Earthbound was in trouble.
The game had been in dire straits for a long time now.
After years and years of development, it felt like the team were no closer to getting the
game working than they had been when they’d started.
When they’d begun developing for Nintendo’s new hardware, the SNES, they’d been among
the first to get the chance to build on this exciting, advanced gaming platform.
Now, many other projects had come and gone, and the little team were still struggling
to make something that even remotely worked.
The project’s leader, advertising superstar Shigesato Itoi, was struggling to get his
team organized enough to be able to complete Earthbound’s inner workings.
The game’s designers and artists had built a huge library of assets that were theoretically
complete, but the game’s coding was such a mess that nothing seemed to work right.
Earthbound had become increasingly expensive, and nobody knew how it could be fixed.
All hope seemed lost.
The higher ups at Nintendo were getting ready to bring the axe down on the entire project,
and cancel Earthbound outright.
Then, just as Shigesato and his team began preparing for the worst, the day was saved,
when a programming genius floated down from On High to fix everything.
This is the story of how Satoru Iwata single-handedly saved one of the most iconic roleplaying games
in Nintendo’s history.
Nintendo’s choppy approach to localizing Shigesato Itoi’s first game, Mother, probably
should have come as a warning sign.
The game had sold well in Japan, but translation into English for sale oversees had proven
difficult.
Nintendo wasn’t exactly well known for their roleplaying games at the time, and such a
big, complicated game with so much text required a large amount of time and effort to perfectly
translate into another language.
What’s more, Mother was filled with cultural references and jokes that didn’t exactly
translate well into foreign languages.
Many at Nintendo wondered whether the game’s appeal would even carry over into Western
markets in the first place.
While the translation was eventually completed, Nintendo actually decided against releasing
the game, instead choosing to bury their translation within their archives, and move on to different
projects.
It didn’t help that Mother was coming right at the end of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s
lifespan, and the company didn’t want to distract customers from the new, shiny Super
Nintendo that was the focus of their efforts at that time.
This was reflected in the development of Shigesato’s second game as well.
Mother 2 began life on the Famicom, but as Nintendo’s efforts shifted to the console’s
successor, the team was told that they’d have to scrap much of what they’d already
done in order to begin anew on the more complicated hardware.
This, it proved, was to be the first of many delays to the project.
The problem was that Shigesato wasn’t a game developer.
He had come to Nintendo as a writer, actor, and advertiser, with ambitions of making something
immersive and interactive, that was, above all, a story-based experience.
Even with one game under his belt, Shigesato wasn’t particularly computer literate.
He left the majority of the technical decisions to other members of his team, while focusing
on getting the story and visuals right.
This even extended to the way the game’s design was laid out.
Shigesato dictated the entirety of his game’s script, while another member of the team wrote
his dialogue into the computer.
Sometimes, when Shigesato saw his words on the screen in front of him, he’d scrap them,
getting his typist to delete them, and trying again with another line.
Sometimes, he’d spell things out letter by letter, especially when it came to the
weird names of some of his game’s characters.
While this wasn’t particularly efficient, the most useful element of Shigesato’s writing
method was that he could get instant feedback on what he was writing.
As he spoke, he’d watch his typist’s face to see the response he got.
If his typist smiled, laughed, or welled up with tears, Shigesato knew that he was on
the right lines.
This process ended up taking time, but Shigesato figured it was probably a lot quicker than
agonizing over every individual line in the game without having such tangible feedback
as he wrote the script.
Unfortunately, it also meant that while the project’s story and art assets were progressing
well, the technical underpinnings of the game weren’t falling into place as they should.
An almost entirely new team of developers and programmers had been assembled for Mother
2, so there wasn’t a lot of experience on the first game of the series to draw from.
These developers were having to figure things out from scratch – especially after the
jump to the Super Famicom.
With Shigesato storming ahead on the game’s design elements, his team of programmers found
themselves directionless, and they were trapped going in circles as they attempted to transform
the game’s ambitious, complicated roleplaying foundations and expansive world into something
that could be coded, organized, and built upon.
Years went by without progress.
While Shigesato had finished his game’s story and designs, there was no framework
to attach this to.
Every attempt from the programmers to build the systems that were needed seemed to end
in disaster.
Finally, after a lot of agonizing work, Nintendo’s higher ups began growing tired of the game’s
many, many delays and hiccups.
Shigesato and his team prepared for the worst, as they anticipated the cancellation that
was drawing near.
But Mother 2 didn’t get cancelled – instead, the project was saved at the last minute.
Satoru Iwata, President of HAL Laboratory, another company that worked closely with Nintendo
on various games, volunteered to help with the project.
He wasn’t going to step on Shigesato’s toes, but he knew how to program a game, how
to manage a team of coders, and how to fix projects that were going horribly wrong.
Shigesato accepted Satoru’s help, expecting the seasoned programmer to sweep in and repair
all the holes in his game’s code.
But instead, Satoru suggested something far more radical.
In order to get Earthbound to the point where it could be saved, the entire coding team
would need to throw away nearly everything they’d done thus far, and start work all
over again.
It seemed ludicrous to throw away so much work, and it left Shigesato with a tough decision
to take.
Did they keep working to patch up their existing game engine?
Or should the team ditch five years’ of coding work in order to trust Satoru Iwata?
Either way, the team had a lot of work ahead of them.
