It’s finally done. (laughs)

Yes! (laughs) Thank you!

Today is like “The Former President Asks.”¹

It sure is! (laughs)

You went to Nintendo after I had been at HAL Laboratory² for about four years, so it’s been about 11 years now.

That’s right. Shall we start by discussing those 11 years, Kawase-san?

Okay. I’m Shigefumi Kawase, this game’s producer. First, let me say thank you to everyone who’s been waiting. We’ve finally made another Kirby game for a home console.

It’s been 11 years since the last completely new game in the main Kirby series.

Yes. To begin by introducing myself, I was originally a designer on a team called Jack’s Beanstalk³ and worked on games like Pokémon Snap⁴. Now I’m a producer in Tokyo.

As for that 11-year gap between home console Kirby games, right after Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards⁵, we immediately began working on a new Kirby game. That was during the time of the Nintendo GameCube system, and screenshots were shown at E3.⁶

“Were shown”? You sound so detached about it! (laughs)

Oh, believe me, I’m not! (laughs) But after that, it never got updated, and I’m sure some people would wonder and ask, “What ever happened to that game?” To some, it had become an object of mystery.

The release date went unannounced forever.

Yes. Actually, there are three lost Kirby games. The first one is the one that pictures were shown of at E3. It was a Kirby game based on the concept of four-person simultaneous gameplay. That was when I learned how difficult it is to make a game that is both multiplayer and single player.

If it had come out, it would have been soon after Kirby Air Ride.⁷

That’s right. The second one was an experiment with extremely challenging gameplay that placed Kirby in 3D space and allowed players to move around freely. But unfortunately, we weren’t able to achieve the quality we hoped for and it never reached completion.



The third one involved an animated Kirby, sort of like a pop-up book. We renewed the Copy Abilities, and tried to power it up. We spent 11 years… making and abandoning these three games.

Now I’d like to talk to those of you who played that role.

All right. I’m Hiroaki Nakano, who worked on the programming. I created the various systems necessary for making Kirby move. And as a leader, I coordinated all the programmers.

The character Kirby has lots of moves, like inhaling things and copying abilities, so the basic system of the programming tends to get complicated. Did you resent the specifications?

The specifications were complicated, but we didn’t resent them. (laughs) The programmers had to wrack their brains, but there weren’t any unexpected “upendings of the tea table”, and the programmers worked really hard, so we were able to see it through to the end. When it comes to programming, four-person simultaneous gameplay was quite a challenge.

More than the difficulties entailed in programming the Kirby character, you had to make it playable by up to four people.

Yes.

Previously, when we made Kirby’s Adventure¹⁰, we made the Copy Abilities system for the first time, but when I consulted Suga-san¹¹, who was the main programmer and leader, he said something I will remember my whole life. He said, “Are we… really going to do this?”

(laughs)

Viewed from development in the days of the Famicom system, I think he meant that the amount of work involved would equal that of several games, and those difficulties in programming have continued to this day as a kind of Kirby tradition. And this time it’s multiplayer.

Yes. The Copy Abilities system was hard, but several of the other programmers and I were involved in the three lost Kirby games, so we had some idea of how to make it. But the selling points this time - that four people can play Kirby, with each one jumping in and out at any time - are new, so we had to do tons of stuff.

As a programmer, it’s a whole slew of bad circumstances.

Yes. Earlier, I mentioned that there weren’t any unexpected upendings of the tea table, but at first nobody mentioned simultaneous four-person gameplay.

As a programmer, I had my head in my hands (laughs), but it makes sense that the players would want to play simultaneously with their friends.

To be honest, I thought it would be difficult to have everyone playing as Kirby, inhaling and copying.

If the programmers had said it was impossible, I would have given up, but Nakano-san thought for a moment and said, casually, “It can be done!” Just like you once said, Iwata-san! (laughs)

The legend of the programmers who never say no continues. (laughs)

Yes. (laughs) I’m relieved that in the end we made it so four players can enjoy playing Kirby.

All right, Kamitake-san?

Okay. I’m Tadashi Kamitake, design leader. The first time I worked on a Kirby game was as a designer for Kirby Super Star Ultra for the Nintendo DS system. I mostly managed schedules and supervised design.

