Miyamoto pledges more Mario
“From now on every year I will still work on it”
Veteran Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto has pledged to continue what he described as his "lifework" on the Mario series of games. Speaking at a press conference held on the day of Super Mario Sunshine's Japanese release, he told assembled journalists "when we announced Mario 128, we were already working on Super Mario Sunshine. At that time, the basic actions were completed; however in the eyes of a Mario player, it was not enough. To go beyond Mario meant using actions to discover new things. Understanding that and retaining elements from Mario 64 was how we passed this year." Miyamoto-san also spoke of his confidence in the N64 and GameCube controllers. "I think we may have raised the bar of 3D action games again," he added. "It is apparent that it is quite difficult to jump around in a 3D environment. By hovering, the player can go here and there freely. It is a good fit with 3D jumping games." Sceptics would do well to wait until October 4th before rebuking his comments, too. You'd be surprised how much harder Sunshine is than the relatively simple Mario 64, and in our estimation there are a good 50 hours or more to this adventure. Apart from collecting the game's 120 shines, players will be expected to keep an eye out for the often incredibly difficult to find blue coins. "I am 50 years old this year. The Mario series has pretty much become my lifework," Miyamoto-san's statement concludes. "From now on every year I will still work on it; I hope more people will play it." Good news indeed - hopefully one day he'll perfect the camera behaviour, too! Related Feature - Super Mario Sunshine screenshots