Of course, when it comes to Japanese role-playing games, in any role-playing game in Japan you're supposed to collect a huge number of items, and magic, and you've got to actually combine different items together to make something really different.

Nintendo's philosophy is never to go the easy path; it's always to challenge ourselves and try to do something new.

Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good.

What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself.

All the time, players are forced to do their utmost. If they are challenged to the limit, is it really fun for them?

For a long time at Nintendo we didn't focus as much on online play because for many years doing so would have limited the size of the audience that could enjoy those features. But certainly now we see that so many people are connected to the Internet. It opens up a tremendous amount of possibilities.

Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of Luigi and Mario has been running on my monitor. We've been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system.