When you saw the output from the three games that never made it out the door, did you get weak in the knees?

To be honest, yes! And I wasn’t the only one. Lots of people did.

Yes, I got that impression that, at first, everyone was a bit uneasy.

I think we were able to get over that because so many of the members of the team, in addition to Nakano-san and Kamitake-san, were relatively young. The power of youth was important in seeing us through smoothly this time.

That’s right. It’s too bad that the third attempt at a new Kirby game didn’t come together, but this time we were confident we could do it!

Being young is incredible! (laughs)

(laughs)

It truly is.

But the team also had veterans. In some ways, they would be the ones who best know the Kirby tradition.

That’s right. At first, a lot of people were worried. But we went to Tokyo to talk with you once, and you had prepared an opportunity for me to talk with them.

Yes. When the project kicked off, I hosted a round table of sorts. Veterans who had worked on the series in the past were there and we got a feel for where we all stood.

I noticed they were worried about the same things we were and that they wanted to go in the same direction. Thanks to that discussion, we were able to establish the past games as a foundation and proceed with overcoming each thing we were worried about.

Partway along, it seemed like you suddenly sped up. Kumazaki-san, about when did you sense that?

About October of last year. We had reached a point where I thought, “This’ll work!” and was able to face everyone and explain what kind of content to shoot for, and the size of the team grew.

You could assert to the team that if you fleshed it out, it would become a product.

Yes. We tried something interesting to track progress. We made an in-house website for the project team. There were pages for showing, at a glance, the current state of the team’s progress by posting screenshots as a history of development, reporting in a blog format on the state of progress, and putting up specifications you were thinking about or art by the designers.

A development diary.

That’s right. One reason we did that was, because of the hard experiences in the past with the three incomplete Kirby games, we wanted to be able to tell visually what stage we were at. We updated it without missing a single day after the project started. That way, the whole team could say, “Oh, it’s really coming together!” It was a way for the whole team to get excited about the game’s progress.

It’s a visualisation technique. It’s important to set a clear goal and make it easy to understand where you are at any time. It must have been like a car GPS navigation system.

Exactly. I talk a lot, and I have an enthusiastic and persistent personality (laughs), so I never ceased stressing the greatness of this game to the team. I wanted everyone to think, “It’ll be all right if we leave it to Kumazaki.”

Nakano-san, when did you realise you could leave it to Kumazaki-san?

From the beginning. When I saw the proposal, I simply thought, “I want to play that kind of Kirby game!” I was like (pumping his fist), “Let’s give it everything we’ve got!” (laughs)

I think we were able to do it because of this kind of encouragement on the team.

Kawase-san, as you watched from the sidelines, at what stage did it seem like they had hit on a trajectory?

This is an important point. Making Kirby’s movement feel right, thanks to previously existing resources, came together at a fairly early stage.

Oh, okay. Something else Miyamoto-san says, is “A game gets better the second time you make it.” I feel like the previous games live on in this one. The third lost game was painfully close to completion, so I didn’t want it to end there. This time, the fourth time, the structure has changed, but the third game’s output is at work in it.

Thank you for waiting, Yamagami-san.

No, not at all. (laughs)

Over the last 11 years, this is the first Kirby game you have worked on. Could you tell us what you thought when you and Hattori-san became involved with the project and what you thought you would tell the team in order to complete it?

Sure. When first approached about it, I couldn’t understand why the three previous games had been cancelled. I thought if I could unravel that mystery, I would be able to come up with a measure against it.

But looking at each of the games, they were all fairly complete. Even if I gathered info on why they got cancelled, I couldn’t quite grasp the reason. So I stopped looking for the reason and decided to work with the parts that already existed. Then I tapped Hattori-san, who’s good at lining up parts.

Then Hattori-san came on board.

That’s right. And then I added (Kazuhiro) Yoshikawa-san¹², who’s good at action games, and paired the two. When development began, since the previous three attempts had been cancelled, the three of us were very thorough about trying to convey to HAL Laboratory exactly what we had in mind.

Above all, we wanted a product that would, without fail, go on sale. Meetings began about March last year, and at that time we were very clear, saying, “We’re going to put it on the market in August or September next year. It’s already decided, so we have to complete it.”

