Miyamoto 'mortified' by Steel Battalion, has wanted to make similar game
"I always wanted to make a flight-simulation game," designer Shigeru Miyamoto confessed in a new edition of Nintendo's Iwata Asks column. The Nintendo president seemed confused by that admission, reminding Miyamoto that he had worked on Pilotwings.
Apparently, Pilotwings wasn't the kind of flying game Miyamoto had in mind. "That game was about you enjoying the flying experiences," he said. "It's a bit different from the kind of flight-simulation game I wanted to make." Instead, the designer has wanted to create what gamers would consider a realistic or hardcore sim, not unlike Microsoft Flight Simulator. "The difficulty level is high with these simulators when we see them as video games, but that difficulty is one of the greatest charms for them," Miyamoto added.
Although Nintendo's games typically appeal to the mass market, Miyamoto expressed his long-standing desire to make a complicated game. "I wanted to make some kind of simulator where you would control something huge, but they beat me to it," he said, referring to Capcom's Steel Battalion game on the original Xbox, which included a controller with about 40 buttons (pictured above). "I felt so mortified when that was released."
Steel Diver may not be Miyamoto's long-desired flight simulation game, but it's a close approximation of his original vision. "Controlling a submarine is like a slower version of a flight-simulation game," he joked. The game may not include its own Steel Battalion-esque controller, but Nintendo can at least "put lots of dials" on the 3DS touch screen.
[Photo credit: John Tregoning]
