00:01Welcome to Nintendo Power Podcast! This episode, we'll talk with the creators of Celeste about their hit Nintendo Switch platformer, plus more with our panel

00:14My name is Chris Slate

00:28As I said, this episode we're gonna talk to Matt Thorson and Noel Berry about their indie platforming game, Celeste, which if you love the really challenging parts of Super Mario games, or even games like Super Meat Boy, then you really need to check this game out

00:41It released about a month ago and got rave reviews, and went straight to number one on the Nintendo eShop best sellers list

00:47I've been playing it pretty much non-stop, even though it tends to kick my butt a lot

00:52We'll also cover the usual ground with pros picks, the warp zone game quiz, players pulse, and more

00:58And joining me for this episode are two members of the Treehouse, Reiko Ninomiya, who is the director of localization

01:01Hi, Rico

01:04Hi, thanks for having me

01:06Thanks for being on the show

01:09And Tim O'Leary, the senior manager of localization

01:11Hey Chris, thanks

01:12Welcome to the show, Tim

01:14All right, we've got a lot to get to, so let's get started

01:16First up is pros picks

01:18Now, this is usually where we talk about games that we're currently playing, but since we're coming up on March 3rd, which will be the 1st anniversary of the release of Nintendo Switch

01:23I thought it might be fun to take a look back at the games that we played the most during that first year, the games that really defined Nintendo Switch for us in its first year

01:34So Reiko, I'd like to start with you, what were the games that really just captivated you on Nintendo Switch this year? Okay, so I think like many people out there, I dove right into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, spent many, many hours playing that one, started to dip my toe into DLC, and then actually got caught up in Super Mario Odyssey, so then that kind of took my Attention for a bit, so I'm still enjoying both of those, still working my way through

02:00And then one that I've been playing with my daughter, which is one of my favorite things, when, one of my favorite ways to enjoy playing games is playing with my kids, but she and I have been playing Stardew Valley together

02:18She's like a total expert in that game, but yeah, I've spent quite a few hours turning away on those three games

02:25But over the weekend, I played some Golf Story and also played some Fe

02:30I just got Golf Story myself, but I've only just started

02:36Have you played it very far? What do you think so far? I've played it for a Couple hours, I'm really enjoying it

02:42I think the story is really cute, the characters are really sweet, it levels up at a certain point, it ramps up, but yeah, I'm enjoying it, it's a good time

03:05Cool

03:28Well, Tim, how about you? What were the games that really just dominated your time in that first year? You know, when you were, when Rico was giving her sort of run-through of it, I was trying to, you know, rack my brain to think of exactly what I played the most of, and I think like most people, of course, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has by far dominated my play time, but you know, I sort of split my time between work and at home, and while I'm at Work, you know, I have to play everything, not have to, I get to play everything, that's one of the great joys of this job, but I want at home, I like to play also with, with my son, or watch my son play, or he watches me play, and we've been doing a lot of Splatoon too, you know, every time with every weekend when there's a Splatfest, sometimes we're on the same side, sometimes we're not, and if you know he is, when he chooses incorrectly, I just try to, you know, not let him play, of course, because he's so much better than I am, he automatically puts my team at a disadvantage, but yeah, so I would say definitely The Legend of Zelda, Splatoon

03:51To obviously played a lot of Mario Kart Wii, played Super Mario Odyssey, of course, and lately, since we're talking about stuff that we've just started, over the weekend, I actually started playing Night in the Woods, and I'm only a couple hours in, but it's, it's got such style, it's a, it's a really fun game to play, and it made me laugh out loud a lot, and again, I sat on the couch and my son sat next to me and was reading the dialogue out loud, and so it was, it was a good experience

04:23I think that's one of the things that overall they really defined Nintendo Switch for me so far as, and you can see it as we talk about the games we've been

04:28Spending the most time with this mix of like huge Nintendo franchises, but also these smaller indie games, or games that maybe, you know, don't have the biggest brand name, but, you know, are soaking up in a lot of cases just as much time as, as, you know, for example, like a Super Mario Odyssey, which I put a ton of time into

04:46But you look at some of these other games that I've been playing, some of these indie titles like Shovel Knight, again, even had it on other platforms, and, and now I'm Celeste, and it that really racks it up too

04:59And so I feel like the Nintendo Switch is this perfect mix of all those different types of games

05:05Completely agree, and one thing I know that in my travel, when I do, you know, undock and take it with me, I find myself gravitating towards things that I can play quickly, and, you know, that I don't have to sink into for a couple hours

05:11So I've also been playing a lot of Golf Story

05:18Mmm, that game's just a heck of a lot of fun

05:24Yeah, I, I played that one all the way through, and I, you know, thinking about this, this today, I actually looked at my play data on my profile page on my Nintendo Switch, and, and saw that for Golf Story, I played it for about 20 hours, and, and Ricky, you mentioned Stardew Valley, I've played that for about 10 hours

05:30Which, for that game, really isn't, that's just getting started

05:37I'm like 60 hours into it

05:43Wow

05:49And so that, for me, my top games, again judging by this play data here, was, was the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, again no big surprise there, over 170 hours for me, and I still have plenty of shrines to find, lots more to do

05:55Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, over 70 hours, which if you add that to how much I played it on Wii U, I've probably played that game for like versions ever, if like 250 hours at this point

06:08And, and then I did everything you could do in Super Mario Odyssey, and that took me over 65 hours

06:13So, so, um, you know, that's a lot for, for three

06:17Games, not not to mention all the other ones, that's a lot of weekends

06:22Yeah, I noticed them

06:28I've got, I've got over a hundred, 110 hours on Breath of the Wild now, and what really kind of changed things for me was the hero's path

06:33I was actually really worried when that DLC became available to see like what kind of crazy, because I feel like you can really take a sneak peek into someone's psyche by looking at the path that they take

