Iwata: I see. Uchida-san, how did you come up with the sound for the bubbles?

Uchida: We wanted it to feel different when you’re in a bubble, so we made a voice come from the Wii Remote. The first time I saw a bubble on the screen, it was drifting around as if it were saying “Lemme out!” so we had a voice say “Help me!” while a player is in a bubble. But later I learned you could also put yourself in a bubble. I thought having the Wii Remote say “Help me!” was a little strange for someone who wanted to stay in the bubble.

Full Interview Here

A portion of a Nintendo Life interview.

NL: A lot of our readers were curious about your stance on modern games. What are your thoughts on them? Particularly things like motion controls and such. Do you own a Wii?

SW: We do have a Wii. Let’s see, I haven’t played many of the Wii games, there’s the, you know, tennis and baseball but I haven’t tried to get good at any of the newer games. My son will play tennis or golf, and he’s into Mario Kart, he’ll do that online. For some reason I haven’t been drawn to the newer games. I don’t know if it’s a fear that I’ll get sucked into some world that I don’t want to be in [laughs]. You know, maybe if I play Halo I’ll get obsessed and ruin my life. But the time I played Gears of War, I was given an Xbox as a gift, and I was pretty much just sitting in the very first room where I couldn’t find where to go, so I’m not really into those games where you’re searching through doors, although I played Doom like ten years ago and ended up learning all the mazes and everything.

To me it’s not compelling enough to want to master those games. I can understand that those that are good at it, I can definitely respect their skill. It’s a different attraction I guess; I think those people wouldn’t necessarily like the classics enough to want to get good at those. They might appreciate them, but it’s almost like two different worlds in my opinion.

NL: Have you heard anything about that? Is there a script or something?

SW: Yeah, they’re working on a script. There’s been a couple drafts done and they still have to iron some things out. When they get a draft they like they’ll go to casting and then it could be within the next year and a half [after that] it comes out.

Full interview here

Bitmob interview with Nintendo’s Nate Bihldorff…

Bitmob: Why Samus? Relatively few Nintendo characters are made to be “real.” You don’t hear Link talking about Ganondorf or Mario wondering what Bowser is up to…yet you hear Samus talking about the Mother Brain, Ridley….

Nate Bihldorff: I don’t think it’s a matter of the folks at NCL [Nintendo Co., Ltd., the Japanese headquarters] going into a room, looking at a dartboard of all their major properties and saying, “That one! That’s the one we’re going to grow!”

It’s more that there’s always been in [Super Metroid director Yoshio] Sakamoto-san’s head a big story and a big background for Samus. You can take a look at some of the manga, which isn’t necessarily related to the games, but there’s clearly more story to Samus than has ever been shown in the games.

I think it’s very appropriate in this case. I think Samus, more than anyone else, is someone whose story we’ve always wondered about, whereas, for various reasons, you don’t really wonder about Mario’s past all that much. And with Link, there have been so many Links over the years, you can get lost looking at all those.

Bitmob: Was it difficult figuring out who should voice Samus?

NB: It was tough, certainly…but no tougher than with any of our other properties. We went through the same casting procedures like we usually do. We had a ton of auditions….

Bitmob: Who is the voice actress? Someone we should know?

NB: I don’t think she’s worked in video games before. Her name is Jessica Martin. She’s done a lot of dramatic work…a lot of stage work. She’s a local actress up in Seattle. She did an amazing job and was great in the studio.

After the game launches, we may make her available to you [media], but I don’t think we’re allowing any contact before that, just because we don’t want her dropping plot points….

Full interview here

Wiitalia: what about the lack of a multiplayer mode?

JV: I really wanted a multiplayer mode for the game, I had many ideas concerning it. One of my favourite weapon in a multiplayer FPS was the Type-1 sword in Halo, it was so satisfying… I would have loved to make that kind of game.

We didn’t leave multiplayer off because it couldn’t be done, I think it could have been done. We had not enough time or resources to make a multiplayer mode. The choice we had to make was to make either a good single-player or an average crappy single & multiplayer game, and the good games are always the right choice.

If we will have a chance to make a sequel I would love to work on a multiplayer mode.

Even though Red Steel was a sub-par game, I enjoyed the multiplayer. Even though I would have loved to see multiplayer in Red Steel 2, I can not really argue with the thinking of Mr. Vandenberghe.

Full Interview HERE

Dunaway on the appeal of Metroid: Other M…

“Well, you can’t get access to Samus and the Metroid franchise on the other platforms. And this experience isn’t about the graphics at all. It is a shooting game. But it is a much more emotional experience with story to it.”

Dunaway on putting Mario on Facebook…

“(Laughs). I don’t know. I think we will continue to save Mario for our own platforms. It’s one of the secret weapons we have. Mario and Zelda are intellectual property that is important to us and will only be seen on Nintendo platforms.”

Dunaway on Nintendo’s E3 line-up, what’s in store…

“We have enough to talk about. We have got such a strong line-up for the first half of the year. People are going to have to tune into E3. As [Nintendo chief executive Satoru] Iwata has already indicated, there are some things we can count on for E3: the new Zelda and the Vitality Sensor. We hope to have a good show.”

Dunaway on the possibility of another Wii price drop…

“Yes. Right now, we continue to see demand at very strong levels. It’s tough to find a Wii now. If we hit 100 stores in the area, we would find Wiis in only 20 percent of them today. That tremendous strength we had in December really wiped the pipeline clean. Our pipeline, the retailer pipeline. And so with that kind of demand, it doesn’t suggest the need for any pricing actions.”

A Ton More HERE

The latest in the ‘Iwata Asks’ series is live and goes in depth about all things WarioWare D.I.Y.  Check out the full interview for many insights into Nintendo’s development process for the game.

Iwata Asks – WarioWare D.I.Y.

Direct link here

Direct link here

Wired.com: You’ve announced major games for the first half of the year. Do you see the game industry moving toward a more year-long release schedule, in general?

Dunaway: One of the things that’s true for Nintendo is that we’re not driven by a calendar for our release dates. When the games are ready to go, when the quality is perfect, that’s when we release. We all benefit if we can keep a pretty steady pace, so the development teams have worked hard to make sure that we’ve got a full lineup this year. If you compare the first half of 2010 with the first half of 2009, it’s night and day. And from some of the things that Mr. Iwata has talked about, and that we will talk about at E3, like Zelda, you know that we’re going to have a good back half of the year, as well.

Wired.com: I think people were really interested to know, are they going to release Mario and Metroid and Zelda all in one year?

Dunaway: And you said we wouldn’t. You bet no, right?

Wired.com: I bet no. Are you going to hold me to that? Do I owe you a steak dinner?

Dunaway: I think you do.

Very interesting comments and not all too surprising given that both Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M will be out before the year is halfway over.  Nintendo has the whole back half of 2010 to fill and I am betting that Zelda Wii will be launching before year’s end.  What do you guys think?

Full interview here