In yet another installment of Iwata Asks pertaining to Mario’s 25th anniversary, the Nintendo president shares a table with some of Nintendo’s younger developers, born in the ‘80s.
A lot of these developers would end up working on the newer Mario games, like Super Mario Advance. One of them, Yusuke Amano, a planner, described his experience working on Super Mario Advance 4 and it’s “Super Skills” movie feature.
“I wasn’t really that good at video games, but [Shigeyuki] Asuke-san, who later directed New Super Mario Bros. Wii, took care of me. However, Asuke-san had extremely high expectations for the quality of the Super Skills movies,” Amano related.
He continued, “He’d be like, "Be sure to go down the very center of the pipe!" and "Don’t jump any more here than is necessary!" And then, just when I thought I’d done a good job, he’d pan it, saying, "It doesn’t look like a real person played it."”
Iwata then jokingly commented that he’d heard someone on the staff had actually wept because of Asuke’s strict demands. To this, Amano replied: “That was me!”
Amano’s experience working on the Super Skills movies in Super Mario Advance 4 eventually led him argue in favour of including the Super Guide feature in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which he reveals was very nearly scrapped during development due to scheduling issues.