06:44I noticed that when I complete a shrine, I tend to run like straight out of the shrine, like, you know, someone crossing the finish line in a race, probably my hands in the air, like live and I don't like go behind the shrine, so there's like all the unexplored territory that I have in the game is like behind the shrine

07:04I'm missing so much of that game, so yeah, so that's allowed me to to kind of explore further, kind of a cool thing

07:11Yeah, my my son came home and said, "Why don't we have the DLC?" and like, we do, me

07:17And he was like, "Wait, what?" and I can't get him off it now, so that's all he's been doing, but watching him play made me realize that I hadn't asked, has I hadn't proceeded as far in the production version, you know, I'd played it in the office so much that I turned it back on and he immediately started

07:33Trash-talking me, he's like, "How come you only have four hearts?" Yeah, what, you haven't even, you know, you're barely off the Great Plateau

07:39So over the weekend, in addition to Night in the Woods, I actually, I got, I cleared two of the Divine Beasts, and you know, I think I'm up to six hearts now, and so he's, he's given me a little bit more respect, but yeah, that DLC adds so much to it

07:48Yeah, it absolutely does

07:56One of my favorite things that I've done so far in that game was actually with the first DLC pack, got that super maxed out Master Sword, which was really hard to do, to go through all those sorts, a legit, you know, I've made it by

08:04The skin of my teeth, and now it just, like, every time I play the game, makes me want to play it even more, like, well, I did that, like nothing could be harder than that, so surely I've gotta finish everything else off

08:16Yeah, I was actually talking with Raiko last week about the, the Lionel's and how hard they are to, to beat, and I'm watching my son play, and he, you know, casually, you know, jumps back out of the way, gets the flurry attack, it takes down the Lionel, and, you know, like five minutes, a Blood Moon pops up, he hangs out and waits for the Lyell to respawn so that he can beat it again, you know, I see one of the game and I can't run away

08:39fast enough, but I'm looking forward to, you know, maybe one day catching up with him

08:46I know I see everybody do these great combos and and and things on the Lionel's, and I'm still the chicken who just always makes sure that I have plenty of ancient arrows, doctor

08:52There's one hit kills, same thing, and I just take photos and leave

08:57I think it was some blurry photos of like me almost about to be killed by several Lionel's, even just snapping a shot of them is is tricky

09:07Now I'd like to move on to warp zone, which is, if you don't know, it's a it's a quiz where I give you a few hints and then we see if you can guess some games that came out for Nintendo systems ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, and you know, I warned the panel last episode that that particular installment of the quiz was going to be really tough, and I'm sorry to say, I think this one's even tougher, so so best of luck

09:32There aren't a lot of games that came out in the month of February to look back on, so uh, we'll do our best here

09:38Okay, we're gonna start with ten years ago, this is February of 2008, and here are the clues: Square Enix put a new twist on a beloved franchise with a first-person action RPG for Wii in which the player swung their Wii Remote controller to slash

09:53Slimes with a sword, any guesses? No

09:58Can you read the last clue? They do, they stay slashed, flying

10:03Yes, my Dragon Quest, there you go, slime

10:08So I thought he said lines, I'm sorry, slash lines, that's a totally great quest

10:11My guys halfway there, Tim, it's all on you

10:15Oh, I'm looking for a Dragon Quest game where you were, you actually swing your Wii Remote like a sword

10:19It's more of a, more of a deep cuts title in the Dragon Quest series

10:25I'll just go ahead and say it, it's Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors

10:30Oh my, so again, that's a little bit of an advanced level there

10:34Yeah, alright, alright, if it gets harder

10:38From here out, we may have to, like, cut this whole section

10:42I think, I think the next one might be a little harder, I apologize

10:48Don't worry, I think we've all, we've all got a shot before it ends

10:5320 years ago, February of 1998, Konami published a game for Nintendo 64 that was a return to the sport they had visited over a decade earlier with Double Dribble

10:58None like Double Dribble, this game had polygonal graphics and real players

11:04Any guesses as to what this Konami Double Dribble-ish basketball 4 game for N64 could have been? Triple Dribble? It's basketball, that's as close as I was gonna get right now

11:13This one was NBA in

11:21The zone 98, which is a tough way, clearly not in the zone, know what you're out of the zone as you can get

11:27Would you guys have heard of Snowboard Kids for N64? The name, yes

11:32Okay, play it

11:36Yes, that also came out in February of that year, so maybe we should have gone with that when it's dead

11:40All right, last one, February of 1998, this is 30 years ago

11:44Konami published a classic side-scrolling action game for the NES in which two shirtless soldiers used an array of weapons and an iconic cheat code to defeat an alien invasion led by the evil Red Falcon

11:55Any guesses on this one? I'm gonna let Rico go for the answer

11:59That's right, it's

12:04Contra, well done

12:08Hey, finally, see, I'm really old

12:12You have to go way back to actually get anything before my time

12:16That was, well, I should have known

12:20It's time entering school, and I was actually living in Japan

12:23This stuff, even if you remember these games from that long ago, it's to just dredge something up from after 30 years is, is tricky

12:29I like to bring up, and I like to pretend that I knew all of these games, but actually, most of them I wouldn't have unless I'd looked them up

12:36So, I think for that, when that was, that was Walden

12:40You got the most important game

12:44Now we're going to move on to players' poults

12:49Now, this is where we

12:54Answer a selection of questions from the listeners, and we're gonna start with Curtis, who asks quite simply, what is your favorite Nintendo game of all time? It's an easy question, but I think very hard to answer

13:00That is a very hard question

13:05Boy, you know, it's difficult

13:10I'd have to maybe divide it between pre-Nintendo employment and post-Nintendo employment

13:14Okay, I think the games that I played the most before I, before I started working here, was Mario Kart on Super Nintendo Entertainment System, mm-hmm, the original, yeah, and the battle mode racing, you know, just popping balloons, playing with my friends

13:29That was probably the game I sunk the most hours into, so I think that kind of equates to favorite at that point

