History of Eiji Aonumas involvement in Nintendo

Read about his transition from marionettes to games, favourite Ocarina of Time temple and more inside

Nintendo staffers must have been feeling quite talkative lately, with a long interview from UK newspaper The Guardian featuring Eiji Aonuma, the director of the Zelda franchise, following the huge Iwata Asks from earlier this week. Weve split this one up into two articles, with this one covering the history of the series and man himself.

Eiji Aonuma jumped straight into the Zelda franchise when he started working at Nintendo, with his first assignment being to create the temples and dungeons for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He has since moved on to direct every subsequent game in the series.

If you were wondering what his favourite design was for Ocarina of Time, well, youre in luck! It turns out the Water Temple takes that spot, but he is regretful about its fault, in the form of the slow boot-switching process.

"The Water Temple in the Ocarina of Time was notorious for being very tough to conquer," he said. "I am most sorry that it was not easy for you to put on and take off the heavy boots; that all the time you had to visit the inventory. I am very sorry about that. I should have made it much easier to switch to the heavy boots. Aside from the problem with the boots, I like the Water Temple so much."

Believe it or not, Aonuma didnt actually start out in the games industry, but his interest in marionettes did eventually lead to his job at Nintendo.

"At college, I was making wooden dolls," he explained. "Not simple wooden dolls, but mechanical dolls, ones that were able to play musical instruments, able to dance. I loved people seeing them and being surprised, watching them wonder how these kind of things could be done, what kind of gimmicks were inside. I did an interview, and had my first encounter with Shigeru Miyamoto, who happened to love the dolls I brought. He said: If you want to make things like that, Nintendo might be a good place for you to work. So thats how I decided to work for the company."

Just because he takes part in making games doesnt mean he plays them to de-stress, something a lot of us do. Again he apologises for not being "that kind of hardcore gamer" himself. He still plays very popular games to essentially see what makes them so attractive to gamers, but explains, "Thats part of my job, though."

He did share some thoughts on some games he has played, though. He likes the "interesting presentation style" in the the Professor Layton games on DS, for example, but finds Mario and what he calls "jump games" quite hard. "I always miss the point where I should land, and I always cry out and say Wait a minute, is this the end of the whole story? Is there no rescue from that?" This apparently lead to Ocarina of Times automatic jumping system.

Just like Miyamoto, Aonuma likes to spend his relaxation time with music. He even leads The Wind Wakers, a 40-piece band made by Nintendo members. Bet you cant guess where the name is from?

Interestingly, Aonumas approach to his puppets of old is just like his current attitude towards games; he treats both as crafts. He observed that Nintendo were "trying to surprise people with video games," just like how he loved that people were surprised by his marionettes. He says that Miyamoto "still comes up with ideas that really surprise me," throughout all his 12 years of working with him, his "highest praise" for the legendary game developer. This emphasis on surprise very much explains the lack of details on many of the Zelda games throughout their design process, even if it is quite annoying for those deep fans of the series.

As we mentioned, theres a fair amount from the feature not covered in this article, so check out here if you want to find out more.