Tales from inside 90s Nintendo - from the man who made Mario's face
In a history that's coming up on the 130 year mark, there have been many fascinating eras of Nintendo - the Yokoi years, those formative Famicom years and the mania around the Wii - but none is quite as evocative as the period in the 90s when the company name became a byword for the entire video game industry. And one of the stories that's fascinated me most is how a group of North London teens found themselves working at Nintendo's Kyoto HQ to help make Star Fox - and how one of them went on to smuggle a little of the demoscene into one of the company's most iconic games when they single-handedly programmed the malleable face that met players when they first started playing Super Mario 64.
And it's that person who I chat to in Kyoto where some of the city's development scene are gathered for a hanami - a celebration of the spring blossom, met with drinks and food. The event's been put on by Dylan Cuthbert's Q-Games - Cuthbert being one of that North London group - and also in attendance are 17-Bit and Vitei, the company started by Giles Goddard. Goddard's the only one who stayed on at Nintendo, in the process becoming the first western employee at Nintendo EAD. Although he left the company near the turn of the century he's remained in Kyoto ever since. Goddard and I found a spot on the banks of the Kamo river, worked through a couple of beers and chatted through what life was like inside Nintendo in the 90s.
Tell me a little about what you were doing before Nintendo.
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