13:40After we're after starting work here, it's, it's really hard because we see games changed so much from when we, when they first come in to us to the final production version, and they all have a bit of a special place

13:54I think for us, just to name a couple that really stand out, we'll go back to Mario Kart, Mario Kart Double Dash

14:00Hmm, absolutely love that game

14:07I love the two-player, or the two, the two drivers, I guess, one driver, you switch out, anyway, they'd be able to switch and grab another item was fantastic

14:12And I love those courses

14:18The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and the first Animal Crossing for GameCube, I think we're probably right up there, I think mainly because the localization experience was just tremendous on both of those titles

14:24Yeah, we just had a great time working on them

14:31Yeah, I would say my favorite game of all time is The Legend of Zelda, the original

14:36Oh, wow! Yeah, the reason being, and this is such a goofy reason to really like a game, but it's my reason, so it's okay

14:43It's the first game that I have an older sister, it was the first game that I can get further than her, I think, but yeah, so that would be probably my Favorite game of all time? Well, you know, we also played together, and lots of good memories playing together, that game

15:07But like, you know, similar to what Tim was saying, I certainly have, you know, games that are very near and dear to me since working at Nintendo, but because Tim's here with me, I'm gonna say Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, haha

15:20This too, kind of a silly, goofy reason, but we have these intense internal tournaments

15:29We haven't had one recently, but we used to do, you know, these internal tournaments, and so Tim and I actually represented the Treehouse at one of the tournaments

15:35I don't know if you remember this

15:41I know that we did four double, we did four double, but I feel like we did as well, we might have been four Jungle Beat, and we also did, you know, just Donkey Konga

15:47Yes, we did Donkey, oh yeah, Donkey Konga, yeah

15:54Well, yes, I just remember like Jungle Beat, like, you know, where you would just have to hit the bongos really, really fast and just collect as many bananas as you could

16:00I remember practicing in the Treehouse and like sitting on the floor with these, you know, with the drums and like just sweating and like having these competitions to see who could grab the most, but just good fun, just a good time

16:11This is criminally

16:23Underrated, fantastic

16:34Yeah, for myself, I'd have to say it's, it's an impossible question to answer for sure, but I, I settled on Super Mario World as my journal answer years and years ago, and I've kind of stuck with it, although if I really thought about it, like honestly, I felt like Super Mario Odyssey might now be my favorite Super Mario game, but I think maybe in terms of all-time favorite, I have to let that game kind of have to marinate on that a little bit more for a couple more years before I can really swap that out with Super Mario World

16:45I mean, we've been on it, we've been really lucky, I think we've had a really Good run in the last couple years of some fantastic games, but I think you're right, they need to, you know, age a little bit to make sure they, they stand up

16:58Yeah, it's always tough, and you guys touched on this a little bit too, with, you know, it's a part of how you remember a game, and how you kind of, you know, classify it on that top list, is, is the experience you had when you first played it, or, or experiences you had with it later on

17:10And so, you know, are you, are you kind of comparing, you know, you're, you know, nostalgia versus, you know, more objectivity of lucky games feature said it's absolutely, you know, you could really make

17:20That list a million different ways

17:30I have so many games that would not fall in anyone else's top 10 or top 5, just because of the way that I enjoyed them, not necessarily because there are great games by any sort of metric that, you know, the universe has put in place to measure games

17:40It is all about the feelings that they bring back, those memories that they dredge up, not dredges, it sounds negative, but yeah, you know what I'm saying

17:44Absolutely

17:47All right, well, let's move on to the next letter

17:51This comes from Zachary

17:55He asks, if you could take a vacation inside of a game, which game would you choose and why? All right, another

17:59Goofy answer from me, I think this will make sense to people who, who kind of know me and know what I'm interested in

18:08I'm gonna say Luigi's Mansion

18:18That's perfect because I like kind of spooky, like growing up, I liked spooky things, so yeah, Luigi's Mansion, I think, would be a really fun place for me to vacation, not that I'm like super courageous and would, like, be the first one to go into the rooms

18:28I would definitely be, like, pushing Luigi into the room first to go check it out before, you know, following behind him, but, and this explains so much

18:33I'm guessing you could get a great discount on that travel package

18:38Yeah, sure you

18:43know, I'm sure E

18:48Gadd would cut me some kind of deal or something, but if he gave me that, the Poltergust, he'd get a look, you know, you don't walk up and, you know, hand against the vacuum cleaner, you know

18:53I, of course, I want to say something, you know, like, I wanna do at a Hyrule, but, you know, I'm not, that's just dumb

18:57I'd die in like the first five minutes and it would be awful

19:02Yeah, there's, you know, this question for me, I think I'd have to go to Wii Sports Resort because Wuhu Island would be just the best place

19:07You can go wakeboarding, you can go canoeing, you can play golf, frisbee golf, I mean, it's, it's fantastic, that'd make sense because Tim is one of the most athletic and active people that I know

19:14Yes, let him know

19:22But yeah, it would be wonderful, that would be the best place I think ever to take a vacation

19:30Well, I gotta say that would be my new favorite answer, but since I didn't think of it before you, I'm gonna give you the one I'd written down, which is Delfino in Super Mario Sunshine

19:38There you go

19:46I just love the music, I left a little little hub area in the town, and you know, and I guess in video games or in real life, my favorite vacation spots tend to be on the more tropical side, so if it wasn't Delfino, it would probably be Seaside Kingdom

19:54And Super Mario, D.S.I., or I'm feeling nostalgic, maybe Startropics on the NES

19:58Nice, nice

20:02And all that fruit, all those vendors in Isle Delfino, in the courtyard, or just look fantastic

20:05They're all that fruit, I just want to eat it

20:09Oh yeah, plus you can just run around shooting, you know, your water packet at everyone and just see what their reaction is

20:14There you go

20:19All right, Dave asks what opening sequence or lead-in to a title screen of an NES or Super NES era game you you the most nostalgic feels personally

