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Yoshiaki Koizumi has worked on many of Nintendo's most revered games, including Mario Kart, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and his latest title, Super Mario Galaxy. GamePro's Dave Rudden got the chance to speak with him and you can read his full interview exclusively at OMGNintendo! Check out the interview after the jump!

David Rudden: Have you noticed a different reception for Super Mario Galaxy here in the US than you have in Japan?

Yoshiaki Koizumi: Everyone seems to have the same sort of reaction; everyone seems to be really happy with the game. In that regard, there's not much of a difference in the reception of the game in different countries. I'm actually very happy about that, that everyone's able to play it and enjoy it.

DR: With the Wiii having such a broad appeal, were you worried about the different approach to platforming that Super Mario Galaxy takes?

YK: Of course. During the development of Galaxy. We focused on creating a game that a broad, diverse group of people would be able to play. That was absolutely at the forefront.

DR: Your last three games have used very different control methods. Super Mario Sunshine used the traditional GameCube controller, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat used the Bongo Drums, and Super Mario Galaxy uses the Wii Remote and Nunchuck. How were you able to handle the transition between games? Were you able to take any lessons from one game to the next?

YK: Every game has very different controls, but when you look all the way back to the original Super Mario Bros., the main thing that people had to remember had to remember was to press A to jump. Every new game needs new ideas and a new feeling, but at the same time you want to make the game easy to understand because if you implement a lot of new actions, each with a different sort of control, then suddenly the complexity of the control scheme is increased dramatically. Controls are very important when adding newness but keeping it playable. Whenever you have a control stick, for example, that opens up a few possibilities, like twisiting the control stick around in a circle, or tilting just a little bit to walk, or a bit more to run. Those are ideas that sort of flow intuitively out of the shape and function of the controls. But in 3D action games, there are already so many different types of complexity you have deal with. For example, in Zelda games, using the Z-button for the lock-on camera that treats the player and the enemy on the same axis. This new interface brings new possibilities to make the game easier; that should be the order of thoughts when you get around to it. In Sunshine, for example, the control stick again seemed for controlling the flow of water when you're shooting it. When you get to Galaxy, however, my stated goal was to design a game with deep and meaningful actions but using very few controls. When I was on Jungle Beat for example, the ideas came from the physical controller being a bongo. You think about hitting it, so suddenly I thought, "Maybe this would be really good for fighting." When you're hitting it, it's like you're punching something, so it'll probably feel really good, and get rid of some stress that way.

Yes, we have a deliberate notion that changing the controls can give a game an entirely new feel. One of the big places where this was a problem was in Sunshine, where we had to give the player the ability to control the camera. This suddenly became quite a burden on gameplay, not only the complexity of the controls. Some people felt like they needed to be able to control the camera to play well, and others felt like they couldn't really enjoy the game because they had to worry about the camera controls in the first place. My basic feeling is that controlling the camera, moving it all around, that's not really gameplay. That's just something you do to make gameplay possible. It's so much better to limit the controls to things that are only gameplay, and that's what I was able to do with Jungle Beat, which is a 2D game that had a completely different feel, because you didn't have to worry about the camera, ever. Finally, that evolution came full circle when we got to Galaxy and we were able to think of a way to keep the player from ever having to worry about the camera at all; it was completely taken care of for them, and all the player really had to think about is, "Use the A-button to jump, shake to spin, and use the stick to move around."

DR: Between Sunshine's water pack and Galaxy's use of gravity, Mario's jumping ability has sort of altered in each of his 3D adventures. Why hasn't that stayed as consistent as it has during the 2D days?

YK: First of all, to address the idea that the jump didn't change as often in the 2D games, I tend to think of New Super Mario Bros., with the wall-jump as a recent addition to the 2D jumping ability. But certainly in the 3D games, you do see a lot of variety in the jump mechanism like with the triple jump. In the old 2D games, many generations ago, we used to measure a jump in a certain number of pixels, and so whether or not you could get onto a certain platform was just a matter of whether it was in that pixel range or not. That's not quite as interesting as the type of jump you can make when you're Spring or Bee Mario or doing a triple jump. That sort of variety just makes the game feel richer and more interesting, I think.

DR: Mario Galaxy seems to have a large amount of power-ups, like Spring Mario, Boo Mario, and Bee Mario, when compared to Sunshine, in which Mario had his water pack and gained new abilities for that later on in the game. Was that a conscious decision to tackle that differently?

YK: It's funny that you bring up Sunshine and the fact that there were fewer transformations, because originally, there were many more different nozzle adapters for FLUDD, but we ended up settling on the three most comfortable ones. In each case, the transformations are meant to help players overcome the ambiguity of judging depth and distance in 3D. They represent a very functional role. In Galaxy, we wanted to use a lot of the same ideas. For example, the Bee suit allows you to hover a little bit, so if you're having trouble judging depth before you land on something, you have more time in which to react. In general, more suits equals more fun. The greater the variety you have there, the richer the experience overall. You have the freedom to create a lot more situations like "What happens when you get this suit and you go into water? What happens when you take this other suit into lava?" You have all these opportunities to see what will happen.

DR: You said there were more than three FLUDD nozzle concepts. Would you be able to let us know what some of the ideas were?

YK: One that cut was sort of a shotgun nozzle that used a ton of water, but covered a really large area. It seemed to resemble one of the included functions on another nozzle, so we cut that out. When thinking about the different sorts of features and abilities you want to include in a game, you have to think of each one's inherent weakness, and eventually a few get cut out. With Galaxy, though, we really feel like we included a ton of things. Almost everything we wanted to do made it into the game, so I'm very happy about that.

DR: You've worked on a lot of influential Zelda and Mario titles. How does working on one series differ from the other? Are there concepts you carry from one to the other?

YK: Despite what people may think, the most basic gameplay concepts you find in Mario games and Zelda games are very similar. When you think where the gameplay fun comes from, it's from the feeling of surprise and wonder you get from exploring certain kind of world and in both games, you're basically navigating a space, trying to find a goal or a boss, and whether you're jumping to overcome obstacles or using a sword to deal with enemies, there's still the same kind of barriers being placed in front of the player. The conditions are very similar.

When you talk about what can go back and forth in terms of gameplay concepts between the two games, of course, there's all sorts of things. If you have to climb a really high mountain, Zelda's going to do it in a very different way than Mario, but they both share quite a bit of ultimate similar objectives. There's a lot of technical lessons we've learned, certain technological solutions that have carried over from games back and forth, but you're probably thinking more in terms of gameplay, so we'll take those individually.

Going from Zelda to Mario, there's not quite as many gameplay ideas that are transmitted directly, just because they have a slightly different feel at that level. From Mario to Zelda, however, there are quite a few ideas that go back and forth. For a long time in Mario games, he didn't have the proximity punch and kick. That's an idea that doesn't really get to go back in the other direction. Another one would be the first person mode in Zelda to look around and search for something. Mario's really not a "search around in first-person kind of game", so that doesn't quite make it back in the same way. Because of that, I feel that the two game styles have been diverging more and more that they have in the past.

DR: Mario has been in 2D, in 3D, on land, in water, and in outer space. Where else could you take him in the future. Are there concepts you've discussed that you still haven't explored yet?

YK: Certainly, there are lots of ideas I've got while working on Galaxy, but I can't really say what those are going to be in the future. There are a lot of things I wanted to do that you can expect to see in future games in a slightly different form.

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