14 DAY TRIAL // One of the main developers working at Nintendo on the core Mario franchise believes that one of the main attractions of the series is the way it managed to use each new generation of hardware to deliver a new and fresh gaming experience.
Koichi Hayashida, who is the game director working on Super Mario 3D Land, told Gamesradar at the Game Developers Conference 2012 event that, “One element is that every time we come out with new hardware, the unique capabilities of that technology drives us to find new combinations for gameplay that’s familiar in the Mario universe, but made new by something special about that hardware.”
Super Mario 3D Land has managed to be one of the best-selling titles to be launched on the 3DS handheld so far during its lifetime and is credited, alongside Mario Kart 7 and Monster Hunter, with pushing sales of the device up both in Japan and in the West.
Hayashida also talked about Shigeru Miyamoto, the man who created Mario and is still the public face of the series, saying, “Of course Mr Miyamoto is not going to retire any time soon, and I have to say I’m going to be working hard as I can on games now and in the future.
“But Nintendo is made up of a lot of really great ideas, many of which were contributed by Mr Miyamoto himself.”
Miyamoto has suggested that he plans to no longer actively work on the biggest Mario and Legend of Zelda titles in order to focus his attention on smaller projects and on teaching younger developers the art of creating titles for Nintendo platforms.
At the moment Miyamoto and the core Mario team is thought to be actively working on a new core title in the series that will be launched alongside the new Wii U home console at some point during this year.