20:22Mine are Metroid on NES and Secret of Mana on Super NES

20:26Nice

20:29And when I say personally, that was actually Dave, not Not me

20:33Oh, okay, okay, good job, Dave

20:36I was like, nice, good job, Chris

20:40Well, he had the best answer right away, you know

20:44I'm gonna have to go back to Mario Kart

20:48I think Mario Kart, the original, you know, watching the racers come in from left to right, and every once in a while somebody else shoot a shell, is the double, you'll drop a banana, and they'll spin out, and the music is amazing

20:52Mm-hmm, yeah, that's a good one

20:59Me and the first Zelda is good, go to that theme music is so iconic

21:06I gave this one some thought while Tim was talking there, actually some theme music popped into my head, Donkey Kong Country

21:13Oh, putting sequins there with Cranky Kong, and he's like, I think he's got like that, what is it called, of like a grandma phone, or grandma phone, is that what those are called? I don't even know

21:19And he's like cranking it, uh-huh, and all of a sudden Donkey Kong like pounces on him

21:26Oh yeah, do you remember that? And he like, I think he does like this goofy dance

21:32Oh yeah, I have to go back and watch it after this, but yeah, so that probably is one of my favorite lead-ins, and the reason that really stuck with me is I used to play that in college

21:43It came out when I was in college, and my friends and I would go out at night, and we'd all come back, you know, go back to, you know

21:49Come back to my house and, you know, I had a Super Nintendo, and, you know, we'd plug it in, and like people would like start falling asleep, and then I'd be like the last one just playing Donkey Kong Country by myself in the wee hours because I couldn't really sleep

22:02I was a total night owl in college, but I just remember that music just takes me back to those times, good times

22:09Makes me think of the DK rap from Donkey Kong 64, it could probably be a pretty funny opening as well

22:14[Music] Not to check that one out too

22:19For me, I guess I would say, for me, I think Ninja Gaiden, because back then, you know, I don't know if like Younger generations of gamers realized, but back then, you didn't really have these big cinematic scenes in games, and Ninja Gaiden was the first one I played where you had that, and it opens with this animated scene of like these two ninjas facing off under the night sky, and then they kind of run toward each other and leap up and kind of clash in front of the moon

22:52It was just so cinematic, and it started telling a legitimate story, and I wasn't expecting that, and it just made the game, as fun as the action of the game was, it made the game so much cooler, and so that always sticks out in my mind too

22:58Then my second, my runner-up, was actually gonna be The Legend of Zelda

23:05Like I think you mentioned, Tim, I love how when it scrolls up before the title screen, it shows you all of the little items and weapons you can get in the game

23:11Yeah, so even when I was like midway through the game, I would sometimes like save the game and go back and look at that and kind of pick out the little items I hadn't found yet and try to figure out where they were hiding

23:17That game was so hard, it was so good though

23:24Yeah, it was a game you really needed like a lot of tips for, but back then you couldn't, there wasn't the internet so you couldn't

23:30Just go find out, so you really had to go to like school or work the next day and like talk to your friends and kind of put your heads together

23:36Yep

23:42All right, last up is Michael who asks, so we've heard what it's like working for Nintendo, we actually spoke about that last episode, but how did you get there? Any tips for someone who wants to work for a Nintendo? I'm just gonna jump in straight away and say that probably, you know, the best way is simply to go to Nintendo.com, in the corporate info section, and look at the job listings, because that's actually how I found the job that I currently have

24:05I'd started, you know, I was a back on Nintendo Power magazine for a few years, but that was when it was actually published by a different company in partnership with Nintendo, so, you know, it wasn't until a couple of years ago that I actually landed here at Nintendo itself

24:23So, so how did you guys kind of get started here, and how did that journey go once you got here? I grew up in Seattle, but I actually moved away after college

24:37I actually moved to Japan

24:52The reason I went to Japan is because I actually minored in Japanese in university, because I knew I wanted to work and use my Japanese, but I also knew that the Japanese I was speaking at home is Probably not the Japanese that you necessarily would use in a professional environment, so I wanted to make sure that I had at least, you know, a foundational understanding of, you know, professional Japanese, but then, you know, I was like, "Hey, why don't I, I'm just gonna move to Japan, see what happens?" And so I did

25:01I worked there for a few years, and then I came back

25:11I did not work at Nintendo, though, but I took, I was able to leverage that experience in applying at Nintendo

25:16I knew that Nintendo was here

25:22I think a lot of people don't know, even in the Seattle area, that Redmond, or it's located in Redmond, and always

25:27headquarters are located in Redmond, but I knew that was a thing, an option potentially for me, so I submitted an application

25:34The thing is, I did not get hired for that position

25:37Um, Bill Trinen and Tim O'Leary were part of that interview process

25:40They decided not to bring me on

25:43Look, it's all Bill's fault

25:49I'd hire her today, but you know, I didn't, I didn't give up

25:54I kept my eye on, you know, the openings list, and you know, I watched to see if there were any other potential opportunities for me

26:00Nothing came up, but I was really lucky in that they called me, a position opened up that they thought I would be better suited for, so you

26:07know I came in again for another interview, and that was 15, 16 years ago now, so my recommendation would be to not give up

26:14Yeah, so we brought Reiko in, in the new position, not the not the original position, and then after a while we're like, actually, you know, that position that she didn't get, she's actually perfect for that, and so we she switched to that job anyway, so I think that that tenacity, you know, proved out

26:30It's been obviously a great fit for myself, you know, sort of similar

26:38I didn't grow up speaking Japanese, but I did study some Japanese in college, moved to Japan correctly after school, I was there a long

26:44time, almost eight years, came back to the Seattle area because I had friends here

26:50I had no idea Nintendo was even located here, answered an ad in a newspaper for a job, which I did not get hired for

26:56Luckily, one of the folks that I interviewed with said, you know, maybe not this job, but very similar, you know, maybe somewhere else

