Shigesato Itoi Visits Arino Kacho’s Challenge Room — Talking 30 Years of Mother — Arino Kacho (Shinya Arino from Yoiko) x Shigesato Itoi

ItoiFrom Miyamoto’s perspective, it’s easy for someone to say they want to make a game. It’s the ‘making’ part that’s incredibly difficult. Just like it’s easy to say, “Some old guy in overalls is gonna jump around and save the princess.”

Arino KachoBut getting Mario to the goal is the part that takes blood, sweat, and tears.

ItoiYou’ve got to set up all the enemies, and make everything fly and jump. There are tons of things you could find dull when they come up during game creation.

Arino KachoAnd if it’s too difficult, most people will just throw up their hands.

ItoiI knew I wanted to make a game, but when my resolve was questioned, I was very sad about it.

Arino KachoYou thought they were going to love your idea.

ItoiWhen I was working as a copywriter, people who understood my work would say “That’s great! Print it!” and that would be the end of it. Once the concept was formed, we could celebrate. With an RPG, even if you’ve got a concept, things cool down fast — the creation process is what draws all that hesitance.

Arino KachoSo those jobs are approached very differently.

ItoiI went back to Tokyo totally crushed. I thought Miyamoto and I had hit it off well at first, but then I was like, “What a taskmaster.” (Laughs)

Arino KachoLike you were shocked at what kind of person he was?

ItoiHe did say to me, “Give me some time to figure this out and see how we can get a team together.” So he was earnest in making it happen. But from my perspective, since he didn’t say how interesting it looked, I’d assumed that meant he didn’t like it.

Arino KachoWhen you’re used to being on TV you just need someone to praise and reassure you.

ItoiExactly. I’d never made a game before, so I interpreted his response as, “Well, it’s not great, but if you’re going to keep insisting on it, I guess I’ll think about whether we should bother putting a team together. As someone without any experience, it was easy to get paranoid.

Arino KachoSo Miyamoto moved it forward under the assumption you’d be leading it.

ItoiHe was kind enough to take it seriously. I didn’t know anything, so I just mumbled a thank you and quickly headed home. They gave me a ride in a black car and treated me well, but I just got more and more depressed.

Arino KachoWere you that hurt by them not complimenting your work?

ItoiI was. I’d been expecting a torrent of praise, but by the time I got on the bullet train back to Tokyo, I was actually in tears.

Arino KachoYou were that depressed? (Laughs)

ItoiVery depressed. (Laughs)

Arino KachoDid you ever bring that up to Miyamoto later on?

ItoiI did. He was just like, “Oh, really?” (Laughs)

Arino KachoSo he didn’t even remember it.

ItoiIt turned out that it was all in my head.

Arino KachoMiyamoto may have been more interested than you’d realized.

ItoiHe put together a team for me. Their internal teams had their hands full, so he went to the trouble of reaching out to a company that would help me make the game.
I met up with the development team at a tiny Japanese restaurant so that they could gauge how involved I’d actually be in all the hard work Miyamoto had warned me about, and so we could get to know each other.

Arino KachoYou even remember which restaurant?

ItoiSure do. It was called Tsukushi.

Arino KachoWow, that’s amazing. I don’t even remember the location of the restaurant I first went out to with the GameCenter CX staff 16 years ago. (Laughs)

ItoiMemories can be pretty sporadic. So I met the development team, but apparently they thought that was the only time they were going to see me.

Arino KachoThey thought it wasn’t going to happen?

ItoiNot that it wasn’t going to happen, but that we wouldn’t need to interact with each other after that.

Arino KachoYou were so busy already that they must have assumed you weren’t going to be able to make any time for them and would just hand them the proposal and say, “I’ll leave the rest up to you guys.”

ItoiYeah. They probably thought we’d discuss the major points in that session and then the team would take it from there and work on it on their own. But I didn’t want that.

Arino KachoYou wanted to work on the whole thing, because it was your idea.

ItoiI couldn’t just have the ending credits rolling without my name in it. But for some reason I didn’t feel any passion from the team when I met them. I only heard later on that they’d just been holding back around me. (Laughs)

Arino KachoEven if they were your fans they probably figured they couldn’t just blurt that out.

ItoiMaybe. As someone who knew nothing about making games, I had no idea what to do with myself. I just tried to answer the best I could when they asked me questions, and they asked to meet up with me just one more time so they could check if they were on the right track.

Arino KachoSince they thought they weren’t going to see you anymore.

ItoiI told them “It won’t be just one time! I’ll be doing my part.” They just said, “Huh?” (Laughs)

Arino KachoSo it went way beyond their anticipation of seeing you just one more time.

ItoiAt the very least I was planning to write the script and the rest of the story. So I had every intention of participating.

Arino KachoSo you were planning on writing every line in the script — every storyline, every character.

ItoiThat’s right — that’s just what I do. I had some thoughts on the art, and even though I didn’t know exactly what to do, I wanted to at least do all the things I could figure out by looking. The team seemed really surprised that I’d been intending to participate that much.

Arino Kacho“You’ll give us that much of your time?”

ItoiI will! Take it!

Arino KachoSo much that you caught them off guard. (Laughs)