Encyclopedia MOTHER: Message from Shigesato Itoi

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[1989: pp. 148–151]

[2003: pp. 152–155]

Message from Shigesato Itoi

Making a Game was My Best Sand Play Therapy.

Originally I had the idea computers and I just didn't mix. It didn't matter how many uses I heard personal computers had, the only ones that ever occurred to me were sorting an address book or keeping track of monetary transactions. They aren't my line of work, I figured, so they don't concern me.

Even when I heard the rumors that a PC exclusively for play was coming out, I bought it with the perspective, eh, I'll finally go ahead and get one just for myself, it's okay if I just use it for fun. Then it came out, and not only was I spared an alphabet keyboard (I don't care for those things), it wasn't a PC: it went by the name Famicom. When I gave it a play I was delighted to find it was a toy through-and-through, and wasn't even so much as a PC-wannabe.

It piqued that feeling from when I was little and I'd be given a brand new toy. I started to forget it was a computer. I bought quite a few of the actual consoles and put them in my place of work, gave them to people, made gifts out of them as souvenirs from the countryside, the list goes on. So you see, I was beginning to loosen my attitude and find it wasn't worth being a computer-phobe.

Playing Dragon Quest Stirred Certain Emotions.

It was around the time I first played Mario that I began to realize there were people out there other than programmers who designed games. Then, I started to get the vague idea that the designs of these games reminded me of advertising methods, or creations like novels, movies or manga. Programs that didn't feel like programs were just starting to be made.

I played Dragon Quest a year later than others did. When it was released, I didn't feel a sense of reality in the battles, so I left it alone for a year. But now that I think about it, I realize it was because I'd simply forgotten to "Equip".

Even before that, I'd had people show me things like Ultima or Wizardry, but all I could see them as were number-spouters, which I'm no good with. "Man, this just isn't my thing," I'd thought.

I picked Dragon Quest back up again a year later, and became aware of certain emotions being stirred within me. So I began to wonder if maybe, through the role-playing genre, I could have someone program something I'd created. Once I really got into RPGs, I found myself saying, oh hey, it'd be cool if they did this sort of thing here. It was just like when I'm watching a movie and can see all the director's methods; and that's how I got drawn further and further into games.

I Watched All the Spielberg Films I Hadn't Yet Seen.

It was then that an idea flashed into my mind for an ending, and that was the final slam-down on my emotion buttons. All I needed to do now was tie it to the kind of story that could be interpreted with nuance, where everyone "gets" it yet everyone differs on it. It'd be like making a superb B-grade movie.

And I watched nearly all the Spielberg films I hadn't seen yet. This was because I had a hunch my creative style was a lot like his. I systematically gathered up every little bit of intrigue from American pulp fantasy and mystery novels. I bought up books on psychic powers, a world I'd been interested in from the start. I must have gathered a bookcase's worth of materials.

For example, I think the difference between a well-made game and a not-so-well-made one can be put like so: I'm someone who, when I throw a bomb at an enemy, feels something simply by the act of taking that opponent out. Who then wonders what the landscape would look like after the bomb is thrown. Who feels hurt. Who thinks I shouldn't have thrown the thing. In terms of your common game, that bomb turns out to be nothing more than a stand-in for an exchange of numbers. A programming convenience, as it were. But there is a projection of reality there, so depending on the person, there can be some sense of friction, or if you prefer, something that "goes against the grain". In which case, I thought, you know what, I think this is my "line of work"! Games had called out to me, requesting my presence.

The Fun of Taking Something that Can't Quite Become a Machine and Bringing it to the Verge of Being One.

According to books on the subject, there is some logic behind war, and a motto: "He's the enemy, kill him." By saying "he's the enemy", you first pigeonhole your opponent, then after you've switched him into something other than human, it comes down to "kill your enemy". Once that's established, anything goes, right?

A game always sees confrontation carried out in the form of non-human "enemies", within a certain rule that states "well, it's just a game". To use my favorite baseball analogy, you might think of it as an army-like formation.¹ Yet we get to simultaneously keep the part of us that makes us human. That's because the fun part of playing make-believe war is that you take something that can't quite become a machine, and you bring it to the verge of being one.² I wondered if maybe this brand of fun wasn't yet being had on the Famicom. At any rate, no one would be hurt, so anything would go. I don't know, maybe that was a bit too primitive of me.

The B-Grade's Lie Broke Through to Me Out of a Blind Alley's Dead End.

It was right in that period of time that advertising was rather lacking in enthusiasm. A lot of advertisements were coming out that were more sales promotion than ad. It was, to use a handy phrase, a return to the drawing board, the kind where they'd just say their company's name over and over; but that simple return to square one made it an awfully boring time for advertising, you know?

Then, while this was going on, New Academism³ was the "in" thing, and there even came a point when it seemed like talk of "dead ends" was music to an intellectual's ears. It was "double bind" this or "postmodern" that. And I myself happened to be writing a novel called A Family's Dissolution⁴, which I guess was also a form of blind-alley dead end. That's how it was: everyone was trying to "out-sigh" one another. Now, in contrast, you had the course Spielberg was on. That, I guess, was when the A-class drove me to say, "That's a lie, but you know, I like that kind of lie," and the B-grade broke through to me.⁵

Planning Out a Famicom Game was Like My God of Salvation.