27:07And at that time, there was an opening in our legal department, they needed a bilingual there

27:14I had no experience or background in legal, but I did end up getting hired and legal, worked there for about a year, and then one day I was introduced to Bill Trenin

27:20Bill and I went to the same university

27:27Even though I'm a couple years older than he is, and he asked if I wanted to translate, localize a game manual, so I got an N64 at my desk with Mario Tennis

27:34I played it for about three days, I localized the manual, and then promptly put in my notice at legal and transferred into the Treehouse because that job was tremendously fun, and I've been there for forever now

27:48I'm coming up on, boy, 19 years, wow, 18 years

27:56So, but it's terms of like how to get to Nintendo, you know, I think really, you know, whatever job that you are aspiring to, whether it's a job in finance, whether it's the job in marketing, whether it's a job in advertising, IT support, audio-visual support, like the folks who are putting together this podcast for us, if you are passionate about something, and you happen to also love Nintendo, as you said, you know, check out our website and see what jobs are available, and then just keep pushing, keep trying

28:26Like I said, I was very lucky, I kind of stumbled into this job, but it's been wonderful, as you can see by almost two decades of being in the building

28:32They've tried to get rid of me, but it hasn't worked

28:37You're too good at Mario Cart

28:43Well, actually, I'm the one that they can all beat, so they're like, yeah, keep that guy around, like the rest

28:49of us feel better

28:56[Music] Before I let you guys go, I thought I would bring back another section from Nintendo Power magazine called game forecasts

29:02As you might expect, this is where we look at upcoming games, and I thought I would really quickly run through some of the new releases that are currently scheduled for next month

29:07I'm starting on Nintendo Switch on February 27th, which is right about the time this podcast should post, we've got Payday 2 from Starbreeze Studios and Overkill Software

29:13Then on February 28th, we've got Bridge Constructor Portal from Headup Games

29:19On March 1st, we've got Malacca

29:25Which is an action-adventure game from Lee ENSO on March 6th

29:31There's Scribblenauts Showdown from WB Games, and on March 16th, Kirby's Star Allies from Nintendo, and on March 20th, Attack on Titan 2 from Koei Tecmo

29:37And then for Nintendo 3DS on March 23rd, we've got Detective Pikachu published by Nintendo, and on March 27th, The Alliance Alive from Atlus

29:43Now, I see a lot of games on that list that I'm interested in, but what jumps out the most to you? I'm gonna have to get that Kirby game, because it's a multiplayer game again

29:56It's a great one to play with the family, so that's one that I'm sure I'll end up picking up

30:01Playing with my kids, Payday 2 also, I didn't mention this earlier, but another reason I like playing handheld games is because when you've got little ones, or sometimes it's nice to have, you know, something that you can play in the privacy of your own eyeballs

30:20So I have been dipping my toe into some of those, you know, more adult, you know, darker titles as well as a result of having the Nintendo Switch at my disposal

30:34That's really funny because, you know, I, you know, I have, my kids are a bit older, so we can play, I can play pretty much whatever I want to play, and and sometimes I said we just like to sit or multiplayer is

30:48Watching the other ones play, but the one that kind of pops out at me that I'm really excited about is actually Detective Pikachu

30:55I've heard such good things about this

31:02It sounds like it's utterly charming, and so I go against, I think, maybe typecasting and choose that as the game I'm looking forward to right at the moment, right? I'm interested in that one too, as well as Kirby Star Allies

31:08I was kind of a late comer to the Kirby series, but I really enjoyed Triple Deluxe, and then, and in Kirby Planet Robobot was probably my favorite, so you can't go wrong with Kirby

31:18Kirby is always fun, and that I've worked on several

31:28Different Kirby titles, I was lucky enough to work on in Kirby Air Ride and Kirby Squeak Squad, and they're just, you mean you just pick them up and you play them, you know what's going on, and it's always, always a good time

31:37So yeah, Star Allies is gonna be fun

31:46By the way, I liked your question the last episode about what, what, what does Kirby feel like, what is he made of, right? Yeah, what is he made of, what does he feel like? We had a bunch of unusual answers, I suppose, to that one

31:51Yeah, I like the cake pop answer

31:56Yeah, like, oh, aroma therapeutic too, nice

32:02He's just made of pure joy, yeah, warm, I don't know, move on toy

32:07tastes like a cake pop, so that brings us right back around

32:12Well, next up is my interview with the creators of Celeste, so break

32:16Oh, and Tim, I'm gonna let you go and you can get back to all your top-secret business at the Treehouse

32:20Thanks so much for joining me

32:23Thanks for having us

32:27Thank you so much, it's been a great time, this is fun

32:30Nintendo systems and platforming games go hand-in-hand, and one of the newest and most notable platformers is Celeste for Nintendo Switch

32:34We're now joined by the game's creators, Matt Thorson and Noel Barrie

32:37Guys, thanks for coming on the show

32:41Okay, yeah, thanks

32:45Yeah, I wanted to start off by talking about the incredible response that this game has seen

32:48I mean, it went straight to number one in Nintendo's eShop, and on Metacritic, calm, it's like the third highest rated Nintendo Switch game, only behind the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey

32:56So what if, what do you guys thought about the response of this game and, and maybe what about it has surprised you? You have been incredible

33:04We try not to put too much like stock into review scores, but at the same time, that's pretty cool to see, wasn't that a great thing you talked about? Yeah, the best has just been the amount of players, like messaging us and like tweeting about the game and like talking about their experience with it and what it meant to them and stuff, and it's just been really incredible to see that

33:28Now, how did the game get started? I mean, obviously you've worked on previous games, a lot of people would know you from TowerFall, but what were the particular, or what was the particular inspiration for Celeste, or maybe the goals that you had in creating that game? Well, originally we had, we wanted to just make a small game together just for fun a few, it was almost two years ago, we just wanted to make something in a few days really

