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Yoot Saito remembers Iwata, says Seaman was planned/canned for 3DS

by rawmeatcowboy
14 July 2015
GN Version 5.0

Coming from Mr. Saito...

I heard the tragic news about the passing of Nintendo’s president, Iwata-san… I can’t believe he's gone.

I first met Iwata-san back in 1996, so it was a time before you would typically see him in a suit. It was at HAL in Kofu. I remember that he always carried around a Mac (PowerBook), which was quite rare in the games industry. I think that formed a bit of connection between us—a feeling that we shared the same interests. It was around the year after that when I saw him with a G3 PowerBook, which even I had hesitated to buy, and I remember thinking, “this guy really loves Macs.”

It wasn’t until a bit later that I got a chance to work with him. It was around the time when Seaman was taking the world by storm and I was really busy working on planning for the sequel and taking interviews and such.

Mr. Saito also confirmed that a Seaman sequel was planned for 3DS, but later ended up shelved.

When Iwata-san came to ask me to create Seaman for the 3DS, I like to think he was in the same frame of mind as when he first came to visit me at my apartment back in 1999. I did start working on the project, but things got really complicated and I eventually let go of it. Unfortunately that brought an end to our relationship, where I could just casually visit him in Kyoto and have fun exchanging new ideas. I felt like we needed some time before we could go back to the kind of creativity-filled relationship.

Full post here