16
Paper Mario – 2000 Developer Interviews | Shmuplations
(shmuplations.com)
There were rejected badges too. In one of them, Mario would get into a “berserk” state where you couldn’t give him commands, but his attack power would shoot way up. For some reason though, that badge made him turn green when he was berserk. The programmer who created it was a Luigi fan, and I guess that idea was that if Mario became Luigi it could be very dangerous. (laughs)
Ooh, thanks for the tip—never heard of that book, but I'll have to check it out! I always loved reading his Iwata Asks roundtable discussions with developers. The fact that he was still pitching in on programming efforts while he was President of HAL Laboratory is a testament to him never losing sight of his game developer roots. Polar opposite of someone like Reggie Fils-Aime—I guess we can thank for some good memes, but I watched a long-form interview with him recently and he comes off as a total business ghoul.
In the meantime, I can recommend these two shmuplations interviews with Satoru Okada^[Bio blurb: "Although his name is not well-known here, Satoru Okada designed (or co-designed with Gunpei Yokoi) every Nintendo handheld from the Game & Watch to the Nintendo DSi XL"]:
https://shmuplations.com/satoruokada/
https://shmuplations.com/okada2022/
I think I'd only ever heard of him in passing, but he's quite the character! The first interview will give you a sense about his personality and background (and I think is a prime example of "If you want to create things, you should go out and experience life!"), while the second one is chock full of interesting anecdotes about his time at Nintendo.