Nintendo’s Iwata talks of Super Mario Galaxy, cooking, and frantic game chefs

Cooking is known to be an exciting, experimental affair: In an interesting talk about cooking up the perfect game, Nintendo’s CEO Satoru Iwata talked with Takao Shimizu and Yoshiaki Koizumi (Super Mario Galaxy‘s producer and director, respectively) about frantic chefs, the sweetness and sourness of Super Mario Galaxy, and the taste tester who is Shigeru Miyamoto.

The story of Mario Galaxy began when Nintendo’s Tokyo team decided to create a new game franchise, which got Miyamoto’s disapproval. The team then thought of doing something big, something that fans would want: a new Mario game. It wasn’t easy, and so the game developers put on their chef’s hats and started experimenting. Said Koizumi:

With Mario Galaxy, we feel as though we’ve played the role of chefs. We showed people our recipe and said, “Look, we want to make this kind of Wii dish,” but our staff weren’t really sure what type of meal would result from our efforts in the kitchen.

They let Miyamoto taste their “recipe” from time to time, everytime they had significant development. “We were cooking and making him eat all the time. He was probably mortified!” Shimizu said.

So how did the recipe end up? Judging by the screenshots and the videos, the chefs at Nintendo managed to come up with the best Super Mario cuisine to date in the form of Super Mario Galaxy. Ready your spoons and forks, we’re going to chow down the main course on November 12!

Cooking is known to be an exciting, experimental affair: In an interesting talk about cooking up the perfect game, Nintendo’s CEO Satoru Iwata talked with Takao Shimizu and Yoshiaki Koizumi (Super Mario Galaxy‘s producer and director, respectively) about frantic chefs, the sweetness and sourness of Super Mario Galaxy, and the taste tester who is Shigeru Miyamoto.

The story of Mario Galaxy began when Nintendo’s Tokyo team decided to create a new game franchise, which got Miyamoto’s disapproval. The team then thought of doing something big, something that fans would want: a new Mario game. It wasn’t easy, and so the game developers put on their chef’s hats and started experimenting. Said Koizumi:

With Mario Galaxy, we feel as though we’ve played the role of chefs. We showed people our recipe and said, “Look, we want to make this kind of Wii dish,” but our staff weren’t really sure what type of meal would result from our efforts in the kitchen.

They let Miyamoto taste their “recipe” from time to time, everytime they had significant development. “We were cooking and making him eat all the time. He was probably mortified!” Shimizu said.

So how did the recipe end up? Judging by the screenshots and the videos, the chefs at Nintendo managed to come up with the best Super Mario cuisine to date in the form of Super Mario Galaxy. Ready your spoons and forks, we’re going to chow down the main course on November 12!