(laughs)

Yamagami-san, you were a prophet.

That’s right. Instead of giving them the big concept early on, at first we said, “Make a single-player game.” We knew we definitely wanted a game for four players, but we thought laying it all on them at once would be too much of a burden, so we had them focus on a single-player game at first, and then gradually introduced the multiplayer element.

Then, we tried to express ourselves as best we could with regard to the specs that were done, saying, “We’ve come this far,” and, “Considering the stage we’re at, it’s looking good.”

Like constantly mentioning how much distance is left in a marathon.

Exactly. We were thorough about conveying our feeling as clearly as possible that it was going well. We wanted them to feel how complete it was.

All right, Hattori-san. You weren’t working on this game the whole time, so how did it feel all of a sudden when they handed you a bunch of parts and made the unreasonable demand that you do something with them?

I started under banks of threatening clouds. I was hearing from everyone at the company how three games had ended incomplete and nothing had been finished for over ten years, so I felt… threatened. (laughs)

(laughs)

I was a little scared at first. I thought, “I’ll pull an all-nighter with everyone to get myself fired up!” But once I got started, I’d never worked on a project before that I could just leave to the developers with such assurance.

Wow. That’s a compliment. (laughs)

Oh, thank you! (laughs)

I was confident from the first meetings that it would be all right. I thought, “This’ll definitely get finished. There’s no way it won’t.”

You were all under Yamagami-san’s influence. (laughs)

Oh, I suppose so. (laughs) But I really couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t. And that wasn’t just a logical conclusion, it was because of the team’s exuberance. I mean, after three failures, their eyes were ablaze!

(laughing loudly)

Yes, yes, they were! (laughs)

Yes, the fourth time, you feel the past as a weight and lose motivation. Just when you were thinking that, a team of people overflowing with love for Kirby, with eyes ablaze, tackled their work fast and furiously.

Yes! They showed us all kinds of things, saying, “Isn’t this awesome?!” (laughs) So I was dead certain from the very beginning that they would complete it. To illustrate, the only two requests we had to make were that they keep the Super Abilities and allow four players to all play Kirby at the same time.

Why did you request those two things?

Because we were certain so early on that they wouldn’t have any problem completing everything else. The basic components of a Kirby game had built up over the past 11 years, so we could really feel confident in leaving it to them.

Here’s one little episode from early in development. Talking with Hattori-san on the train on the way to HAL Laboratory, I said we should raise the issue of making it so all four players could use Kirby, but Hattori-san said that would be too much too suddenly, so we should just suggest each player controlling a different character. The idea was that if the game turned out to be fun, they would want to make it so all four could play Kirby. So at first, we kept the idea of all four players playing Kirby under our hats.

You talked about that on the four hour trip there.

Yes. Then, once development had made some progress and we brought up the idea of all four players playing Kirby, they were like, “We were talking about how we’d like to do that!” Like Hattori-san mentioned earlier, everyone on the team was exuberant, so we waited until they naturally wanted to do it themselves.

Everyone wants to play as Kirby.

If all four players couldn’t play as Kirby, then when brothers played together, the little brother would never get to play Kirby. The older brother would always take him.

Like, “I want to inhale enemies, too!” (laughs)

That’s right. Inhaling and spitting each other out and copying each other’s abilities are things the other characters can’t do.

That’s what’s fun about the game. Competition rather than cooperation gets people fired up.

Little scuffles within a broader context of cooperation is classic. Why did you request the Super Abilities?

Because they look so awesome! (laughs) Those scenes look so great that I wanted to put them in the ads. How fun they are comes across just by looking at them. But they’re powerful abilities that change the nature of the game, so we asked HAL Laboratory to consider toning them down a little, saying, “Just as an effect is fine, so could you put them in for fun?”

With regard to the Super Abilities, they weren’t in the first proposal that I submitted. The Super Abilities were in the specs for the third lost game, so we had done every experiment we could think of at the time, but it didn’t come together. In the end, we included them, but at first I was scared to try.

Those are really hard for designers. The cost of creating them is incredibly high.

