Metroid Creator’s Early 8-Bit Days at Nintendo

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SAN FRANCISCO — Most people associate Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto with Nintendo’s classic 8-bit games, but Yoshio Sakamoto’s retro cred stretches back almost as far.
Sakamoto joined the company in 1982 and was responsible for several *** hits on the Nintendo Entertainment System, from Wrecking Crew to Balloon Fight. As a producer at Nintendo, he’s also in charge of games like Wario Ware: D.I.Y.. At Game Developers Conference last month, he spoke about his long history at Nintendo.
As one of the creators of Metroid, Sakamoto’s next big game is Other M, the latest Wii version of the outer space adventure game series. But since we’d already talked about that game at last year’s E3, I wanted our interview at GDC to concentrate on Sakamoto’s early history.
Wired.com: What year did you join Nintendo, and what was the first thing you worked on?
Yoshio Sakamoto: I entered the company in 1982, which seems like quite a long time ago now. At that time, we were mostly making Game & Watch products. But this was also the first time that they had begun to recruit new employees from art programs at universities. So I was working on the multiscreen version of the Game & Watch Donkey Kong game. If you remember the barrels and the cranes in that game, I made those. That was the first thing I ever created that appeared in a game.

Wired.com: What were the challenges in drawing for LCD games?
Sakamoto: When we were working on the Game & Watch, everything was in black and white. There were two things we really had to pay attention to. The first was line thickness. We couldn’t go below a certain thickness and still have good visibility. Another one was, whenever you have joined segments on a liquid crystal display that appear and disappear, you have to be very careful about the gap that you leave between the two. It would have to be at least a certain amount of space.
Wired.com: Very shortly after that, the Famicom came out. So they put you to work making art for those games?
Sakamoto: Even before the Famicom era, I was involved with a couple of arcade projects. I’m not sure if you remember Donkey Kong Jr., but at that time, Mr. Miyamoto was working on some of the pixel art for the game and needed some help. So he actually pulled me from another department of the company entirely. He spoke to my boss, and I was available, so that was another big debut for me.
It’s true that creating pixel art was my first experience in the videogame industry, but one of the stranger experiences I had was an interaction with Gunpei Yokoi, where he said, “If you can make pixel art, you can make a game.” So when Famicom came out, he pulled me and I began to direct titles for that.
Wired.com: What was Yokoi like as a boss, as a game designer? How would you contrast him with Miyamoto?
Sakamoto: I think that earlier episode, where he said “If you can make pixel art, you can make a game,” was a pretty good illustration. He was the one that was always really pushing us to come up with new and creative ideas. The way that he would constrain us was to say, “All you have to do is come up with a great idea, and give it to a designer. In fact, I don’t want you guys to learn any of the technical stuff. It’s just going to hold you back.”
Whereas Mr. Miyamoto would say, you have to learn the technical side to be able to give 100 percent to the designer. But Mr. Miyamoto was never my boss, so it’s hard to compare them on that scale.
Wired.com: When Yokoi said to you, “If you can draw pixel art, you can make a game,” what did you think at that moment?
Sakamoto: I remember thinking, “Well, if my boss says so, then maybe I can. But I certainly know that I have to try.” I was also very interested, so I worked hard at it.
Wired.com: What was the first game you designed?
Sakamoto: Wrecking Crew, a game where you break walls. There was the home console version, as well as an arcade cabinet that actually had a head-to-head setup. I don’t know if it actually came out in the United States or not.
Wired.com: I think it did. At that point, you were using Mario and Luigi as characters. Did you have to go and ask Miyamoto if it was OK to use them?
Sakamoto: Originally, the Wrecking Crew character wasn’t Mario. He was just a guy with no moustache, wearing overalls. I was in a different department, but Mr. Miyamoto came along and said, “You know, you should probably just use Mario. He’s really easy to draw, and people recognize him.” So it was actually Mr. Miyamoto who pushed that.
Wired.com: The design of Wrecking Crew was more complicated than a straightforward platform game. What was your inspiration there?
Sakamoto: A lot of things. I wanted to make a game where you broke walls and got sort of a “puzzle” feel out of that. And nothing really I could put my finger on as far as a specific influence or inspiration, I was just imagining that type of puzzle action game.
Wired.com: Between Wrecking Crew and Metroid, what did you work on?
Sakamoto: Balloon Fight. And then there was another game that only came out in the U.S., called Gumshoe.
Wired.com: Gumshoe was kind of weird. How did you come up with that one?
Sakamoto: Well, I remember that Mr. Yokoi had come to me saying that he really wanted to design a light gun game. And I had this initial idea of making a ball jump when you shot it with a gun. And so he asked me to flesh that out. I created something, and tried it, and it turned out to not really be that much fun. But we decided that if you could keep shooting things as the main control scheme, this could be perhaps something very interesting.
So we had this old man who was running down the street, shooting things like a bottle, and it’s not so much that you’re shooting it, but you’re telling it, “Jump!” This had changed quite a bit from Mr. Yokoi’s original idea, but it had turned into something very interesting.
At the same time, I didn’t even have permission from him, but I decided to make the character look a little like Mr. Yokoi. When he first saw it, he was very surprised: “What have you done here?”
Wired.com: You said you were inspired by the Italian filmmaker Dario Argento — is that inspiration was why so many red, yellow and orange colors were used in the design of Samus? Or, are we just taking it way too far?
Sakamoto: You’re overthinking it. Sorry!
Wired.com: What are some specific ways, though, that these films that you mentioned inspired you in terms of creating games?
Sakamoto: One of the things that I really like so much about Argento’s films is his use of music and quick cuts to create this amazing contrast from one scene to the next. The music would come along, swelling, and then a big cut with a wonderful surprise for the audience. And he was very good at using those sound effects to change the mood immediately, on a dime.
All of this was very stimulating as I was creating these formulative creative ideas. I thought that this music was perfect for a scary environment, and that it must be possible to include that sort of feeling in a game through music. I think some of that came out when I was working on Famicom Detective Club.
As for Metroid: Other M, we have professional musicians who are much more sophisticated about these sorts of things than I am. But I discussed with them a lot about creating those dramatic moments, and we have found ways to use dramatic camera angles and other tricks that probably do share some inspiration that I originally got from Argento’s films.
Top image: Jon Snyder/Wired.com.