In Iwata Asks I usually only talk to Nintendo staff members, but this time I’m joined by two members of IS (Intelligent Systems, Co. Ltd.¹). Please introduce yourselves, including your work on the WarioWare series. Let’s start with you, Sugioka-san.

¹ Intelligent Systems Co., Ltd.: A company that has helped develop Nintendo software (like Fire Emblem and the Paper Mario series, among others) and development tools for various game consoles.

I’m Taku Sugioka from Intelligent Systems. The first game in the WarioWare series I worked on was WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! for the GameCube² I was a programmer then. After that, I worked on WarioWare: Touched!³ and WarioWare: Smooth Moves⁴ as director at IS and main programmer.

This time, for the Nintendo DSiWare title WarioWare: Snapped!, in addition to planning and directing the trial phase, I performed tests and managed actual production.

² WarioWare, Inc., Mega Party Game$!: Released for the Nintendo GameCube in September 2004 in Europe. The second game in the series.

³ WarioWare: Touched!: Released for the Nintendo DS in March 2005 in Europe. The fourth game in the series.

⁴ WarioWare: Smooth Moves: Released for the Wii console in January 2007 in Europe. The fifth game in the series.

You’ve known Goro Abe of Nintendo for quite a while.

Yes, that’s right. Abe-san, how long has it been?

After the original WarioWare⁵ game came out, Mega Party Game$! came out six months later, so I’d say about six years.

⁵ WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania!: The first WarioWare game. Released for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance in May 2003 in Europe.

It really was overdoing it to come out with Mega Party Game$! after just six months, but I was the one who requested it. (laughs) I said, “I want you to remake the original WarioWare, Inc. for the GameCube. And I want it fast.” They said, “How fast?” I said, “As soon as possible!” We haggled over it, and development of Mega Party Game$! began. After a little while, Abe-san told me there was a talented programmer at IS, and it looked like it could be done. That was when I first heard about Sugioka-san.

I myself was worried about whether we could really do it in such a short time.

Did you think I was asking for too much?

Well, if you try, it’ll work out somehow. It turned out to be a good experience, and proved beneficial to my next development project.

We won’t be talking about it today, but Abe-san and Sugioka-san, you two also combined efforts on the DS game Made in Ore⁶, didn’t you?

⁶ Made in Ore (Japanese title): DS software scheduled for release in Japan in 2009. Software that allows players to make and play the microgames appearing in the WarioWare series.

Yes. Development of Made in Ore was taking so much of my time that when it came to Snapped! I pretty much left everything to Mori-san, here beside me.

Mori-san, would you please introduce yourself?

I’m Naoko Mori from Intelligent Systems. The first WarioWare game I worked on was Mega Party Game$! I was the art director. Next was Touched!, for which I was the designer… No, before that I worked on Twisted!<sup>7

7</sup> WarioWare: Twisted!: Only released for the Game Boy Advance in North America and Japan. The third game in the series.

You worked on Twisted!, too?

Yes. Next was Smooth Moves. I was the art director.

Partying, twisting, touching and making smooth moves - you must have been really busy! (laughs)

I was! (laughs) For Snapped!, I was the director at IS.

Abe-san, I don’t think you need to mention what past WarioWare games you’ve worked on, but could you tell us what kicked off development of WarioWare: Snapped!?

It started with a proposal from IS back before we knew about the Nintendo DSi. DS Face Training for Adults⁸ came with a camera for recognising faces. IS suggested the possibility of using that for something like WarioWare.

⁸ DS Face Training for Adults: DS software for training facial muscles to make various facial expressions. Released in Japan, in August 2007.

Making Face Training proved incredibly useful when we made the Nintendo DSi. For example, we developed Nintendo DSi Camera for a long time using the camera for Face Training because the Nintendo DSi hardware didn’t exist. Snapped! is another example.

Right. IS was also involved in the development of Face Training, so I borrowed the camera from the Face Training team to make a test model.

The first one we made resulted in a really strange style of play. You held the Nintendo DSi in your left hand, and held your right hand in front of the outer camera.

A feeling of speed is essential to the WarioWare games, so in order to increase processing speed, we made it so the hand captured on camera appeared in silhouette.

How did you play the games?

For example, if there was a ravine and characters couldn’t cross, you could use the silhouette of your finger as a bridge to allow them to cross. But when we started testing it out, we learned the camera was having difficulty detecting the hand.

Depending on the illumination, shadows would form, and the camera would detect those by accident.

So we laid a black mat underneath so shadows wouldn’t form.

So we made a finger sleeve for the players’ index finger. Anyone, regardless of variations in skin tone, would be able to play.

For a while we were even using gloves.

We were seriously considering selling the game together with the finger sleeve and black mat.