Satoru Iwata wasn’t pushy about his plans for Earthbound.
He’d looked over everything that Shigesato and the team had produced thus far, and he
wasn’t sure that continuing with the existing code was the best strategy.
As far as Satoru could tell, it would be easier to rebuild the entire game with a better foundation
than to continue struggling with a system that wasn’t fit for purpose.
Nevertheless, Satoru wasn’t about to tell Shigesato what to do.
This wasn’t his game, and he wasn’t in charge.
It wasn’t Satoru’s place to wade in and begin demanding that the team scrap everything
they’d already done.
Instead, he took Shigesato aside, and respectfully gave him some advice.
If they continued to use the existing system, it would take two more years to finish Earthbound,
but if the team started afresh with Satoru to guide them they could complete the project
in half that time.
Either way, Satoru insisted, he would support Shigesato in his decision.
This was his passion project, his baby.
Satoru would be there to assist him no matter what he decided.
Shigesato really appreciated Satoru’s honesty, and his gentle, supportive attitude.
He accepted the suggestion – Shigesato admitted that he didn’t have the best grasp of the
technical aspect of game making.
If his friend felt that he could get things done quicker by restarting the coding, then
perhaps it was best to trust someone who had a lot more experience in this field.
And so, Satoru set to work – but not in the way that Shigesato expected.
Instead of tackling any of the big, gaping holes in the project, Satoru started coding
a tool for implementing game content.
Shigesato was confused, but Satoru was in his element.
He presented the seemingly unimportant tool to the coding team, and showed them how it
worked, then explained what they could build with it.
Finally, he assigned them several tasks, and instructed them to use his self-made computing
tool in order to achieve them.
This kind of compartmentalized game making blew Shigesato away, but he was also astounded
by the way Satoru dealt with his team.
For years, Shigesato had been trying to manage the group, organizing their efforts into something
cohesive.
Satoru clearly had a plan in his head for how things should be organized, and could
break down the project into smaller, more achievable chunks that he could then assign
to groups within the larger team in order to help things run smoothly.
Everything Satoru said and did was presented with the utmost respect for the teams’ skills.
He knew what they were capable of, and knew where they needed help in order to stretch
themselves and achieve their goals.
To a certain extent, Satoru was treating project management in the same way that he treated
the process of coding.
He had a desired outcome, and made sure to break down and organize the team’s resources
and talents in order to make it happen.
The group’s problem before had been in communication.
They hadn’t known specifically what they needed to do, and so they’d struggled to
deliver the needed results.
Satoru saw each member of the team as a process within a piece of code; without clear instructions,
they couldn’t work as they needed to.
Thus, Satoru didn’t blame these coders for failing to build Earthbound the first time
around.
Shigesato had, very understandably considering his background, merely been unable to explain
what they needed to do.
Satoru provided the structure that the team needed to organize the code, and he left Shigesato
to implement the specifics of his creative vision.
The two made an excellent pair, and within no time at all, the looming threat of cancellation
faded as Mother 2 began to take shape.
Finally, the game was finished.
In fixing the project, Satoru had managed to achieve in mere months what Shigesato had
struggled to do in years.
Shigesato was blown away with the speed and efficiency that his team were capable of with
Satoru to guide them, and similarly, Satoru was very impressed with the deep, emotionally
powerful story that Shigesato had created within this game.
Mother 2 was released to Japan, and Earthbound hit American shelves not long after.
The game became one of Nintendo’s most iconic titles.
While Earthbound initially struggled to find an audience in the West, in large part due
to a bizarre marketing campaign that didn’t do a great job of communicating the game’s
quirky, heartfelt yet comedic story, it took a few years for English speaking fans to really
engage with the game.
Eventually, though, fans began to embrace the title in their millions.
Earthbound became a phenomenon, with fans worldwide falling in love with its odd sense
of humor, its complex themes, and its unique gameplay mechanics that were unlike anything
gamers had seen before.
All of the hard work that had gone into Earthbound paid off.
Shigesato Itoi got to see his vision realized, as the game became a cultural touchstone for
a generation of gamers.
Satoru Iwata had saved the day, as he had done before, and would do many times again.
His practical, caring, understanding managing style, paired with his own coding brilliance,
had helped to turn an ailing project into one of Nintendo’s greatest achievements.
The moral of the story is that if at first you don’t succeed, it doesn’t mean you
should give up.
Sometimes, as we work to learn new skills, improve ourselves, and develop our talents,
we may find ourselves hitting a wall, as we’re unable to continue progressing.
It’s easy, when trials come our way, to give up, throw in the towel, and decide that
some things are just too hard to achieve.
Or, alternatively, we might belligerently keep pushing forward, dead set in our ways
even though our stubbornness is getting in the way of our own success.
It takes a lot of patience, wisdom, and self-control to change direction.
Sometimes, all that we need is a fresh perspective, and a new approach, in order to overcome the
pitfalls that stand between us and our goals.
If you find yourself stuck, if you’re not able to progress and develop as you’d like,
and if you just can’t quite get things to go your way, remember the example of Satoru
Iwata.
Sometimes, the best solution is to take a moment to breathe, take stock of your situation,
and consider an alternative way to move forward.
Seek help from others where necessary, think hard about your goals and what needs to be
done to achieve them.
Sometimes, by trying a fresh approach to an old problem, you may find a solution that’s
been in front of you all along.