Iwata

Hello everyone. My name is Satoru Iwata from Nintendo. Now that Fire Emblem will become available for the first time on the Nintendo DS, I would like to take this opportunity to introduce everyone to all the attractions that this game will offer on a new format. However, this occurred at the same time when I had to head off to the U.S. for the E3 press conference in Los Angeles. With all the demands on my schedule, at first I thought it might be impossible to make this interview happen, but then I came up with an idea.

The idea was to ask Mr. Masahiro Sakurai from Sora Limited to interview Narihiro-san from Intelligent Systems on the exciting developments in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Sakurai-san’s work on Super Smash Bros., and Narihiro-san has worked extensively as producer of the Fire Emblem series. Sakurai-san’s deep familiarity with the Fire Emblem world can be felt keenly through his work on Super Smash Bros., so it only seemed natural to ask him to do the interview. What immediately came to mind was the memory of Sakurai-san singing the Fire Emblem song on stage at the August, 2002 Super Smash Bros. Melee orchestra concert, sponsored by HAL Laboratory.

So while I was at E3, Sakurai-san did the interview for me, and he is about to give you the background and news on Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. With his passionate enthusiasm towards the game, I’m confident he can get the story from Narihiro-san from a perspective that only Mr. Sakurai can provide, and one that is uniquely different from my own.

Perhaps readers may feel these last-minutes changes are a little sudden, but please make yourselves comfortable and enjoy the interview.

*This interview was held in the summer of 2008, right before the release of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for the Nintendo DS in Japan.

Sakurai

Hello, I am Sakurai from Sora Limited. I’m sure the reason Iwata-san asked me to do this job has already been explained above. As someone who has never tried this before, getting this task really piqued my interest. Setting aside worries about doing this well, I went to Nintendo’s head office in Kyoto thinking, first of all, just try this out. But, then I thought, the role of “Iwata Asks” is a task that only Iwata-san could do. And try as I might, it would be impossible to imitate the President’s role, so it would be better to ask questions from my own perspective. That said, I’ll be asking lots of detailed questions about Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. So, Narihiro-san, thank you for meeting me today.

Narihiro

A pleasure, but please go easy on me…

Sakurai

Well, first, may I try asking about Curate Wrys¹? (laughing)

Narihiro

Ha ha ha! (laughing). Starting out with a question only a die-hard fan would ask.

1. Curate Wrys: A character appearing in Vol. 1 of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Japanese title: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi), built originally for the NES. This character does not appear in the sequel Mystery of the Emblem (Japanese title: Monshou no Nazo), also built for Super NES, but he will appear again in this latest remake.

Sakurai

Ha ha! No, no, I’m just kidding. (laughing) Firstly, let’s start with your introduction. Please.

Narihiro

My name is Narihiro. I work for Intelligent Systems where I am managing the production of the latest version of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.

Sakurai

Intelligent Systems is well known through its work on Nintendo Wars, Paper Mario, and of course the Fire Emblem series. Among the original developers of NES games, Intelligent Systems was a fairly known name in the industry, correct?

Narihiro

Well, originally, our company was known as a development tool maker, much more so than as a game software development company.

Sakurai

When I first joined HAL Laboratory, there were development tools for the NES, and all of them were labeled with the Intelligent Systems logo. Seeing these devices around our office led me to think that maybe HAL Laboratory was working in a really close partnership with Intelligent Systems.

Narihiro

Well, they weren’t products that you would find selling at regular retail stores.

Sakurai

Not only HAL Laboratory, but other companies developing NES software were also using development tools from Intelligent Systems.

Narihiro

Our start point for making development tools was when Nintendo launched the NES system. It was totally different from today in that PCs were not yet used widely. Whether you did software or dev kits, back then there was neither. So, we had no option but to make it all ourselves. For example, even graphics software for drawing pictures was something we devised by ourselves.

Sakurai

Yeah, and thankfully, your products were extremely useful (laughing). By the way, Narihiro-san, what was the first product you worked on?

Narihiro

I think I started by helping to develop Nintendo’s “Gyromite” for the R.O.B.²

Sakurai

Oooh, that’s great. And, Gyromite came out in 1985 right?

Narihiro

Yes, Gyromite came out soon after Stack-Up.

2. R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy): A peripheral device that could move wirelessly through an interlock connection to the NES. R.O.B. also appeared in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Sakurai

At that time I was still a high school student. To me, that really makes you like a senior in the industry.

Narihiro

I’ve put on a few years (laughing). Also, after Gyromite, to assist Nintendo in a way, I was involved in various titles including arcade games targeted for release in the U.S. We then started to work on simulation games. The first that came out was Nintendo Wars³. With a new theme of making a simulation game in which players can see and enjoy a world from a RPG perspective, we started working on Fire Emblem.

3. Nintendo Wars: A strategy simulation game released in Japan on August, 1988 for the NES.　Better known in North America as Advanced Wars, is a series of games that Intelligent Systems worked on. This series became popular in Japan, but did not reach the US until the Game Boy version was made in 2001.)

Sakurai

What was your involvement in the very first Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon⁴?

4. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon: A simulation role playing game released in Japan on April, 1990 for the NES. With the release of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon on the Nintendo DS, Fire Emblem returns to its roots with a complete remake of the original, with added new features including touch screen controls, multiple save options, and a new chapter in the beginning that sheds light on the main character Marth, of his early years.

Narihiro

Originally I was a programmer. Even so, I did all kinds of work here and there in various areas. At that time, the size of this game development project was not very big, and regardless of your place in the organizational chart of the company, everyone was doing a wide variety of tasks. For example, it was common for programmers to be creating sound, etc.

Sakurai

A long time ago, the director could draw the pictures. There weren’t many boundaries on the work and who was assigned to what task.

Narihiro

Actually at the time the main NES unit wasn’t able to drive simulation games by itself.

Sakurai

What do you mean?

Narihiro

The program in a typical simulation game uses a lot of memory. Our game exceeded the capacity of the main memory available in the NES unit. So we figured out a way of increasing capacity by accessing a portion of the memory dedicated for saving the game. Using this memory together with the main memory we were able to get the game running.

Sakurai

Oh, that’s interesting.

Narihiro

To display characters, we loaded a chip into the machine that was able to process and display Kanji characters… So, at Nintendo we were always working as partners with the people who were making the hardware, and I acted as a kind of observer during our development of the NES version of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.

Sakurai

Wow, you’ve done a bit of everything.

Narihiro

By the way, did you ever play that version for NES when the game was launched? Though that was 18 years ago…

Sakurai

Of course! I had an experience with that Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon that I’ll never forget…