Gamers will play a game which surprises long term fans

Nov 18, 2011 20:11 GMT  ·  By

Nintendo has hyped up The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword by saying that more than 100 developers worked on the Wii game for more than 5 years but the man behind the series says that two of those basically don't count when looking at the final product.

Shigeru Miyamoto, who is the legendary developer behind the biggest Nintendo franchise and the leader of development on Skyward Sword, told Famitsu that, “I did say it was five years, but the first two of those were spent with assorted experimentation, so essentially it was three years. We went through kind of a long experimentation period, I suppose.”

He added, “When you have a development period of five years, it’s often the case that around two of those years wind up being completely wasted effort. With this game, though, I think all the work that everyone put into this project gets fully seen in the final product.”

The experimentation stage of Skyward Sword development was necessary because the team at Nintendo wanted to make sure that they create a game which is both faithful to the history of the franchise and manages to introduce some positive change.

Miyamoto shared a little about how he approaches video game development, saying that he likes to create the game structure and the mechanics up to a point and then deciding which characters and which themes are appropriate.

The launch of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is seen by Nintendo as a way of revitalizing sales of the Nintendo Wii ahead of the crucial Christmas shopping season while also repaying those long term fans who have waited so long for the game.

It's widely believes that this is the last of the core Nintendo franchises to launch on the Wii and that the next major games are being prepared for the launch of the new Wii U home console.