The Japanese logo for the first Zelda game, The Hyrule Fantasy

Today is the 40th anniversary of Zelda 1!

Of all the Zelda titles, this is the one we know the MOST about; they've discussed it in interviews for years. Let's go down memory lane with some fun quotes

#Zelda
#TheLegendOfZeldaQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #TezukaQuote, #NakagoQuote, #KondoQuote

PEOPLE: - Satoru Iwata, age 49. Programmer on Balloon Fight, President of Nintendo. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer on Balloon Fight, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Director & Producer of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Iwata: HAL Laboratory worked on the [Famicom] version of Balloon Fight while… Nakago: We worked on the arcade version. … We wondered why the player's movements were smoother on the home version and asked Iwata-san for advice. Iwata: That's when I told Nakago-san everything I knew. One thing I recommended was that instead of calculating the character's position using integers, they should also calculate it using decimal points, thereby doubling the precision. In this way, calculating gravity, buoyancy, acceleration and deceleration all become more precise and the movements look smoother. … Nakago: … I remember Miyamoto-san complaining: “Why do you have to go to another company to find this stuff out?” [laughs]

Iwata on the time he gave programming advice to Nakago, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#BalloonFightQuote
#IwataQuote, #NakagoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/01d01475fc47...

PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Main Programmer on Excitebike, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Director of Excitebike, Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros. & The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Iwata: So your job was to port arcade games like Donkey Kong over to the Famicom? Nakago: That's right. Then around the time that job was coming to an end, someone I didn't know came up behind me and said: “You're Nakago-san, right?” And that turned out to be Miyamoto-san. Iwata: So even though you'd ported Donkey Kong across to the NES, you didn't know Miyamoto-san? [laughs] Nakago: I honestly didn't know anything about him! [laughs] At that time, I didn't even know that anyone by name of Miyamoto was working for the company. Then he came up to me and said: “We're going to be working on Excitebike together.”

Nakago on the first time he met Miyamoto, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#DonkeyKongQuote, #ExcitebikeQuote
#NakagoQuote, #IwataQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/01d01475fc47...

PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Producer and Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 68. Lead Programmer of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Takashi Tezuka, age 64. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., Director of The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Miyamoto: Though Nakago-san is a programmer, I invited him to planning meetings [for Super Mario Bros.] with us. Aside from the music, it was the three of us for the most part. We did anything and everything we could. Nakago: When working on the programming, I even brought in Miyamoto-san and the others to devise how to structure the game data. We've always been involved in all sorts of things. Miyamoto: … It was my job to present game ideas that can be conveyed to programmers, and even before Super Marlo Bros., Nakago-san would get mad at me. It felt like he was my editor or something, saying, “If you continue doing this, it’s never gonna get done!” [Laughs]

Nakago & Miyamoto on collaborating as director and programmer in the 80s, 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #NakagoQuote, #TezukaQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/29a41fe961fd...

PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. The Legend of Zelda (1986) Programmer. - Takashi Tezuka, age 49. Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda (1986). - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 57. Producer & Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda (1986). QUOTE: "Nakago: And this is the first land map for Zelda. Back then we had some long paper, and Tezuka-san and Miyamoto-san would sit side by side and draw together. You drew the stuff on the left, Tezuka-san, and the right side is Miyamoto-san’s. If you look closely, you can tell how marker was used to make small dots. These are rocks, and these are trees. And you can see Miyamoto-san’s personality. At first he’s making individual dots, but as he gets tired of it, toward the top, he just fills in a bunch of space! Aonuma: Yeah, the left and right sides do look different. Tezuka: They really are different somehow."

A small image of a black and white pencil drawing of the Zelda 1 map. It is remarkably close to how the final map ended up. You can tell that it was drawn in slightly different styles on the right vs the left side of the map.

It's the 39th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda!

Nakago on the first draft of Zelda 1's map, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#TheLegendofZeldaQuote
#NakagoQuote, #TezukaQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/fe5e8d856abc...

PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 48. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., co-director of The Legend of Zelda. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Director & Producer of of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Iwata: Now the two of you have lunch with Miyamoto-san on a more or less daily basis. I sometimes join you, which means that we've spent a lot of time together. But this is the first time we've ever spoken in this kind of formal setting. … You know, I always got the sense that you were suspicious that there was some kind of ulterior motive behind these interviews. [laughs] Tezuka: Well, I always thought it would be better to stay out of them. [laughs] Iwata: [laughs] Well, I asked you to join me for this interview because I felt that it was impossible to discuss the history of Mario without reference to the triangle formed by Miyamoto-san, Tezuka-san and Nakago-san."

Iwata on Nakago & Tezuka's relationship with Miyamoto , 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#TezukaQuote, #NakagoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote, #IwataQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...

PEOPLE: - Satoru Iwata, age 49. Producer for Kirby Super Star. President of Nintendo. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer of The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros., and other Zelda titles. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer for Kirby Super Star, Creator of Zelda and Mario. QUOTE: "Iwata: [Multiplayer] is one of the ideas that he returns to with every Mario game. It's a fair while ago now, but I once went to see Miyamoto-san to propose an idea for [Kirby Super Star (1996)]. He then set me a task to work on, saying: ‘We keep trying it every time with Mario but just can't seem to pull it off. Why don't we try having a multiplayer mode in Kirby?’ Nakago: So even though you'd gone to propose an idea to him, Miyamoto-san actually turned the tables and proposed one to you? [laughs] Iwata: That's right. It was this, which led to the director on Kirby, Sakurai-san, to come up with the idea of having a two-player helper system and including it in the game."

Iwata on Kirby and Miyamoto's long-held goal of multiplayer Mario, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#KirbySuperStarQuote, #MarioSeriesQuote
#IwataQuote, #NakagoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...

PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Nakago: That's right. Miyamoto-san said to me right at the start [of Super Mario Bros.’ development]: ‘Make it so that a single level lasts about one minute.’ But with a regular game, you could run across a single screen in about one second. Iwata: If it takes a second to run across the screen, and you want it to last for a minute, you're going to need sixty screens. Nakago: That's why I asked: ‘Are we really going to make this many screens?’ Miyamoto-san responded by saying: ‘We're going to have all sorts of things going on in between, so twenty screens should be enough for a single level.’ At that time, I couldn't grasp what Miyamoto-san meant. "

Nakago on Miyamoto's direction for the length of Super Mario Bros. levels, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#NakagoQuote, #IwataQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...