33:52quickly some kind of platformer about climbing a mountain, so we kind of prototyped it out, and I think just like four or five days, and from there it really grew

33:58Yeah, it was just like a really small, we just wanted, we wanted to make something really small, so he started Celeste, and it ended up being this two-year project

34:05It kind of grew like way beyond what we thought it would be, and yeah, the theme of like climbing a mountain just sort of, just sort of came to us as like an easy thing to make a small game about, and then as we like expanded it into a bigger game, we found all these, you know, different elements of what

34:25Climbing a mountain could mean, and all these different ways to work with it

34:32Yeah, our original prototype name was just, so it was just Everest, because we just knew it was about climbing a mountain and overcoming that, and we didn't have, like, yeah, a ton of direction at the start

34:38And that's that kind of the first part, or maybe the first version of the game that you started with, is that what ended up being the kind of 8-bit version of the game get in the game and the Pico-8 game? Yep, totally

34:50And it's actually, you can play the Pico-8 game as well online for free, and you have, like, the whole time we were making the game

34:55It's been online for free as well, and yeah, a lot of people think we made that just to include it in the game, but that's the original prototype, actually

35:07Yeah, and Pico-8 actually looks like a tool you can use to make games, and so people want to make their own games, you know, of the same kind of size that that "Arcade's Lust" is, they can like 100% go online and just do that

35:15The tool's just called Pico-8

35:20So from a gameplay perspective, what made you settle on the, I mean, you have a relatively small move set in the game that you are then kind of encouraged to really make use of in a lot of different ways, so how'd you land on one jump? in that a mid-air dash, and, and in the climbing mechanic, yeah, it's really based on bouldering, like real-life rock climbing, and it was just trying to find like the most minimal possible move set that could sort of express the same thing, the same feelings I get when I'm in bouldering

35:50Yeah, and so there's a lot of like resource management with the climbing stamina, and then the air dash, and that kind of reminds me of rock climbing in a way, how you're trying to manage your like different grip strengths and your sort of endurance as you're on the wall, is that something you do bouldering? Yeah, I've kind of fallen off it

36:10During, well, no pun intended, kind of dropped off the wall there while we were developing the game

36:22The last few minutes are pretty intensive, yeah, we crunched pretty hard, so unfortunately, so I want to get back into it pretty soon though

36:29And how did you land on pixel art for the game? I know that that seems to be popular among a lot of indie developers, and myself being a retro game fan, I love it, but what was it? I would imagine I kind of compare this aesthetic more, I guess, towards 16-bit feel

36:41Yeah, I mean, it's something we're really comfortable with, it's something really like, like we like the visual style of pixel art

36:47A lot, just as an art style, it's something we really like, and then it's something also that our whole team is just comfortable in working with, and also excels

36:54And I think every one of the team has made, you know, quite a number of pixel art games, and it's something that we, we thought we could do really well specifically for this game, especially a game about, like, you know, fairly precision platforming

37:06Yeah, and that's another thing, it's like with the game where it's so precise, and like, you need to be clear where the hitboxes are and stuff, takes a large, really good for that kind of game because everything's kind Of blocky by nature, it's also sort of, you know, any time you don't have hyper realistic graphics, I feel like you have a little bit more of an impressionistic feel, which maybe, kind of, maybe I'm drawing things here that you didn't necessarily intend, but it seems to me that it kind of goes hand-in-hand with the games, with some of the feel and the themes of the games, which can be very introspective and surprisingly deep

37:36And, you know, I don't want to spoil any of the late game story or anything like that, but the more I played into the game, the more I was just really taken aback and surprised by how the types of conversations that these characters were having, right? Yeah, that that's an advantage of pixel art in general, is that the player fills in the details when you're low res, right? So you can kind of imply stuff, and then the player can sort of fill it in

38:00That's like something really creative, like almost any like very stylized art style is, you can kind of, yeah, do what we like, it doesn't have to be realistic, so you can kind of play with it and make it express the things you really wanted to express

38:18Yeah, and as the game, as you'd like, you're saying, as the story gets more sort of abstract and out-there matically, the the Art can do more abstract, weird stuff too, and the player doesn't really, like, if it was super realistic, it would be harder to, you know, suspend the player's disbelief, and that stuff starts happening

38:34And again, I don't want to get too into detail in the story and ruin things for people, but it was just so refreshingly different

38:44I just wanted to ask, you know, did the story component of it, was that something you kind of envisioned early on, or is that something that once the gameplay was nailed down, then you said, well, we need a story, because it seems like it was, it was so, you know, such an intrinsic part of the game

38:55Yeah, we didn't have it at the start, and it's sort of, we knew at the start that we wanted to make something more introspective, like TowerFall is a very sort of extroverted game and more like about, you know, parties and having fun with your friends, so we wanted to go the other direction and make something more introspective

39:15And as we just made the game, and sort of, you know, as you're making a game, you're trying to figure out what it's about to you, you know, like, and we just landed on these themes over time, and it really surprised us actually how big a part of the game the story was, and we ended up delaying the game

39:37Just so we could really, you know, do the story justice and, like he said, like intertwine it with all the gameplay properly

39:43We even went back and started like kind of reworking earlier parts of the game once, you know, Matt really pushed for this story, and once, once there was a lot more of that there in the game, we kind of went back to earlier chapters of the game and actually like revisited them, reworked them a little bit to make it flow better through the whole thing, because when we first started the concept, just like, oh, it's a game about climbing mountain, and there was that, there was always that idea of like

40:01That's a hard thing to do, and we want the gameplay to reflect the challenge, you know, that the player's going through

40:07But yeah, as the story developed, it became, yeah, way more of a, yeah, yeah, became important to go back and make it work everywhere

40:18Yeah, and I think, you know, you touched upon how the actual, the really challenging aspect of the gameplay really ties in nicely to the challenge that Madeleine is kind of facing in the story, and there's a lot of like self-doubt and a lot of, you know, can she do this and characters telling her she can't, and as the player, you feel that you're like, well, I've, you know, I'm making it this far, but I feel like one of the things that you balance well in the game is that, as someone who has played a lot of platforming games over the years, it was very challenging, but I never felt like I couldn't do it

