeptics) Sonic Unleashed. There are the movies adaptations too, and they’re very high on Wii’s buying list.
I’ll not even start with Condemned, or Yakuza, Full Auto (they are publishing it after all), Valkyria of the Battlefield, Virtua Fighter 5 because you’d need more than two gamecubes taped together to run them. These are great games, innovative games, something you do not know how to do or then don’t have the balls to. All that you care about is profit or casual gamers and this in the gaming industry is a sad thing. That’s why your games are all subpar with SEGA and many other publishers. Yeah I said it. What can I say, at least with SEGA I have a choice besides the usual rehash of Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, Metroid and Wii something. It’s true you have the money and the entertainment of millions of casual gamers, but you don’t have the satisfaction, nor the quality and creativity SEGA has.
I do wish that you were speaking about distinguishing between Nintendo and SEGA styles however. That would be something, perhaps even a compliment that you actually think SEGA is a distinguished foe. I somehow think this is not the case… I do salute you though, knowing exactly what makes a game sell. You just have to spit Mario on there and it will sell millions.
It’s true that Nintendo is here and SEGA isn’t but you know what Miyamoto? It wasn’t Nintendo who threw SEGA out of the ring, but Playstation. As far as Nintendo is concerned, they never won, they placidly sat there and waited for the war to end, shitting the same remakes over and over again. This seventh generation of consoles is a disgrace comparing to the fourth and fifth. A console who doesn’t have games, another full of FPS and MMPORGS and another one which constantly rehashes the same one trick pony. Repetitive much? That’s your fucking Wii.
Apples and Oranges
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 10:18 pm.
man hehe nintendo is good 2 , why people fight so much in forums? its silly…
paly
Posted June 24th, 2008 at 11:31 pm.
Tsk tsk.. Miyamoto is getting a little smug now that he an Iwata own the video game market.
I will always agree that by and large Nintendo’s quality control is excellent and probably the best in the business, but to suggest that Sega is a benchmark to tell when a game is below Nintendo’s standards is absurd.
The reason QC is so great for Nintendo is because they NEVER take risks. Even with their new “innovative” consoles, the games they release are decidedly safe (Marios, Zeldas, Wii Play which is essentially a mini-game collection..). Probably their riskiest recent offering is Animal Crossing, but that’s about the extent.
Then you have Sega who consistently redefine games and genres. They always try to give gamers something different. Some attempts are more successful than others, and when they are successful they make a huge impact. Jet Grind Radio could and would NEVER come from Nintendo. Shenmue, Yakuza, Samba de Amigo are all examples of the payoff of Sega’s edginess and innovation over Nintendo’s safe and sure policy.
Thanks, but I’ll take a new, unbelievable experience over yet another fun but nothing-new Zelda or Mario game.
(To be clear, I’m actually quite a fan of Nintendo overall. I’m just a little miffed that Miyamoto would be so arrogant.)
shinneri
Posted June 25th, 2008 at 12:14 am.
Nintendo sucks COMPLETE ass to me, so that dude really shoudn’t be so smug because there are millions to billions of other people that feel the same way i do.
segakid
Posted June 25th, 2008 at 5:21 pm.
Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooly fuck. This shit was fucking laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. Who gives a fuck about Nintendo or Sega? They both suck fucking ass.
Holy FUCK
Posted December 1st, 2008 at 3:55 pm.
GRAHAM LOVES COCK JUICE
Nigger Dong
Posted December 1st, 2008 at 3:56 pm.
Hell yeah I agree with that motherfucking Segakid. Segakid, you are CORRECT, SIR, AND YOU’VE EARNED YOURSELF A DILDO TO SHOVE UP YOUR FUCKING ASS!
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I HATE YOU PEOPLE
Posted December 1st, 2008 at 3:58 pm.