Ask Iwata by Satoru Iwata

Author:Satoru Iwata
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: VIZ Media
Published: 2021-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Two ways of

resuscitating EarthBound

When development for EarthBound (released as Mother 2 in Japan) was in shambles, I was called in to save the sinking ship. At the time, I was both the president of HAL Laboratory and one of its programmers.

I tended to agree that the game was not heading in the right direction. So I came right out and said to Shigesato Itoi, “The way it is, I don’t think it will work.”

And I added this: “If you’d like, I’d be happy to lend a hand, but I see two ways of going forward.”

From there, I said something that has become the stuff of legend among gaming fans:

“Working with what we have, it would take two years to fix things up. If you don’t mind starting from scratch, we could be done in half a year.”

In the end, we wound up remaking the game from scratch, but I could have gone about things either way, and I think the game would have worked out regardless.

If I had been asked to determine the best course of action, I think I probably would have said, “Let’s start from scratch.” Still, I had been called in after the fact to get the project on its feet again, and I was ready to go with the flow.

How could I show up out of nowhere and tell all these people who had worked so hard, “All right! We’re starting over?” Everyone would have dragged their feet. When the mood in the workplace sours, it can make a good thing fall apart. Therefore, I determined the right thing to do was to present the two possible options and let those involved make the decision.

From start to finish, EarthBound was in development for almost five whole years—the first four years without me, and the last year with me helping out.

I may have reorganized the game from scratch, but the constituent elements had come into being during the four years when I wasn’t around. The graphics were done, and the story and soundtrack were essentially complete. So the materials were basically in place.

The first time I visited the team, everyone’s files were more or less in order. I said to them, “I’ll play around with what we have,” and I went back with the project in its current state. About a month later, I showed Shigesato Itoi and his team a revised version, with the scrolling map and everything.

Were they surprised! In fact, they were all freaking out so much I honestly felt confused. I was like, “Guys, I barely did anything.” That’s how bogged down the project was.

Approximately six months later, EarthBound had finally come together, to the point where we could actually play around with it. From there, we made another pass to polish things, spending six more months working out the kinks, until it was finally complete.

It may appear as if everything happened in the one year I was involved, but we were only able to get EarthBound that far in a year’s time because of the four years of work that had already been completed.

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