Nintendo lent some of its greatest minds to the development of Mario’s Picross, sending legendary creators such as Yoichi Kotabe, Tsunekazu Ishihara, and Mario’s father, Shigeru Miyamoto, to the third-party studio in order to “personally” teach the team Mario’s fundamentals.
In an interview with Famitsu, CEO and founder of Mario’s Picross’s studio Jupiter Corporation, Makoto Nakayama, recalls Nintendo’s involvement in the puzzling spin-off. Nakayama previously worked at the gaming giant’s first-party studio Intelligent Systems, where he made connections with Nintendo bigwigs like Satoru Iwata, Masahiro Sakurai, and Shigeru Miyamoto.
After starting his own studio, Nakayama was talking about adapting picture-based newspaper puzzles into video games when Miyamoto offered his beloved Italian son as tribute. As translated by GamesRadar+, Nakayama describes how the partnership between Jupiter and Nintendo was a “perfect” match. “If we were working on a big project, it would have been completely different,” Nakayama says. “But because we would only be working for between six months to a year, it was perfect.”
However, Nintendo did more than just offer up Mario’s star power to the studio. “They sent over [Yoichi] Kotabe to supervise everything,” Nakayama recalls. “He worked with [Studio Ghibli’s Hayao] Miyazaki on [TV series] Heidi, Girl of the Alps… Kotabe taught Meguro how to draw Mario.”
For most, Heidi would be low down the list of Kotabe’s accomplishments. He also worked with Miyazaki on Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, as well as at Nintendo, supervising the animation for Pokemon X and Y, and many of the Pokemon movies.
While Kotabe might have taught the managing director, Nakayama couldn’t help but participate in a bit of one-upmanship. “Miyamoto personally taught me,” he says when talking about how he was coached on the plumber’s fundamentals. Not to be shown up, Meguro piped in with a name drop of his own, adding “[Pokemon’s Tsunekazu] Ishihara taught me his game design know-how.”
The Legend of Zelda CDi games and Mario is Missing were released just before Mario’s Picross began development, so Nintendo might have learned a few lessons on third-party oversight for its biggest series.
After leaving Fire Emblem studio, Donkey Kong veteran and Mario’s Picross creator couldn’t hire his former co-workers or he’d face Nintendo’s wrath: “It shows a lack of decency”
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