I doubt anyone would buy something like that. (laughs)

Yeah. (laughs)

(laughs)

The whole idea of using one hand to hold the Nintendo DSi and moving around your other hand to play was bound to fail. So then we tried out a bunch of stuff, like capturing your feet on camera...

Your feet?! (laughs)

Yes, your own feet. (laughs) That way you could hold the Nintendo DSi with both hands. But we weren’t sure it would make for good gameplay...

And it would look weird! (laughs)

We tried other things – like secretly capturing the face of someone facing you on camera and then sticking that person’s head into nose holes during the game—but nothing seemed to feel quite right.

So we gave up on the outer camera and tried using the inner camera to capture the player’s own face.

We created a test model that could be played by setting the Nintendo DSi down, which was alright in its own way, but it didn’t quite have the feeling of speed that previous WarioWare games did. The project was getting bogged down.

Anyway, it had been decided to set the DSi down, so at the very end, I asked them to present another proposal. And the catchphrase for that was WarioWare: Don’t Touch?!

Don’t Touch? (laughs)

In addition to the proposed style of play, the last page was a “bonus” section.

A bonus section?

There were weird photos... Uh, it looks like we’ll have to talk about you know what.

You know what…what?

Something that shows up at the end of the game.

Oh, that! (laughs)

Abe-san, it looks like you’d rather not talk about you know what.

If possible, I’d rather not reveal it here. There’s some sleight of hand involved.

I see. Sleight of hand.

I really don’t want to reveal any spoilers. I want players to approach the game in complete ignorance, and then, when they’ve played, feel like shouting out, “You got me!”

Well, just like with magic, hearing about it is quite different than actually seeing it.

Yes, it makes quite an impact when you see it.

Okay, without touching upon you know what, shall we talk about what we can talk about?

(laughs)

I think it’s great the way you can play without touching the Nintendo DSi.

Is that why the catchphrase is Don’t Touch?!

In Snapped!, you can capture your face or hand on camera and it will show up on screen as a silhouette. I thought that is a really great way to play a video game. Because, even though there have been games before using images of the player, they were always a little embarrassing to play. This time there are four modes. The players’ response when they play will be, “Oh, I see, I see.”

It was that way for me.

See? Not “Oh, this is interesting…” but “Oh, I see.” But I’m actually pleased about that response. It’s precisely because of the silhouettes that you know what has such effect at the end.

When you see it at the end, it’s almost cathartic. Hmm, we keep coming back to the forbidden topic.

We sure do...

I think we should stop trying to avoid it.

Are you sure?

There’s no drama to Snapped! if we don’t talk about it. I mean, that was why when we had everyone try the test model, they had such a good time.

That’s true.

You even came to my room to cause trouble.

(laughs)

I was surprised. I thought all I had to do was move my silhouette to complete various tasks, but the truth was my face was being recorded, and when I completed the tasks, the game showed what my face looked like when my guard was down while playing! (laughs)

How did you ever come up with such an idea?

As Abe-san said, there was a period when the project was getting bogged down and we were teetering on the edge of an abyss, and then we were going to submit our final proposal. Just before that, I ran into a programmer on my way home, and he told me that the camera was actually running the whole time someone was playing the game.

In other words, only the player’s silhouette was showing up on the screen, but the camera was actually capturing the player in full detail.

Right. I thought, wouldn’t you be happy if you could see those pictures when you cleared a stage? As an extra treat. So the day before we submitted the proposal, with nothing to lose, we added the bonus section at the end.

Along with the humorous photos in the bonus, it said, “You make funny faces while playing, so play as cool as you can.” When I read that, I thought it looked like a lot of fun.

We took that photo with an underwater camera during a company trip to Okinawa. If you take a picture under water, everyone’s face looks funny. At first no one wanted to have their picture taken, but eventually everyone came to see what was going on. I thought the psychology behind that was interesting, and that connected to the Snapped! project.

But at that time it was only a proposal. A working model didn’t exist.

Right.

The bonus was just on paper, but Abe-san jumped all over it.

Boy did he ever! (laughs) If he hadn’t, we would have fallen off the cliff down into the abyss.

Of course, we couldn’t make a decision based solely on the proposal, so we made a working model. And when we actually played it, it was really fun, so we decided to have you look at it as soon as possible.

You didn’t come to ask me to look at it, you came to play dirty tricks! (laughs) Anyway, at that point, what was the response at IS?

Everywhere I went people were bursting out laughing. Even people who are usually extremely serious were saying “No! No!” but in the end would see themselves and practically bust a gut laughing. In all my time making games, I’ve never experienced anything like it.

Now that I think about it, when you came to my room to have me play the game, you had a big grin on your face.

Sorry about that. (laughs)

I thought something was suspicious, but I had a responsibility to decide whether it would be worth it businesswise to push development on to the next stage, so there was no way I could go without trying it out. But never since becoming president has anything made me think “You got me!” the way that did.