Now that I was planning out a Famicom game, I was brimming with life. It was like my god of salvation. Coming up with a game is taking what you have inside your head and bringing it all outside to see, or in other words, it's making the world inside your head into that sandbox we call a game. Doing this brought my cheerful nature further and further out.

This is a kind of fun where you enjoy deceiving yourself. Maybe even enjoy deceiving others.

For example, if I were to write a novel or an essay on friendship, there'd be a side to it that would lean inevitably toward pessimism. But if I were to think about how I could represent friendship in a Famicom game, I'd realize friendships actually do exist. There's self-sacrifice, there's ardor, there's love bordering on agape. Everyone has those things, and yet it's gotten to where you can't discuss them in today's media. The reason for that has to be out there; and you could go looking for it, but if you're able to create that special something that hearkens back to a time when those things were around, and make that your work, now that's fun.

You'd be lying if you said, "but friendship is such-and-such, isn't it?" Why does realism end up excluding all else? Because it confines itself to what we say is the truth.

You can do similar things in a game. Lloyd and Ninten's journey isn't defined by their personalities, but rather by what you do with the obviously weak one when he shows up, and how the two of you will walk together. Stuff like that happens in real life. You started off weak yourself, and you're constantly getting reminded of that. To put it the way the game does, others might tease you and say, "oh, are the two of you lovers?"⁶ There can even be times you then realize you are lovers.

To be a child is to experience a simulation of adult society from a young age. In a game, you can have that in a vicarious experience. That sort of game is one I'd like to play.

The Sophistication of the B-Grade Breaking Through the A-Class Gives Me a New Lease on Life.

There is one key trick no one has caught on to, and that's the naming scheme for the baseball bats.

Battered Bat, Ordinary Bat, Good Bat, Best Bat. This way, no one has the feel of holding the bat in their hands, do they? If I'd gone with Paper Bat, Plastic Bat, Wooden Bat, Metal Bat, you'd know how it would feel to grasp them.⁷ This sense of touch is absent from MOTHER. You should be getting the feel of battle, but not through the grasping of a bat. "How do I do this so that it isn't the bat that brings out the raw feel of things? But then, what other kinds of weapons could there be aside from bats?" My logic, or whatever it is, will be there asking me these questions.

This seemed to be something I needed for my mental health, as well. "Each of us has a universe inside us" is my slogan. The size of a person's universe is determined by how many experiences they've recognized. And the bigger and messier it is the better. When you've put all of that nice and together, and contrast it against others, not only is sympathy likely to come of it, but so are battle tactics.

For example, I hear all kinds of theories about the father's absence, but if I went and told them the reason for it, kids would end up getting the full picture. Yet most kids are being deceived by their father and mother. "He's busy with work", and all that. Your mother is keeping up a certain system and ideology when she says that. If your father is the type to come home after drinking, odds are you know how this works. The father on the other end of that phone line is just about every father. I imagine those who understand that aren't going to ask why he's absent.

Even though they have a vague feeling they're being lied to, when children become adults they tell the same lies. Spielberg gets that, so he doesn't allow for anything like posing the question to children of why the father isn't around. This, you see, is the sophisticated side where the B-grade breaks through the A-class. This sort of thing just might be my sand play therapy.

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¹ A few sentences around this section of the essay were giving me trouble, so I turned to HiNative for help. Here's what user Fidy88814637 had to say:

In general, baseball in Japan is often trained under a strict discipline that is comparable to that of the military.

² Added insight, again from Fidy88814637:

[Itoi] believes that an army is something mechanized and orderly, devoid of any humanity. [He] recognizes an adversarial structure in which the general idea of war is not to challenge specific individuals with strong hatred or murderous intent, but rather, to adopt a large-grouped concept of enemy. This is the same in baseball, where fans are excited and saddened by the conflict structure between teams, rather than against a particular pitcher or hitter.

In other words, the sentence [about keeping our humanity] would imply that "it is an interesting state of affairs in wars in which the human element seems to have been lost, and yet at the same time, the human condition is preserved."

³ New Academism: A social science fad that took Japan by storm during the 1980s.

⁴『家族解散』 Kazoku Kaisan, 1986, published by Shinchosha.

⁵ I think by "A-class", Itoi is referring to the lackluster state of advertising and pessimistic outlook of the intellectualism he describes (all contributing to cynicism), while "B-grade" refers to unrealistic, but idyllic themes (hence, "that's a lie, but I like that kind of lie") such as those portrayed in Spielberg's works. 

It's the reason I chose to translate B級映画 earlier in the essay as "B-grade movie", rather than just "B-movie", because it came up again later in this context. It's also the reason I went with "A-class" in contrast, even though both words used the same suffix (A級 and B級).

(And he's clearly not throwing shade at Spielberg by referring to his films as B-grade. They're anything but. It may just be an acknowledgement of some of the times he stretches believability to provide a big, satisfying finish, like how the shark in JAWS bites down on the air tank and Brody blows it up, a scene the author of the book took issue with in favor of believability.)

⁶ Spoken by an NPC in Valentine.

⁷ Ironically, this is the very style of naming scheme for the baseball bats used by the official localization.

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