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

Shigeru Miyamoto roundtable notes and Zelda

The big news coming out of the Shigeru Miyamoto  Roundtable Q&A session yesterday was that Nintendo is working on a new Zelda game for the Wii. Apparently it wasn’t quite ready to be shown at e3 this year, but Miyamoto hopes that it will be ready for E3. Kyle Orland, who attended the event, gives us a few more details:

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Sonic and Mario’s Frosty Face-Off

We all knew that Sonic and Mario would square off again because the first collaboration between Nintendo and Sega did so well at retail - in fact it was one of the company’s top grossing games in 2008, selling 10 million copies worldwide. So news that Sonic and Mario will attend the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada is no big shock. Sega says that the new game will be ready in late 2009 for the Wii and DS.

The game, which will be developed by Sega of Japan under the whip of taskmaster Shigeru Miyamoto, will pit Sonic, Mario and all their friends in various Winter Olympic sports including Alpine Skiing and Speed Skating using each system’s specific controls. Sega says that each platform will also have exclusive modes and gameplay features, which will be announced at a later date, no doubt.

More details when we have them.

Miyamoto: ‘We’re Making Pikmin’

Of course Shigeru Miyamoto plans to make a Pikmin sequel. He is probably also working on a new Zelda game too. Go figure. However, the rabidity of the Nintendo fan base on the internet is such that when Miyimoto speaks people listen. Answering a question during a developer Roundtable Miyamoto said that Nintendo is working on a Pikmin game. “We’re making Pikmin,” he said in response to a question about the popular strategy franchise. So there you go, but should this surprise anyone?