Takashi Tezuka is a high profile video game designer for Nintendo, who's work goes as far back as the original Super Mario Bros. of which he took the role of main director to Shigeru Miyamoto. He is still an integral part of Nintendo and took some time out to chat about the progression of the company. Tezuka believes that Nintendo's style has not deviated from its original roots, the way of expression has changed but their inner core values remain intact. He specifically refers to the Wii and how Nintendo inspires other game creators to generate new entertainment which is not just evolving the standard line of games with even more beautiful graphics.

Do you feel that Nintendo is returning to its gaming roots with Wii and DS?

Actually, I don't feel that Nintendo has ever deviated from its gaming roots. The style of expression has changed, but I feel the substance of entertainment that we try to provide has not changed significantly.

Of course, interests vary depending on which country, territory or time people live in. We always try to create some pleasant surprises, but how we can surprise people changes too, accordingly. We're always trying to pay close attention to the flux of time, but what doesn't change is that we're always trying to create brand new entertainment that can give pleasant surprises to people.

The hardware of Wii and DS have been designed so that they can encourage and inspire game creators to create brand new entertainment that does not necessarily exist as a linear extension of the past stream of videogame evolutions. As a result, though some of the games may make you feel that they have returned to their origins, in reality we have been able to create brand new genres of videogames. Wii, for example, has so far been able to generate a new wave by enabling more physical experiences instead of just aiming at the increasingly gorgeously looking graphics and beautiful sounds, I think.