Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of Luigi and Mario has been running on my monitor. We've been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system.

What comes next? Super Mario 128? Actually, that's what I want to do.

Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll.

I wanted to make something very unique, something very different.

I think I can make an entirely new game experience, and if I can't do it, some other game designer will.

Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of Luigi and Mario has been running on my monitor. We've been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system.

A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.

Actually, 3D is really the most normal thing because it's how those of us with two eyes usually see the world. TVs are the unusual things in 2D!

Anything that is impractical can be play. It's doing something other than what is necessary to continue living as an animal.

As a kid, I was a big comic fan and I liked foreign comics as well.

Game music has a purpose and it does incorporate sound effects.

Games have grown and developed from this limited in-the-box experience to something that's everywhere now. Interactive content is all around us, networked, ready. This is something I've been hoping for throughout my career.

I always try and come up with a clear theme when I'm making a videogame.

I don't really think of things in terms of legacy or where I stand in the history of Nintendo or anything like that.

I don't think as a creator that I could create an experience that truly feels interactive if you don't have something to hold in your hand, if you don't have something like force feedback that you can feel from the controller.

I don't want to criticize any other designers, but I have to say that many of the people involved in this industry - directors and producers - are trying to make their games more like movies. They are longing to make movies rather than making videogames.

I enjoy thinking about ways to create something that other people have not even thought about, something no one has managed to achieve.

I know as a child, I was really interested in becoming a manga artist, to create my own stories and illustrate them and present something that people would be interested in reading and looking at as well.

I made some games, but I'm pretending like I didn't because they all turned out weird.

I never really participated in specific sports or anything, but once I hit 40, I started to get a little bit more active and began swimming more.

I think everyone can enjoy games.

I think that inside every adult is the heart of a child. We just gradually convince ourselves that we have to act more like adults.

I think that the entertainment industry itself has a history of chasing success. Any time a hit product comes out, all the other companies start chasing after that success and trying to recreate it by putting out similar products.

I think what's really the most ideal thing is for the player themselves, within their own imagination, to carve out what they view as being the essence of the character.

I try not so much to create new characters and worlds but to create new game-play experiences.

I used to draw cartoons. I'd just show them to some of my friends, expecting that they were going to appreciate them, that they were going to enjoy reading them.

I'm not saying that I'm going to retire from game development altogether.

I'm very impressed that there are so many fans - not just in Japan, but here in America - that are fond of the work that I've done. I'm actually kind of embarrassed by it all.

It would be a joy for me if someone who was working with me became a big success.

Japan actually is an aging population, and so as the population has aged, they have had a lot more problems with health.

Japanese people have a funny habit of abbreviating names.

My days all follow much the same pattern. They are structured and typical.

Nintendo's philosophy is never to go the easy path; it's always to challenge ourselves and try to do something new.

Nowadays I think it's really important that designers are really unique and individual.

Of course, I have my own limits as to how much game software I can take care of at any one time.

Of course, when it comes to Japanese role-playing games, in any role-playing game in Japan you're supposed to collect a huge number of items, and magic, and you've got to actually combine different items together to make something really different.

Our job as the game creators or developers - the programmers, artists, and whatnot - is that we have to kind of put ourselves in the user's shoes. We try to see what they're seeing, and then make it, and support what we think they might think.

People often say that videogames made by Western developers are somehow different in terms of taste for the players, in comparison with Japanese games. I think that means that the Western developers and Japanese developers, they are good at different fields.

Players are artists who create their own reality within the game.

Providing new means of entertainment is the important thing.

The obvious objective of video games is to entertain people by surprising them with new experiences.

There are big lines between those who play video games and those who do not. For those who don't, video games are irrelevant. They think all video games must be too difficult.

There are some ghost stories in Japan where - when you are sitting in the bathroom in the traditional style of the Japanese toilet - a hand is actually starting to grab you from beneath. It's a very scary story.

There's definitely space for uniqueness in a home console.

This is the entertainment industry, so game designers have to have a creative mind and also have to be able to stand up against the marketing people at their company - otherwise they cannot be creative. There are not that many people who fit that description.

To create a new standard, you have to be up for that challenge and really enjoy it.

Today, there are many, many ways to entertain people in one single videogame. And the Internet has made it so easy for people to ask for clues.

Up until now, the biggest question in society about video games has been what to do about violent games. But it's almost like society in general considers video games to be something of a nuisance, that they want to toss into the garbage can.

What I found is that just in the lifestyle today, people have fewer and fewer opportunities to get exercise.