#NakagoQuote
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Today is the 40th anniversary of Zelda 1!

Of all the Zelda titles, this is the one we know the MOST about; they've discussed it in interviews for years. Let's go down memory lane with some fun quotes

#Zelda
#TheLegendOfZeldaQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #TezukaQuote, #NakagoQuote, #KondoQuote
The Japanese logo for the first Zelda game, The Hyrule Fantasy
February 21, 2026 at 9:43 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Iwata on the time he gave programming advice to Nakago, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#BalloonFightQuote
#IwataQuote, #NakagoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Satoru Iwata, age 49. Programmer on Balloon Fight, President of Nintendo. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer on Balloon Fight, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Director & Producer of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Iwata: HAL Laboratory worked on the [Famicom] version of Balloon Fight while… Nakago: We worked on the arcade version. … We wondered why the player's movements were smoother on the home version and asked Iwata-san for advice. Iwata: That's when I told Nakago-san everything I knew. One thing I recommended was that instead of calculating the character's position using integers, they should also calculate it using decimal points, thereby doubling the precision. In this way, calculating gravity, buoyancy, acceleration and deceleration all become more precise and the movements look smoother. … Nakago: … I remember Miyamoto-san complaining: “Why do you have to go to another company to find this stuff out?” [laughs]
January 18, 2026 at 3:55 AM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Miyamoto, Iwata, & Itoi on lunch hangouts, 2011.

Source: Iwata Asks

#MiyamotoQuote, #IwataQuote, #ItoiQuote, #TezukaQuote, #NakagoQuote

iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/w...
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 58. Producer and co-director of the first Zelda and Super Mario games. - Satoru Iwata, age 51. President of Nintendo. - Shigesato Itoi, age 62. Creator of Earthbound. - Takashi Tezuka, age 50. Co-director of the first Zelda and Super Mario games. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 54. Programmer for the first Zelda and Super Mario games. QUOTE: Miyamoto: You stock up a lot of topics for "Iwata Asks" at lunchtime, right? Iwata: Yeah. Miyamoto-san has lunch with the same people almost every day—Takashi Tezuka-san and Toshihiko Nakago-san. It's been that way for quite a while. Itoi: Longer than our wives. Iwata: Yes, that's how long we've been eating together! [laughs] Miyamoto: It's true! [laughs] Iwata: About once a week, I join them and listen in. If I think something sounds interesting, I remember it and use it in "Iwata Asks.”
May 10, 2026 at 10:36 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
It's the 39th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda!

Nakago on the first draft of Zelda 1's map, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#TheLegendofZeldaQuote
#NakagoQuote, #TezukaQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/fe5e8d856abc...
PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. The Legend of Zelda (1986) Programmer. - Takashi Tezuka, age 49. Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda (1986). - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 57. Producer & Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda (1986). QUOTE: "Nakago: And this is the first land map for Zelda. Back then we had some long paper, and Tezuka-san and Miyamoto-san would sit side by side and draw together. You drew the stuff on the left, Tezuka-san, and the right side is Miyamoto-san’s. If you look closely, you can tell how marker was used to make small dots. These are rocks, and these are trees. And you can see Miyamoto-san’s personality. At first he’s making individual dots, but as he gets tired of it, toward the top, he just fills in a bunch of space! Aonuma: Yeah, the left and right sides do look different. Tezuka: They really are different somehow." A small image of a black and white pencil drawing of the Zelda 1 map. It is remarkably close to how the final map ended up. You can tell that it was drawn in slightly different styles on the right vs the left side of the map.
February 21, 2025 at 6:34 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Tezuka & Nakago on the happy accident that led to the 2nd Quest in Zelda 1, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#TheLegendofZeldaQuote
#TezukaQuote, #NakagoQuote, #IwataQuote

iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/d...
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 49. Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda (1986). - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for The Legend of Zelda (1986). - Satoru Iwata, age 49. 4th President of Nintendo. QUOTE: Tezuka: Basically, we were going to make lots of dungeons using one square per room, and lay them out like a jigsaw puzzle. Nakago: Right. Tezuka-san said, “I did it!” and brought this to me. I created the data exactly in line with it, but then Tezuka-san made a mistake and only used half of the data. I said, “Tezuka-san, there’s only half here. Where did the other half go?” and he was like, “What?! Oops, I messed up…” But Miyamoto-san said it was fine just like that. So, using the half of the memory that was left over, we decided to create the Second Quest. Iwata: Huh? Just wait a second. If Tezuka-san hadn’t messed up, there’d have been no Second Quest? Nakago: Yes, that’s right.
May 12, 2026 at 9:56 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago on the first time he met Miyamoto, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#DonkeyKongQuote, #ExcitebikeQuote
#NakagoQuote, #IwataQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Main Programmer on Excitebike, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Director of Excitebike, Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros. & The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Iwata: So your job was to port arcade games like Donkey Kong over to the Famicom? Nakago: That's right. Then around the time that job was coming to an end, someone I didn't know came up behind me and said: “You're Nakago-san, right?” And that turned out to be Miyamoto-san. Iwata: So even though you'd ported Donkey Kong across to the NES, you didn't know Miyamoto-san? [laughs] Nakago: I honestly didn't know anything about him! [laughs] At that time, I didn't even know that anyone by name of Miyamoto was working for the company. Then he came up to me and said: “We're going to be working on Excitebike together.”
November 27, 2025 at 6:20 AM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago & Miyamoto on collaborating as director and programmer in the 80s, 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #NakagoQuote, #TezukaQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/29a41fe961fd...
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Producer and Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 68. Lead Programmer of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Takashi Tezuka, age 64. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., Director of The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Miyamoto: Though Nakago-san is a programmer, I invited him to planning meetings [for Super Mario Bros.] with us. Aside from the music, it was the three of us for the most part. We did anything and everything we could. Nakago: When working on the programming, I even brought in Miyamoto-san and the others to devise how to structure the game data. We've always been involved in all sorts of things. Miyamoto: … It was my job to present game ideas that can be conveyed to programmers, and even before Super Marlo Bros., Nakago-san would get mad at me. It felt like he was my editor or something, saying, “If you continue doing this, it’s never gonna get done!” [Laughs]
November 9, 2025 at 4:44 AM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Iwata on Nakago & Tezuka's relationship with Miyamoto , 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#TezukaQuote, #NakagoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote, #IwataQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 48. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., co-director of The Legend of Zelda. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Director & Producer of of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Iwata: Now the two of you have lunch with Miyamoto-san on a more or less daily basis. I sometimes join you, which means that we've spent a lot of time together. But this is the first time we've ever spoken in this kind of formal setting. … You know, I always got the sense that you were suspicious that there was some kind of ulterior motive behind these interviews. [laughs] Tezuka: Well, I always thought it would be better to stay out of them. [laughs] Iwata: [laughs] Well, I asked you to join me for this interview because I felt that it was impossible to discuss the history of Mario without reference to the triangle formed by Miyamoto-san, Tezuka-san and Nakago-san."
February 11, 2025 at 12:51 AM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago & Miyamoto on the core team for Super Mario Bros., 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#NakagoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote, #TezukaQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/Nintendo-Mus...
PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 68. Lead Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Producer and director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Takashi Tezuka, age 64. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., co-director of The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Nakago: Going back to the first Super Mario Bros., it started with one person, and eventually there were about seven of us. That was huge in terms of the scale of programmers back then, but I can’t even imagine that now. Miyamoto: There were other people who supported us, but the main members drew the maps and the sprite images too. Tezuka-san was a newcomer, in his first or second year at the company at the time. I asked him to come up with all kinds of ideas and handle different tasks, and though Nakago-san is a programmer, I invited him to planning meetings with us. Aside from the music, it was the three of us for the most part. We did anything and everything we could.
August 13, 2026 at 9:10 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Iwata on Kirby and Miyamoto's long-held goal of multiplayer Mario, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#KirbySuperStarQuote, #MarioSeriesQuote
#IwataQuote, #NakagoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Satoru Iwata, age 49. Producer for Kirby Super Star. President of Nintendo. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer of The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros., and other Zelda titles. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer for Kirby Super Star, Creator of Zelda and Mario. QUOTE: "Iwata: [Multiplayer] is one of the ideas that he returns to with every Mario game. It's a fair while ago now, but I once went to see Miyamoto-san to propose an idea for [Kirby Super Star (1996)]. He then set me a task to work on, saying: ‘We keep trying it every time with Mario but just can't seem to pull it off. Why don't we try having a multiplayer mode in Kirby?’ Nakago: So even though you'd gone to propose an idea to him, Miyamoto-san actually turned the tables and proposed one to you? [laughs] Iwata: That's right. It was this, which led to the director on Kirby, Sakurai-san, to come up with the idea of having a two-player helper system and including it in the game."
January 26, 2025 at 10:25 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago on Miyamoto's direction for the length of Super Mario Bros. levels, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#NakagoQuote, #IwataQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Nakago: That's right. Miyamoto-san said to me right at the start [of Super Mario Bros.’ development]: ‘Make it so that a single level lasts about one minute.’ But with a regular game, you could run across a single screen in about one second. Iwata: If it takes a second to run across the screen, and you want it to last for a minute, you're going to need sixty screens. Nakago: That's why I asked: ‘Are we really going to make this many screens?’ Miyamoto-san responded by saying: ‘We're going to have all sorts of things going on in between, so twenty screens should be enough for a single level.’ At that time, I couldn't grasp what Miyamoto-san meant. "