Yes. You can do anything using a Super Ability. You can destroy landforms, and if there’s something huge, you can burn it up. Ideas were coming to us right and left, but actually implementing them was hard.

Am I correct in thinking that each ability is customised especially for each scene?

Yes. You can use them on any stage, but there are special stages on which you can make extra use of the Super Abilities. We cut down on the frequency and types, focused on power and surprise, and took care not to destroy the overall game’s “Kirby atmosphere” and tempo.

It’s great the way you’re on the edge of your seat wondering what will show up next.

Yes. Action on this large scale doesn’t exist earlier in the series, so I think in the end there’s a lot of merit in going as far as we did to generate surprise.

From what I can tell based on what I’ve played, when I’m playing and use a Super Ability, it feels like you have truly been considerate, and I’m happy.

It’s an effect to raise up Kirby as if to say, “He’s a hero!” (laughs) And by the way, toward the end, we prepared something challenging even for Super Abilities, so look forward to it!

Hattori-san, how much had you played the Kirby series before?

I had played the first Kirby’s Dream Land¹³, Kirby’s Adventure, and Kirby Super Star Ultra. Those are the three in the main series that I had played.

When you came to work on this project, what did you think was the essence of Kirby?

It’s difficult to say. I listened to a lot of people, but everybody says something different.

I know. They’re as different as they are for The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. But everyone thinks their idea of the essence of Kirby is the right one! (laughs)

They feel rather strongly about it.

I feel like Kirby contains a lot. After all, he can inhale just about anything, so anything fits! (laughs)

I agree! His appearance and abilities are ever-changing, which should be his greatest attribute, but he doesn’t need to transform and can cruise along just fleeing his enemies. That flexibility is a part of Kirby. I think “Anything is possible,” sums up Kirby.

I think that whatever we add or subtract, Kirby is Kirby, so I don’t insist on any one particular thing. What each person thinks is probably right, so I think that the essence of Kirby is that which is not determined, but at the same time doesn’t budge.

How about you Kawase-san?

In games like Kirby’s Dream Course¹⁴, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble¹⁵ and Kirby Mass Attack¹⁶, Kirby can do anything depending on the game’s materials. So I think the essence of Kirby is the player being able to turn at any time into whatever form he or she wishes.

Kumazaki-san?

At first glance, it has mass appeal and casts a broad net, but you can enjoy feverous action. A lot of a Kirby game’s appeal is in its cute and amusing appearance, but the action is surprising, the setting deep and the developments thrilling.

I think the essence of Kirby lies in its broad appeal and the way both adults and children can enjoy its depth. When we make a game, we’re careful to ease players in during the first half and suddenly increase the tension in the second half.

Nakano-san?

This isn’t a very “developerly” way to put it, but for me, Kirby is about super excitement! That was my impression as a child playing Kirby. It surprised you and stimulated your imagination, so you thought “What’s this?!” and “Kirby can do that too?!” As you’re playing, you grow elated. To me, that is the essence of Kirby.

Yes, just like you said, that comment isn’t very “developerly”. (laughs)

(laughs)

What do you think, Kamitake-san?

Like Hattori-san, I think Kirby is about anything being possible. There are easier gameplay elements for small children and plenty of fun elements for hardcore gamers like me.

Since people who can play comparatively challenging games can also enjoy reaching the goal rather easily in a Kirby game, there must be an element that allows players the freedom to play a variety of ways at their own skill level.

Yes. There are many ways to clear one map. The developers imagine one particular solution, but we have a good time on the team when someone says, “Did you know there’s this way, too?” Another characteristic is the large variety of Copy Abilities.

How did it look to you, Yamagami-san?

About 15 years ago, I worked on Kirby’s Block Ball¹⁷, but at first HAL Laboratory said it wasn’t like Kirby. In the end, we spent about half a year on a major overhaul. They gave me thorough instruction on every aspect of Kirby’s movement.

Yes, I remember.

That was when I learned the importance of paying thorough attention to each single movement when working on a popular character. So this time, as I watched it coming together, I thought that, while anything is possible, they were portraying Kirby’s movement precisely, and the balance between that disciplined creativity and high degree of freedom in gameplay is the essence of Kirby.