40:51I always felt like I just had to keep pressing that much harder, and I feel like that's reflected in the story as well

40:56Oh, that's awesome, that's exactly what we're going for

41:00It's great that worked

41:05And, well, speaking of the challenge as well, I mean, it's one of those games where you can, you can lose a lot of lives on a stage, but you appear again instantly, and you've, you know

41:12Learned what not to do

41:18So, one of the things that you added was assists, so you don't necessarily have to be, you know, write off the, you know, the first time you play through a level, this perfect advanced skill to platformer

41:25You can kind of adjust it to your level, so can you talk a little bit about kind of, you know, why you added that functionality as well? So, as this mode came in actually fairly late in development, we, we always think about difficulty a lot, like for example, the strawberries in the game are like a way of adjusting the difficulty as well, but it, you can only make it harder for yourself at those

41:49It's like, if you want more of a challenge, you can go for the strawberries type thing, and so it became obvious that we had, like, a big blind spot for, like, players we just couldn't handle, like, even the minimum difficulty with no strawberries, and we saw, like, the conversation around some other indie games, like Cuphead in particular, and just, like, thinking about how, you know, games that are meant to be hard and how, like, the argument, sort of the debate around them, the conversation goes, we just were thinking about how we could accommodate more players with Celeste, and we had a few members on the team who are really Pushing us to, like, think about that, I'm really glad we did

42:30Yeah, it was a big discussion at the time because we, we had no intention of adding it originally, like, we're just making a hard platformer, and then it was, it was fairly late in development where we thought, no, this is something that, you know, we should make it more accessible to people, and we should find ways that everyone can enjoy it, especially because there's, you know, so much story and so much stuff that we think is really cool for people to see, letting them play it at their own pace, like, why would we, why would you not do that? Like, yeah, and it is kind of a

42:56Blind spot for me personally, because I'm, I've been playing platforms my whole life, so like, I do want to be accessible for everyone, but it takes, I have to see a lot of, you know, play testing and stuff to see people of lower skill levels play it to understand that

43:14Yeah, and it just, we just wanted players who, yeah, weren't like lifelong platformer players basically to be able to enjoy it at their own pace and do it in the way that's like not condescending, where like if the game's just a bit too fast for you, you can just turn it down to like 90% speed and that's fine, like the game is completely the same in every other way

43:28It's just a little bit slower and that kind of stuff

43:43Yeah, like how it's scalable that way, and because you can also give yourself more air dashes, but because you can kind of choose the number, or like you said, you can choose exactly how fast it goes, you can, you know, maybe start off raining all that stuff way back, making it, you know, fairly easy, but then you can start taking those away one piece at a time and, yeah, slowly making yourself better

43:58I, you know, I'm a sucker for punishment

44:05I even if I'm banging my head against a level for like an hour, I refuse to turn them on, but then I have a seven-year-old son who Comes in, he likes, he likes to watch me play this game, and I started turning on the assist

44:12I actually allowed him to play, and he was having a great time, and as he got better, I could see myself turning some of those back off

44:18If that's fantastic, yeah, that's, that's perfect

44:23It's like a really good use case of assists just being a little, here's someone who, you know, hasn't been, has me playing platformers forever, but can still have a lot of fun out of the game, yeah, by just slowing it down a little bit or trying various features on and off

44:34Yeah, as a designer, it's a bit painful at first to think about a system, oh

44:40Because it is like, spent so many hours like fine-tuning these levels, and then you just give the players the option to, you know, be invincible and run through it, and it's like part of me like cringes at first, then it's like, actually, you're, you're improving people's enjoyment of the game, right? Because if they can see it and they can like get through it and experience it, like, and players know, like, assist mode tells you it's supposed to be challenging, so we have to trust the players, we'll make the game like the right amount of challenge for them so that they can still enjoy it

45:04Yeah, it's definitely discussion of

45:10Like, we want to make sure that people, you know, understand the intention of the game and don't ruin it for themselves, for players who are fully capable, but just turn it on immediately, which is why we, you know, we're so careful with the wording and the way that it's implemented, is just making it very clear that, you know, this is something that you can use, but isn't necessarily, like, you know, the first thing you should try

45:26Yeah, I like the message you get too early on in the game about strawberries, it's kind of this calming message, it's just like, you don't have to get these, you know, don't worry about it

45:34Yeah, I have

45:42This problem, when I play games where if there's extra collectibles or achievements or anything, I just have to get them, like it's like a compulsive part of my personality, even if it's making the game worse for me

45:51And I think a lot of people struggle with that, so we wanted the strawberries just be like, you know, only do these if they look fun to you, like, and I think that that works for a lot of people

45:57Now, one of the other things in this game that really stood out to me was the music, the music is amazing

46:03Oh yeah, and it's this kind of, you guys I'm sure can describe it better than me, but it's, it's this cool synth kind of

46:08moody vibe that really kind of underscores a lot of the emotion that's going on in the game, and there are some chapters where it just builds and builds, and it really starts to kind of add to the intensity, I think, of what the character's going through, and also the challenge level

46:26So, you know, what were you trying to kind of achieve with that? Yeah, our composer, Lena Raine, she, she's incredible, she's like, an amazing job, and she had pretty much free rein for a lot of it, for pretty much all of it

46:40We, you know, give her feedback and stuff, but it was really her, like, baby, the music, and yeah, she's did an amazing job there's a

46:51A lot of places in the game where I would have liked, it's sort of levels designed, it's just like white boxes with no, no real graphics yet, and she would come in with the music and it would just be like this incredible, fully realized music for this chapter, and that would really inform, like, the direction I went with the level design, where the art went