December 5, 2024 at 6:12 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Iwata on the time he gave programming advice to Nakago , 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#BalloonFightQuote
#IwataQuote,#NakagoQuote,#MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Satoru Iwata, age 49. Programmer on Balloon Fight, President of Nintendo.. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer on Balloon Fight, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Director & Producer of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Iwata: HAL Laboratory worked on the [Famicom] version of Balloon Fight while… Nakago: We worked on the arcade version. … We wondered why the player's movements were smoother on the home version and asked Iwata-san for advice. Iwata: That's when I told Nakago-san everything I knew. One thing I recommended was that instead of calculating the character's position using integers, they should also calculate it using decimal points, thereby doubling the precision. In this way, calculating gravity, buoyancy, acceleration and deceleration all become more precise and the movements look smoother. … Nakago: … I remember Miyamoto-san complaining: ‘Why do you have to go to another company to find this stuff out
July 18, 2024 at 4:16 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Tezuka & Nakago on the level authorship process for Super Mario Bros., 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#TezukaQuote,#NakagoQuote,#MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 48. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros., Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer & Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Q: How did you create the levels [for Super Mario Bros.]? Tezuka: … We'd sketch a design for the level on a piece of paper then pass it on to SDR, saying: ‘Please make it look like this.’ Nakago: Tezuka-san or Miyamoto-san would draw the level on a huge sheet of graph paper and we would have to painstakingly enter the data by hand. … Every morning when I got to work, I'd be handed about twenty sheets of paper and be told to get on with it. … We'd spend the entire day poring over these notes and adjusting the map. Then at around ten at night when we'd finally finished, we'd burn the data to the ROM, at which point the two of them would play the level."
September 22, 2024 at 3:36 AM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago on what platform the first Zelda was originally planned for, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#TheLegendofZeldaQuote
#TezukaQuote,#NakagoQuote,#IwataQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Takashi Tezuka, age 48. Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: "Tezuka: I don't really remember when we first began Zelda. [laughs] But I know it started with the dungeons. Nakago: At the very start, we were developing the game using the arcade system. You mentioned it a little earlier, Iwata-san... Iwata: We're talking about the Nintendo Vs. System, right? Nakago: I remember that we started out using the Vs. System. Iwata: So it wasn't originally made for the Famicom Disk System."
August 15, 2024 at 8:16 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago on a vivid memory from Super Mario Bros.' development, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#NakagoQuote,#IwataQuote,#MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 56. Producer and Director of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Nakago: I can clearly remember right at the start of the development process [for Super Mario Bros.] when the blue sky appeared on the screen. Iwata: Games at that point almost always had black backgrounds, didn't they? Nakago: That's right. At that time, there was nothing displayed on the screen aside from the blue sky with white clouds and the ground but that image really jumped out of the screen and I thought: ‘This is incredible!’ … I'd never seen anything like it. When I saw that image, it was already late in the evening but I rang Miyamoto-san straight away, telling him: ‘We've come up with something amazing!’ [laughs]"
July 8, 2024 at 1:48 AM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago on where the firebars in Mario originally came from, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#SuperMarioBrosQuote,#TheLegendofZeldaQuote
#IwataQuote,#NakagoQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer on Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: "Iwata: It's surprising how many game fans aren't aware of this, but the first Super Mario and Zelda titles were made simultaneously, with the same staff. It's something that seems completely unthinkable now! [laughs] Nakago: Occasionally you'd get a transfer of ideas from one game to the other. For instance, there are bars of fire in Super Mario, aren't there? … Those first appeared right in the center of the screen in Zelda. Iwata: …Really!? Nakago: … We thought it would work better in Mario, so we transferred it across."
July 2, 2024 at 3:55 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago and Tezuka on the starting point for the first Zelda game, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#TheLegendofZeldaQuote,#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#NakagoQuote,#IwataQuote,#TezukaQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer for The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros.. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda, Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros.. - Takashi Tezuka, age 48. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: "Nakago: [The Legend of Zelda] began with the creation of the structure of the dungeons. There were about five mountains on the screen and you'd go into the middle of them and there'd be a dungeon. That was all there was to it. Iwata: So at the start it was a game where you only went around dungeons. Nakago: That's right. But partway into the development process, we thought: ‘It would be better to have over ground sections as well.’ So we began to make these sections afterwards. Tezuka: At that stage, we were making faster progress in developing Zelda, so we all thought it would come out before Super Mario Bros."
July 14, 2024 at 6:05 PM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Nakago & Iwata on business trips and parallel game development in the 80s, 2009.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#ExcitebikeQuote,#SuperMarioBrosQuote,#TheLegendofZeldaQuote
#NakagoQuote,#IwataQuote

www.notion.so/01d01475fc47...
PEOPLE: - Toshihiko Nakago, age 52. Programmer on Excitebike, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda. - Satoru Iwata, age 49. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: "Nakago: As Excitebike was being developed in Tokyo, I went on a lot of business trips there together with Miyamoto-san and we'd often stay over in a hotel. … There were times when it would be really hard to secure a hotel room. There were even times when we slept in the same bed. Iwata: …What!? [laughs] Nakago: That's how we made Excitebike. Then after that, we began to work on Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda at the same time. Iwata: … It's surprising how many game fans aren't aware of this, but the first Super Mario and Zelda titles were made simultaneously, with the same staff. It's something that seems completely unthinkable now! [laughs]"
June 29, 2024 at 5:18 PM