Their love for Kirby truly is deep. Something surprising happened during a meeting once. Kumazaki-san said, “I can’t wait for the weekend.” I thought that was because the work was so hard, but on the contrary, it was because on the weekend he was going to put in specs that he liked.

Huh?! (laughs)

It’s true! Throughout the week, I was mostly supervising and couldn’t work on whatever I wanted.

You were busy each day with your supervisory responsibilities, so you couldn’t think of new game elements.

That’s right. But on weekends, fewer team members were around, so I could make time for myself to think up new specs. The programmer who worked with me on the last boss for Kirby: Power Paintbrush is often at the company over the weekend, and I would say, “Try making something like this,” and he would do it right there before my eyes. Knowing that programmer was there, I would gladly head to work on weekends.

So when the new week began, you must have been surprised.

Well… it had become normal.

Oh, so you weren’t surprised? (laughs)

We were like, “I guess we can put that in, too.” (laughs)

(laughs loudly)

There’d be elements I never remembered making, so I’d ask, “How did you make that?” He was assembling elements from what already existed.

Do you hear what the programming leader and design leader are saying? (laughs)

Ah, well. (laughs) The degree of completion was so high that it allowed for that. One good example is Kirby’s Super Inhale. He doesn’t just inhale big enemies or multiple objects, but also co-players, and then spits them out. That programmer I mentioned suggested that. I thought it was a fairly dangerous idea, but it was already done when he said, “I thought of this, so how about it?”

Oh!

We have a lot of programmers and designers like that. I’d go to the company on the weekend, and bunches of them would be there. We’d throw ourselves into making things and had a great time developing the game. I looked forward to big vacation times like Golden Week and Obon the most, because then I could concentrate on work! (laughs)

They worked like it was a weekend pastime!

Yes, for fun! (laughs)

I’ve worked on a lot of development projects, but this was the first time I had to say, “Please, don’t overwork yourselves!” You could say I was like a mother watching over them.

They awakened your maternal instincts! (laughs)

So what is the product’s selling point?

The biggest one is four-person simultaneous gameplay and the way players can join or leave at any moment. Four-person simultaneous play was part of the first of the three lost Kirby games, and this time we finally did it.

“Multiple players in a side-scroller” is something Miyamoto-san has wanted to do for a long time. We had tried it multiple times with Mario and Luigi, like in Mario Bros.¹⁸ We finally achieved four players for Mario with New Super Mario Bros. Wii¹⁹, and now after 11 years of twists and turns, it has come true for Kirby.

Yes. I love Mario, but I wanted to do something a little different from New Super Mario Bros. Wii. With it, you return to the World Map and set up the Wii Remote controller to increase players. The specs are attractive and it’s highly stable, but I wondered if we couldn’t do something more drastic and used the Helper system in Kirby Super Star Ultra as a reference.

You press Select and a Helper appears for an ability you have inhaled. That Helper system stems from a suggestion Miyamoto-san made once when (Masahiro) Sakurai-san²⁰ and I went to Kyoto for a meeting.

That’s right. I thought it was amazing. Allowing new players to join and leave anytime was quite difficult, but as long as you have the Wii Remote, anyone can join in a flash. It’s revolutionary and resulted in game developments that allow players to enjoy aggressive gameplay.

How did you determine game difficulty?

As Yamagami-san said, we focused on the single-player mode first, but from that time on, we actually tried to include devices and actions with four players in mind and made scenarios throughout that were a little more difficult than usual. That way, we thought when players ran into trouble, they could say, “Hey, help me out!” So in the latter half, the game gets a little more difficult than in previous games in the series. And since it’s multiplayer, we wanted to put in more riotous scenes and prepared a way for the characters to carry items.

What are those?

They’re new items that Kirby can carry around once he touches them. It’s a system like in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, but it’s the first time in the series that, unlike Copy Abilities, you carry around special items and perform actions.

I suppose I don’t remember Kirby ever carrying items around.

That’s right. We drew upon elements you might see in a variety television show, like cannon balls coming out one after the other from a cannon you’re holding, or bombs swelling and blowing up. You’re like, “I’ll pass!” or “I don’t need that!” or “Bring me that!” The carry items feature is a new element that can be fully enjoyed alone, but they’re even more fun in multiplayer mode.