(laughs)

What’s more, Abe-san looked extremely pleased as he took the Nintendo DSi and left. He said everyone was waiting. Did they see the pictures of me?

Of course! (laughs) I begged him to bring them back and show me.

He showed me, too. I was…very pleased.

Did it reward all your hard work?

Absolutely! (laughs) We passed them around to everyone!

Is this what you call work? (laughs)

(laughs)

WarioWare: Snapped! isn’t so much a game as it is a tool for making funny videos.

That’s right. So, while we were designing the microgames, we thought about what kinds of gestures would be likely to result in funny videos.

That’s the opposite to the normal starting point for games.

For example, you don’t want people to see you shaking your head from side to side and you don’t have many opportunities to see what your face looks like when you do. So we thought up a game for shaking your head side to side.

Can you make something like that just by thinking about it? Or did you have people try out what you’d made and then watch them as they played?

We watched people. But the place rapidly cleared out...

Of uninitiated people to lure into your trap. (laughs)

(laughs)

We were strapped for test subjects, but found some who didn’t know what was up and had them try it out. We saw which parts looked difficult, and then made adjustments so anyone could do it without explanation.

Did anyone’s response make a strong impression on you?

One guy got mad when he was done. At first he was extremely interested, but I guess it was a shock when he saw himself at the end. He got mad at the Nintendo DSi and yelled, “What?! You stupid thing!”

(laughs)

Who was that?

Ko Takeuchi.

Nintendo’s Ko Takeuchi?

Yeah.

Ko Takeuchi who drew the characters for WarioWare, Inc. and Rhythm Heaven?

Yeah. He bellowed out, “No one said anything about this!” (laughs) Honest souls are more likely to get angry about it.

Yes, seriously angry! (laughs)

(laughs)

It’s more fun to make others play this game than it is to play it yourself!

You can watch as they play, then, as a treat, see how they react when they see themselves at the end. (laughs)

It’s a new kind of game. Video games are fun because you get back more than what you put in, but this is a little different.

That’s another reason I think it’s like a magic trick.

Ah, I see.

But many people, while they might not get angry, don’t like to have their picture taken, so we made it so that when you start a new game, the previous images disappear.

Even if you just close the lid, they disappear. You laugh, and then it’s over.

If the images disappear, then no one can take a peek at them later. The way everyone looked at mine! (laughs)

(laughs)

According to the guidelines for the Nintendo DSi, when the camera takes a photo it has to make a sound. But if it kept making noise while you were trying to play Snapped!, it would interfere with gameplay. So we addressed that problem by erasing the videos and photos. Also, as another specification, it doesn’t take videos or photos if the player doesn’t successfully complete the game.

So, for example, if you tried to take a picture of a stranger sitting next to you on the train, you wouldn’t complete the game, so the images wouldn’t be taken.

But certainly some people would like to keep these funny images of themselves.

Well, since the images don’t remain, you feel like moving on to take even funnier ones next time. This time there aren’t that many microgames, but there’s motivation to try the ones there are over and over again. The fact that the videos and photos disappear makes each encounter with the games a moment to be treasured.

Abe-san, what did you think about releasing it as Nintendo DSiWare?

If it wasn’t going to be Nintendo DSiWare, I don’t think we’d have been invited to participate in Iwata Asks. (laughs) Development began with the idea of taking photos during play, but as a single packaged software, it might never have been released.

If a game is going to be released as packaged software, it needs to have a certain amount of content. But it had been decided that it would be distributed for 500 points as Nintendo DSiWare (in Japan), so we determined the specifications of the game so it would deliver satisfaction corresponding to that price. It was easier to make that way.

I decided to call this game Big One-off Performance. Mori-san, what did you think when you heard that?

I’d heard that the only categories for Nintendo DSiWare were tools and games, so I was surprised. Only Snapped! could be called Big One-off Performance. It sounded special. I liked it.

That’s how much I felt like you’d tricked me! I’m not holding a grudge or anything, though. (laughs) This game makes you want to take it with me when you go out, give it to people and say, “Try this out. It won’t take long. It’s fun.” Fun in a certain sense, anyway.

It’s fun for someone watching! (laughs)

I wonder who it would be good to play this trick on?

I want to have people who don’t usually play video games, like older people for example, to play it. I bet the video afterwards would really be something! (laughs)

I think the best person to use this on is your boss at work. Wouldn’t you say so, Abe-san? (laughs)

...Right! (laughs)

(laughs)

WarioWare has become one of our headliner titles whenever we bring out a new piece of hardware. First there was touching, then dancing, and now snapping photos. I’m really looking forward to seeing how players put this game to use, but I suppose the ones who are the most excited are the mischievous children sitting here with me today. (laughs)

Thank you for joining me today.