Historic Interview with Zelda 3: ALttP team

[Cosmonautical]

I think there's a lot of subtle and direct wisdom here that current developers, Nintendo included, could take note of:

GlitterBerri » The Men Who Made Zelda – Staff Interview

Miyamoto: These days, fantasy games with swords and magic are quite common. When we first started out, there wasn’t a market for that, so that’s where the game got its appeal. However, now that we’re doing a series, we’ve got no choice but to continue using swords and magic. But the more we do that, the more we’re reluctantly forced to go in a different direction than we were aiming for. I feel like there’s no challenge in swords and magic anymore.

Thanks for confirming that for me, Miyamoto. All the same, I'd prefer you'd kept your focus and ignored the competition a bit more. You guys already had a different flavor.

Miyamoto: It’s no good to have a constant stream of sidequests, but you can’t make a game without doing that. That’s why I didn’t want to have quests that told you to “Go give the medicine to the girl,” but rather for the players to think for themselves what they ought to bring to her. Early on, we planned to have more actions available like “Eat” and “Dance”, but we couldn’t deal with them all in the end.

Amen to that. I wish Aonuma could get this through his head.

[1-up Salesman]

Cool. Thanks for putting it up.