Usually, your attacks won’t damage the other players, but the attack determinations are different for items that you carry. They’re set to include the other players, so anything can happen!

Does that change multiplayer gameplay?

Yes, it changed a lot. You can fight over the items. The player who has a copy ability will tend to become the hero, but even among players who don’t have that ability, once someone gets an item, the pace of the game changes considerably.

That setup is similar to items in the Super Smash Bros. series²¹. It really is amazingly well done. The programmers had been told, “First, make a single-player game,” then it was “Actually, we had something more in mind,” and in the end the programmers were thinking, “We want to make four Kirbys possible!” Is it mere chance that they were on exactly the same wavelength?

Um, I should use this chance to apologise for something. We definitely wanted to make a four-player game. But at first, you said we should start by making a single-player game. So, rather early on, we secretly agreed with HAL Laboratory to eventually make it a multiplayer game.

In other words, we shared a desire the whole time to expand it for four players. We prepared for the day when we wouldn’t need to worry any more about it as a single-player game and could tackle multiplayer gameplay. That’s why it went so smoothly once we started seriously talking about four players.

So no tea table got upended. Instead, you thought, “Just what we were waiting for!”

I think so.

Usually, when the tea table gets upended, you’re thinking, “Oh no!” But it didn’t even phase you. (laughs)

We were more like, “All right, we finally got the green light.”

I imagine there were all kinds of difficulties in making a multiplayer game in which players can join or quit at any time. How did you conquer those?

That’s right. There were a lot. A character who came in would suddenly disappear from the screen, or be inhaled and spat out by another character only to then be nowhere to be found.

They were disappearing from the screen a lot! (laughs)

At first, there were nothing but unexpected problems, but then we began to understand what kinds of situations were dangerous. I watched the programmers from a distance, and just when I thought they had a grasp of that, they quickly resolved it.

All of a sudden? (laughs)

Really?! (laughs)

Yes. (laughs) I glanced over and four developers were having a good time playing it in front of the programmer’s television. (laughs)

Level design is crucial for this kind of game. It’s hard to design in consideration of both single-player and multiplayer modes. How did you overcome that?

We worked out something special for that. We established a workflow from the level designers making a map to me checking it. The level designers were in the next booth, so as soon as they made something, I would think it over with them and convey the necessary adjustments.

How many level designers were there?

Quite a few lent support, but only one made most of the maps. Since there was only one, his know-how built up. Watching from the side and talking with him as he went was much faster than simply supervising his work.

Because you could give feedback more often. Did you devise anything special for balancing both single-player and multiplayer gameplay?

To be honest, there’s something I wish we had handled better. Once we started developing for four players, we found all these places that couldn’t be cleared on each other’s backs. There were lots of stages that couldn’t be played the way we had imagined with four or three players.

We didn’t do anything special, but just adjusted the player-characters and maps until each place was also fun for multiple players. And by reworking the map designs again and again, we raised the degree of completion.

If the programmers had been able to raise problem areas faster as we went along, that burden could have been lightened.

The level designers in particular struggled with elements like four-person gameplay and Super Abilities. About once every six weeks, there was an occasion for making a progress report to Nintendo. Each time, we set the goal of completing it one level at a time.

That resembles something I did when making Kirby’s Dream Course. Before I left meetings with Miyamoto-san, I would say, “We’ll do such-and-such by next time.”

Yes, that’s exactly it. We proceeded simultaneously with correcting places pointed out in meetings and moving ahead with goals for next time, so the latter half was incredibly difficult, and after everyone finally went home at night, I would confer with the level designers and draw up new maps. Nonetheless, that time was really enjoyable! (laughs)

And when dawn breaks, you can see Mt. Fuji in all its glory.

Yes! (laughs) I was lucky to have had so many team members who would stick with me through such gruelling times!

Lastly, I would like each of you to say something to the fans regarding the release of the first Kirby game in the main series in 11 years. Yamagami-san, would you start?

