Shigeru Miyamoto, father of a large number of Nintendo’s most famous characters, has been in the news quite a bit lately. Translated interview snippets have revealed many of his thoughts regarding the current state of Nintendo and the industry at large, and one of the latest has him discussing the many “exciting things on [his] plate” and his desire to work on smaller projects with entirely new premises.
The below excerpt is from a recent Famitsu magazine interview, translated by Nintendo Everything:
Miyamoto: I often think in the back of my head that it’d be nice to work on a small project with a group of several people. But at this moment in time, I’ve got a lot of exciting things on my plate other than that… When that time comes, if I can somehow discover an inspiration that I haven’t had before, I’d really like to make that. Nowadays, if I say, ‘What do you think about making this?’ to those around me, they’re not very receptive. I know it’s going nowhere when they respond with, ‘Oh, huh. Interesting.’ (Laughs)
One of Miyamoto’s most notable small projects in recent years was Project Giant Robot, a Wii U game featuring (surprise) giant robots that was to take advantage of the many unique features of the GamePad. It was shown off at E3 2014 before being quietly shelved as the Wii U continued to struggle and the Switch began to enter the final stages of production before release.
Miyamoto is famous for generating massive hits with humble origins based on simple, everyday circumstances; Zelda is based on his days as a boy exploring caves near his home, for example. While a few of his ideas haven’t seen quite as much success (such as the aforementioned Project Giant Robot), it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that whatever new IP Miyamoto ends up working on next has the potential to become a new fan-favorite.
Hopefully Miyamoto gets his wish and is able to work on a new passion project soon!
