Popular Mechanics grills Miyamoto

As you probably know from countless news stories and interviews this week (and last week) Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto was recently in New York doing a press tour and answering questions about his newest game - New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii. It seems like every Tom, Dick and Seth is hanging out with the man behind such hit franchises as Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, playing games, asking questions and getting Miyamoto’s odd little autograph.

In this latest interview Popular Mechanics talks to Miyamoto the origins of Mario, the mythological nature of Zelda and why blowing into your NES cartridges actually works. Thank god we don’t have to do that anymore. Here’s an interesting exchange about:

PM: A lot of your characters started out as villainous in earlier games, such as Bowser and Donkey Kong and Wario, and in later games they became more sympathetic and almost goofy. Is there a conscience effort to “de-villainize” evil characters in later games?

SM: One thing I’m not really good at is creating truly heroic characters or truly villainous characters, with the one exception being maybe the Zelda series, where I think we did a pretty good job of defining the roles in that series. I think we never really see anything all that serious come about in the Mario series, and then we have games that fall somewhere in between the two.

Yup, next thing you know Ganon will have his own racing game on the Wii. Be that as it may, you can check out the entire interview by visiting Popular Mechanics now:

Exclusive Interview With Nintendo Gaming Mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto

Popular Mechanics test drives Project Natal

Popular Mechanics takes Microsoft’s motion sensing control scheme for the Xbox 360, Project Natal, for a test drive and likes it apparently if you believe this article. In it Seth Porges gets a little too excited about the possibility of controlling his games controller free, testing out a racing game and a full-body Breakout-like game.

While Natal is still pretty interesting Microsoft needs to get past the gimmick phase and show the real power of this system with some key franchises that will get players excited. A racing game is a start but i’m really concerned that will see more silly little applications like a “full body Breakout-like games, than serious ones. Check out the article and the video at the link above and judge for yourselves.

Popular Mechanics Reviews iRacing

If you’re looking for a thorough, expert review of iRacing, than you probably won’t do better than within the virtual pages of Popular Mechanics.

For example, instead of using a standard home computer to test this online subscription based simulation racing game game, Popular Mechanics used a PC-connected custom-built chair rig with a huge monitor and an off-the-shelf Logitech racing wheel. After an initial test drive, Popular Mechanics then called in its senior auto editor Mike Allen to put the game through the paces. Mike is described as a “seasoned race-car driver with a notorious distaste for the fakery present in most racing games” so as you can imagine, the test was vigorous and real-world standards were applied.

But don’t take my word for it - you can check out the Popular Mechanics review of iRacing.com right here.