Okay. I’m incredibly pleased that we were able to achieve a Kirby game with four-person gameplay, but HAL Laboratory has really outdone themselves in a lot of details as well. For example, when your Kirby’s hit points run low, the other players can help you, and the gesture for sharing HP is a kiss! That’s so cute it’s unbearable! I hope everyone will play with their friends and have their characters kiss each other. Everyone will immediately fall for the game the first time they see how cute that is! (laughs)

And then there are all the different challenges in order to collect Energy Spheres, which you can really get into, that are just the right length and difficulty.

They’re just the right balance - neither too easy nor too difficult. They’re right where you think you can get them with just a little more effort.

I want everyone to experience the moderate difficulty and detailed aspects of playing together with their friends.

All right. Hattori-san?

For me it’s the way the words “Anything is possible” symbolise this game, I think anyone can play and equally enjoy this game. New players as well as those who are returning to the series after a while can both enjoy it. If you want to play it in depth, you can, and players who aren’t good at action games can also thoroughly enjoy clearing it. It has a perfect balance, so I hope people will play it and each person will find his or her own distinctive idea of Kirby.

Okay. Kawase-san.

Well, it’s been 11 years, so…

Uh-huh. (laughs)

For 11 years, we wanted to deliver a Kirby game to the fans, and I’m terribly sorry that we couldn’t. A lot of people at the company were frustrated as well, but this time we properly completed the game. HAL Laboratory will continue to challenge itself. I want to release many more Kirby games.

Those 11 years weren’t a waste. Without the previous attempts, this game would never have been born. Okay, Kumazaki-san?

All right. I hope players will enjoy to their heart’s content this high-power canonical Kirby game in which you can enjoy for the first time in a while inhaling, copying and performing new command moves. As for something I recommend, I really like making bosses. When it comes to the last boss in particular, we’ve prepared something for the climax that will blow your mind.

You are a director whose love for bosses never ceases! (laughs)

You know it! (laughs) I think the key ingredients of an action game are devices, maps, and tough boss battles. I worked with the programmer mentioned earlier on the last boss and was able to present the climax the way I wanted. If you play to the end, exciting developments await that will make you think, “This is great!” So please, enjoy it to the end!

Nakano-san?

Well, the first Kirby game that I played was Kirby’s Adventure. I started liking Kirby then, and I eventually found work at HAL Laboratory. As a fan of the Kirby series, I was able to throw in all kinds of elements for a Kirby game that I would like to play. When it was done, I thought, “So many of my dreams have come true!”

But aside from me, we had lots of developers feeling that way, so - in a good way - we were able to pack in all this mischief and excitement. I hope as many people as possible, including fans of the series of course, will enjoy those things.

Whew! Everyone’s love of Kirby is incredible. I’m very grateful.

(laughs)

When I first started making Kirby, there was a kindergarten right next door. I’ll never forget how moved I was the first time I saw doodles there of Kirby. That may have been the first time I realised that the world would recognise what we had made.

Because of that feeling, Kirby is special to me. But listening to you today, I feel my love for Kirby doesn’t even come close to yours. All right, finish us off, Kamitake-san.

Okay. When I first heard about players being able to join anytime, I thought I wanted to play it with my family. And because you can join or quit anytime, mum and dad can easily pop in and out of the game. For a little while now, my kids have been asking me to buy them a game, and I’ve been saying, “Just wait a little longer and I’ll buy one for you.”

(laughs)

Not “I’ll buy one for you” but “I’ll finish making one for you.”

Yes. (laughs) Now I can finally give it to them. This only pertains to myself, but I’m looking forward to playing this game with my kids soon!

(laughs loudly)

That does only pertain to yourself! Oh well, hopefully people will project it onto themselves and feel the same way. (laughs)

In today’s “Iwata Asks,” we talked more than usual from the customer’s point of view. That made quite an impression on me. It is deeply moving that the pupils of my pupils would make something like this.

I think it is a game that shows that all the hard work and blood and sweat of the last 11 years hasn’t gone to waste, so I hope anyone who is even a little interested will check it out. I’m sure you will be able to enjoy it in line with your skill level.

Again, thank you all for coming today.

Thank you.

I’m glad you completed it.

(sighs)

I still can’t believe it. (laughs)

(laughs)