47:10Yeah, there was other times where she was the last one to come in, but it was like, yeah, I think as a general principle, we try to, like, make sure that, you know, people, like, in their specific skill set, kind of have control over what they want to do with it, so, like, giving her Complete, like control over the music and being like, take this where you think it should go, was like really important

47:33Yeah, yeah, and we work with people who are very motivated and very, like, yeah, self-driven, and she had, she had a very strong vision for the music that just really, really clicked with the story, and yeah, really happy we worked with her there

47:41Yeah

47:49Now, now how big was the full team for this game? I, there's six core members, we'd say, and then probably three, well, three to five other, like, collaborators

47:58Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was like me and Matt working on the programming and Matt doing the game design stuff

48:06Basically every day, and then Lina doing the music, and then Power Patio, one main person from Power Patio working kind of on the side of sine every day, and then the rest of his team helping, and then our artist, Pedro Nomura, who did their, and then we had like other, yeah, we had like Gabby who did the mountain 3D model, yeah, and our friend Sven who came into the lighting for the 3D model, 'cause we had no idea what we were doing with 3D stuff and stuff like that

48:39Yeah, this might be kind of a very broad question, but what's it like being an indie developer? It seems like indie games have come a long way in the last several years

48:45Yeah, it's definitely changed a lot in a lot of several years too

48:53I don't know, I, I love it

49:01I, I mean, we're, we've pretty good, like fresh has come pretty well, like we just get up and work on our own stuff, and we have a lot of creative control, and it's, yeah, it's been a really positive experience for us

49:09Yeah, I think one of the huge things for me is just being able to work on the things that I'm excited about and not have to answer or do things that I, I'm not that excited about

49:17And I mean, within indie games, you still have to do things you're not always excited about, like bug fixing or, you know, things like that that aren't

49:23necessarily super fun, but in general, you can kind of work it around the things that you like doing

49:28Yeah, and, and you own your work, you know, you're, you know, you're making something that you're passionate about, the vision, which I think is very important for anyone

49:34Yeah, yeah, it's definitely really exciting for us to be able to do, do the things that are, you know, they were passionate about on a daily basis

49:39And what was it like working with Nintendo Switch? It was really good

49:46I mean, we were super excited to get the game onto Nintendo Switch right, right from, you know, the beginning, we're just big Nintendo fan fans, we

49:56Actually, we thought, we were hoping we could get the game out way earlier than we did, because we were extremely more optimistic about, you know, the game size and stuff, because our schedule basically, yeah, was scheduled, it was just not realistic, but we wanted it to be out, you know, as soon as possible on the Nintendo Switch, because it was just, we were planning to be a launch title, you're hoping to be, that did, to give you an idea badly, we were good, but we wanted to, because we were so excited about, you know, the Nintendo Switch and having this game and like this really cool handheld environment, yeah, it just felt like a

50:10Perfect fit for us

50:24Yeah, the game, this Celeste, always kind of felt like a Game Boy game to me, like a Game Boy Advance game or something

50:38Yeah, obviously with the higher resolution and stuff, but that's like kind of how I envisioned playing it

50:43So then this Nintendo Switch just, like, yeah, and, like, works perfectly that way

50:50I mean, I think it's true for both of us, but having a game on a Nintendo console is definitely something that's, like, a childhood dream, you know, playing with Super Nintendo and NES and the Nintendo 64 and things like that growing up and being able to say, like, wow, like, we've made something that is on a Nintendo thing is like, yeah, that's the same part of like my brain that gets excited about the Metacritic thing where it's like, Zelda, Mario, Celeste, all right

51:09Well, before we go speaking about, you know, being Nintendo fans or just video game fans in general, I'm gonna put you guys on the spot and I'd love to hear what you're, you know, let's say your top three favorite platformers of all time are, not counting Celeste, I don't think it's less would be in my job for you, but the top is definitely Super Mario Brothers 3, and there's a lot of, I don't know if you've, if you've played through Celeste, you've probably seen some

51:21some inspiration from it in there

51:34Next, we probably, Donkey Kong Country 2, and then Yoshi's Island

51:41Yeah, Yoshi's Island is up there for me

51:47For me, Yoshi's Island is just really up there

51:51That's hearing number one, it might be

51:55It's like, yeah, I need to replay it again, but as a kid it was definitely like, yeah, my favourite platformer

52:00Yeah, Yoshi's Island was the game that made me realize that human beings made games

52:06[Laughter] Yeah, such a playful, colorful, yeah, it looked like a kid drew it in like a good way

52:14Yeah, yeah

52:22Would you say there was any one game that that made you guys want to get into making games, or was it more just Gaming in general, I think I, I don't remember a time where I didn't want to make games, it's just I didn't even realize it was possible until I played Yoshi's Island

52:30And yeah, I think, I think for me probably a Link to the Past, and then was what made me start making games

52:38And then I think later Cave Story was what made me be like, oh, I actually, I can, I can actually do this, like this is something that, you know, people can actually, yeah, Cave Story is made by one person, yeah, which is ridiculous even still, but that was something that I played, it was like I was already making games by them, but I was really, oh wow, people can

52:51Actually, like, you know, maybe I own things and make a conveyor-like career

52:55Yeah, exactly

52:58Guys, thank you so much for joining me today, and I'm gonna promise to do my best to 100% complete Celeste

53:02I don't know how long it's gonna take me, but I'm gonna give it my best shot, and I look forward to whatever your next game is

53:08Awesome, thank you

53:14Yeah, that's it for this episode of Nintendo Power Podcast, and once again, I'd like to thank our guests, Reiko Ninomiya, Tim O'Leary, Matt Thorson, and Noel Berry

53:20And don't forget, you can help shape future episodes by letting us know what you thought of the episode and what you'd like to see, and if you Have any questions? Send them to us, and we'll consider answering them on a future episode

53:33You can email us at Nintendo Power podcast at NOA@nintendo.com

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53:44Thanks for listening, and keep playing with power

53:49[Music]