Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

LightNews

Max Nichols

@maxnichols.bsky.social

4.6K followers 380 following 7.1K posts

He/him. Game designer. I make worlds that you want to explore. Sr. Tech Design in AAA. Prev: Bungie, Turbine. I run @HyruleInterviews.bsky.social Blog: namelessquality.com Portfolio: maxnicholsdesign.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 21m

"[Creative Director] really loves [new game in a similar genre that came out mid-production]"

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 2d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 10h

And the remake has great line delivery in the new voice-acting, to go with it. I listen to every single line to the end, which I can’t say I do in many games.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 10h

The dialog in this game is superb. Maybe the most I have ever appreciated a shakespearean theatrical style of writing like this.

Also maybe the best ever example of localization adding to the original? It works so well and my understanding was that it wasn’t present in the JPN version.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 10h

The Gaffgarion fight was a very good skill+build check. I went in feeling quite confident in my Ramza and got my ass whipped repeatedly. 1st time i was forced to do multiple iterations on my build for a fight. It felt good to have a broad set of options from various jobs—and I needed them!

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 12h

Wow incredible

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 12h

(I would read those manuals constantly, and also use them as reference to draw the games' items and maps myself. They were well-loved, it was actually an upgrade to get new ones xD )

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 12h

This reminds me, when I was a kid I lost all my Zelda manuals and I was so upset about it that wrote a letter to Nintendo of America asking for new ones.

They did in fact send me new manuals for Zeldas 3, 4, and 5, along with a hand-written note from... Someone at NOA! I so wish I had kept it

History of Hyrule, Zelda Archivist @historyofhyrule.com · 12h

lol, idk, if mine is hers might be too! It still worked in college after all of that sandy trauma.

She's also the one who found a letter she wrote, but never sent, to the cartoon writers asking them to make Link less annoying because Zelda was too awesome for him. 😆

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 12h

My parents severely restricted my gaming time, and I fully believe that it lent my playing time an aura of rarity and wonder, directly leading to my becoming a game dev later in life.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 12h

If you cannot imagine that other human beings have interiority, then maybe the LLM chatbot is for you!

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 12h

I'm guessing her childhood SNES isn't, though xD

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 12h

Incredible

I hope she's doing well these days

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 12h

Why does every AI proponent have the world's lamest idea of what a conversation is

Well

I guess only someone who gives zero shits about other people could possibly imagine LLMs being worth talking to

Erica C. Barnett @ericacbarnett.bsky.social · 18h

"And you could say, Well, Dr. Martin Luther King, I've always wanted to meet you. What was your day like today? What did you have for breakfast? And he comes back and he talks to you. How cool would that be if we have a series of historical figures that we all could agree on, that we respect?"

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 14h

"Meta-[medium]" comes to mind, but I'm not sure I've actually seen that term thrown around

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 17h

Last i checked at least

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 17h

And yet there’s no current printing!

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 23h

And now he's 57 and he's led 3D Mario for 25 years. We may never get to see more of that kind of work from him

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 23h

But Koizumi had another side: the side that invented the backstory of the Triforce & the three goddesses; wrote the dreamlike story of Link's Awakening; designed the 3-day system and directed Clocktown & the bomber's notebook quests in MM.

That romantic side of him didn't get to thrive on Mario IMO

PEOPLE:
- Takashi Tezuka, age 49. Director of Link’s Awakening.
- Yoshiaki Koizumi, age 41. Writer for Link’s Awakening.
- Shigeru Miyamoto, age 57. Producer of Link’s Awakening.

QUOTE:
Tezuka: It looked like [Koizumi] would be good at creating a story, so we lured him into our afterschool club. Koizumi-san was in charge of the opening movie and main story. He's a romantic, and I think that shows in Link's Awakening. He was in charge of the whole flow of the story.

Iwata: What was Miyamoto-san doing [during Link’s Awakening development]?

Tezuka: I think he was busy with something and didn't pay us much mind.

Aonuma & Yoshiaki on co-directing Majora's Mask, 2000.

Source: GlitterBerri's Game Translations

#Zelda
#MajorasMaskQuote
#AonumaQuote,#KoizumiQuote

https://www.notion.so/29f994ce55ec4439842c50abc3f2fbf2

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 23h

Aonuma's strengths lay in dungeon design and 3D spatial design, basically.

Zelda is more about exploration, Mario more about "athleticism" and the core gameplay verbs. Whence the split.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 23h

When I say Aonuma "didn't really have the chops", I basically mean that Koizumi had a lot more experience with core gameplay design. He was assistant director for Mario 64, designed the combat and items and movement in Zelda 64.

Aonuma did not have that core gameplay design expertise.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 23h

But I'm not sure that was an option. Koizumi was a good choice to lead Mario or Zelda; he'd been instrumental in Super Mario 64, too.

Aonuma didn't really have the chops to lead Mario. So if those were the two that Miyamoto was training to be the next gen of directors, that had to be the split

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 23h

I've always wished that Koizumi had done Zelda instead. He has a much clearer & stronger aesthetic that I think was a better fit (than Aonuma) for Zelda, and was a more natural fit for Zelda than it ended up being for Mario.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 23h

After, Aonuma directed The Wind Waker+Twilight Princess and then became producer of the Zelda series.

Koizumi directed Super Mario Sunshine+Galaxy and then became producer of the 3D Mario titles.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 23h

Koizumi was a crucial figure in making both Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask go down their strange, wistful, dreamlike storytelling paths.

Koizumi and Eiji Aonuma co-directed Majora's Mask together--

Hyrule Interviews @hyruleinterviews.bsky.social · 23h

#Linktober 11: Dream/Nightmare

Koizumi on writing the story for Link's Awakening, 2007.

Source: Wired

#Zelda
#LinksAwakeningQuote
#KoizumiQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/adccbdbf92a3...

PEOPLE:
- Yoshiaki Koizumi, age 39. Writer for A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening.
- Shigeru Miyamoto, age 55. Producer of A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening.

QUOTE:
Koizumi: Back then, the people who wrote the manuals often became the people who came up with most of the backstory for the entire game. The first real game work that I did was on Link's Awakening. … I came in to write the manual, as I did on [A Link to the Past]. But they had nothing in place. So I ended up making an entire story to go along with the game. The dream, the island, that was all mine.

And so that was my first experience doing the kind of work that we would now call "event design." But there were not too many people at the time with expertise in that area, so I really had free reign to do what I wanted, so long as I didn't make Miyamoto angry.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah! I had to look it up, but that is indeed how it works.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 1d

I am gonna bench Cloud so deep he’ll never be seen again, lol