Super Metroid creator discusses making the leap to SNES

To celebrate the launch of the SNES Classic Edition, Nintendo has posted a fascinating interview with Super Metroid creator Yoshio Sakamoto and composer Kenji Yamamoto.

During the chat, the pair discuss everything from working with the improved SNES hardware to balancing the demands of game development. 

Speaking about that switch-up to the SNES, Sakamoto-san recalls how the entire production process seemed to scale-up overnight. 

"I thought it was completely different from NES. With NES, what we could do was simple. But with Super NES, unless you put in a lot of thought beforehand and drew up thorough designs, things that should be possible would become impossible," he explains.

"For example, once development had made some progress, if I told a programmer to make something spin, he might say that it was no longer possible. And I didn't know much about technology, or rather I was unacquainted with it."

At that point, Sakamoto-san realized he needed to develop at least a basic understanding of the technology in front of him -- something he was told would hamper the design process when he first joined Nintendo. 

"I joined the company as a designer, and my boss at the time was Gunpei Yokoi, who always said, 'Designers don't need to know about tech. If they do, they'll start claiming something is impossible before they try, and that's no good,'" he continues.

"But when we tried to make something for Super NES, I thought that would never do. I realized that we needed some degree of knowledge in order to give the programmers instructions, and above all, we needed a firm vision or the hardware would be difficult to deal with."

The full interview goes into more detail and is well worth a read. You can check it out by visiting the official Nintendo website.