E3: Miyamoto, Sakurai Talk Wii, Super Smash Bros Brawl

At a Nintendo event held on the first evening of the E3 Expo and attended by Gamasutra correspondents, Wii title Super Smash Bros. Brawl was revealed, and Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto appeared alongside Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai to answer questions on Wii and the game itself. Super Smash Bros. Brawl itself was shown solely in video form, but will debut on Wii next year, and will feature a number of the more obvious regulars (Mario, Link, Pikachu) alongside more unlikely players such as Nintendogs characters and even Metal Gear Solid's Solid Snake, who emerged triumphantly from a cardboard box during the trailer. But the Q&A session provided the most interesting responses, many of which ranged outside simply game-specific features, and touched on interesting new thoughts on the Wii. Miyamoto noted that one of the main reasons the game was created was that Nintendo staff believed that the best Nintendo franchise to take the console online would be Super Smash Bros. Also touched upon was the non-HD nature of the Wii, but one of the submitted questions noted that Zelda for Wii was running in widescreen 480p, and asked how widespread that screen ratio would be - to which Miyamoto replied: "I think it's really up to the developers in terms of whether they want to use widescreen or not... obviously, the Wii is much more powerful so when it displays in widescreen." When asked about new Wii ideas that he hadn't yet discussed, Miyamoto referenced his own seminal Mario series "One thing I've always wanted to do with a Mario game... is to have one player play as Mario, and for other players to join in and help out." Finally, when asked how he decides to design Wii games, Miyamoto explains his thinking to get the most creative ideas from the innovative control mechanism: "I'm thinking in terms of how I then take advantage of [the joy communicated in playing using the Wii controller] in creating software that makes it look fun and enjoyable to play the games."