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	Nintendo of America recently hosted an interview with two of the masterminds behind The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Producer Shigeru Miyamoto (who directed the original Zelda titles, including Ocarina of Time) and Director Eiji Aonuma spoke with members of the gaming media via video teleconferencing from Japan. Portions of the interview are presented here, providing a brief glimpse at the making of a masterpiece. The interview began with a few opening comments from Mr. Miyamoto. Note: Interview has been edited for clarity and length. Mr. Miyamoto: Good evening everyone, and thank you for joining us today. It's been about two and a half years since Majora's Mask was released. Of course it featured a more realistic visual style, but now we have a completely new Zelda ready. Considering that we started from scratch—The Wind Waker has completely new graphics and gameplay—the fact that we were able to complete this in two and a half years is really good for a Zelda game. I'm relieved that, as I promised, we were able to complete the game and launch it in Japan by the end of the year. I do have some regret that we weren't able to do that for the U.S. version. But in Japan this year, while we do have Zelda, we do not have Metroid, which is obviously a large title that the U.S. has for the end of the year. This time around I think the story is more in-depth and the characters that appear in the game have a lot more to them. So, we are going to take the right amount of time to localize this properly for the U.S. and have it out early next year. I apologize. This time around, I'm not actually the director of the game. I'm the producer. Mr. Eiji Aonuma sitting here to my right is the director. It's actually been nice to be able to work as the producer on this game. I've been working with Mr. Aonuma since the Ocarina of Time. On Majora's Mask he was pretty much independent in moving that project along. So it's been very easy for me as producer on this game. As a producer, I play a few different roles. One of them is getting involved early in meetings designed to determine direction. Then I get involved later in the development, working on the fine-tuning and helping to make improvements. This time around it was actually quite easy—a lot of meetings were held throughout the development and we didn't have to make many changes to the game spec. In the end, it wasn't so much me coming in and having to change things around ... it was just me being there to give input and to make sure that the quality was there. It was easy for me in that sense. For me personally it's been great because it's given me a different feel for the development, rather than having to create everything myself. It's also given me some insight into other aspects of development that I didn't have a chance to see up until now. Of course, Zelda games have a long history. The world of Zelda has a very strong tone that lets you know you're playing a Zelda game. This time, I really think we did an excellent job of bringing out that flavor, as well as enhancing the whole experience of the player going into the world and interacting with it. I think we've really done a great job. When did development on Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker begin? Mr. Miyamoto: Right when Majora's Mask ended we already knew that the Nintendo GameCube was going to be our next platform, so we had to begin planning for that. If you were to actually go back and look at when we were doing experiments on the Nintendo GameCube hardware itself, it would be more than two and a half years ago. The reason we were able to show you the more realistic-looking Zelda battle at Space World 2000 was because we had been doing some preliminary experiments with the console prior to completing Majora's Mask. That's why that video existed. It wasn't until afterward that we began working with the director and the programmers to go ahead and create The Wind Waker.

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