Dylan Cuthbert on working with Nintendo, calling Miyamoto's StarFox bluff, Nintendo prototypes and more
The following comments come from Dylan Cuthbert...
On his early days with Nintendo...
"I found it really eye-opening. I came from the English games industry which had no concept of game design whatsoever. The programmers made the games. I went to Nintendo and they had a dedicated director and assistant director on the team. There would be Miyamoto checking the game design, not a programmer. They had this way of making sure a title had all its elements in place across the span of the game. You'd have an ending that was just as thrilling as the opening of the game, which a lot of games didn't have, especially in Britain."
On Miyamoto saying StarFox 64 3D could be the last game in the series...
"He always says stuff like that. Eventually [there'll be another]. It's one of his characters. It'll make a re-appearance no matter what happens I think, though I can't speak for him obviously."
On his own ideas for the StarFox franchise...
"We always have ideas but it needs Nintendo to come and speak to us about it first. We can't actually decide anything ourselves."
On pitching ideas to Nintendo and their unused ideas...
"The problem with Nintendo is that they have so many internal staff that whatever idea you go and show them it's quite likely they've already developed a prototype for that kind of game internally. You're showing something they've already seen. It's weird. Several times in the past I've shown them stuff that I thought was totally new and original and they'll go away, come back and say 'actually we made this prototype last week' and it's the exact same game. But they never finish anything. The vast majority of stuff never makes it out. If you can work like that it's the best way to do it. Throw it all up against a wall and the thing that sticks is the thing you go with. We try and do the same thing with PixelJunk. We've had lots of ideas in the past that we just stopped. We'll find a more interesting idea and go with that instead."
Link
On his early days with Nintendo...
"I found it really eye-opening. I came from the English games industry which had no concept of game design whatsoever. The programmers made the games. I went to Nintendo and they had a dedicated director and assistant director on the team. There would be Miyamoto checking the game design, not a programmer. They had this way of making sure a title had all its elements in place across the span of the game. You'd have an ending that was just as thrilling as the opening of the game, which a lot of games didn't have, especially in Britain."
On Miyamoto saying StarFox 64 3D could be the last game in the series...
"He always says stuff like that. Eventually [there'll be another]. It's one of his characters. It'll make a re-appearance no matter what happens I think, though I can't speak for him obviously."
On his own ideas for the StarFox franchise...
"We always have ideas but it needs Nintendo to come and speak to us about it first. We can't actually decide anything ourselves."
On pitching ideas to Nintendo and their unused ideas...
"The problem with Nintendo is that they have so many internal staff that whatever idea you go and show them it's quite likely they've already developed a prototype for that kind of game internally. You're showing something they've already seen. It's weird. Several times in the past I've shown them stuff that I thought was totally new and original and they'll go away, come back and say 'actually we made this prototype last week' and it's the exact same game. But they never finish anything. The vast majority of stuff never makes it out. If you can work like that it's the best way to do it. Throw it all up against a wall and the thing that sticks is the thing you go with. We try and do the same thing with PixelJunk. We've had lots of ideas in the past that we just stopped. We'll find a more interesting idea and go with that instead."
Link
