Categories
Games

The Making of A Link to the Past

Shmuplations is a fantastic site that digs up classic interviews with video game developers, translating them from the original Japanese. One of the latest interviews shared is this gem with Shigeru Miyamoto, talking about the making of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Categories
Fashion

An Interview with Hiroshi Fujiwara

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I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but here’s an interview with legendary fashion curator Hiroshi Fujiwara by Tiffany Godoy.

Categories
Games

An Interview with Tomonobu Itagaki

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Even though I know he’s working hard on a new project that hasn’t been announced yet, it’s been great to see my buddy James Mielke get back to a bit of games writing (on Glixel and Polygon), and his latest piece is this feature interview with legendary game creator Tomonobu Itagaki (Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive) over at Polygon. It’s a super fun read, with Itagaki being his usual “straight” self, and it’s quite interesting to hear him talk about Devil’s Third, a game that you would think would be down and out, but isn’t.

Categories
Games

Shiny Shoe’s Mark Cooke

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I first met Mark Cooke when he was living in Tokyo, working at Grasshopper Manufacture. He now runs his own studio in San Francisco called Shiny Shoe — the name coming from a particular pair of sneakers he used to have, that I remember him wearing when he presented at a PechaKucha Night in Tokyo — and you can hear more about his trajectory and what he’s up to these days in this interview podcast produced by Autodesk.

Categories
Books Fashion

Interview with Takeyoshi Hayashida

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David continues to add to his “Ametora Extended” collection of articles that support Ametora, this time sharing an interview he conducted while researching the book, with Van’s Takeyoshi Hayashida.

Categories
Games

Miyamoto Talks Super Mario Run

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Following last week’s announcement that Nintendo is producing a new Mario game for iOS, Super Mario Run, The Verge was quick to share this interview with Shigeru Miyamoto himself, on what the thinking is behind the game (set to come out in December). I thought it was a pretty big deal to see Miyamoto join Tim Cook on stage during the Apple keynote, and to me it felt as momentous as when Bill Gates showed up in the keynote back in 1997 to talk about the “Microsoft Deal.” Also, I’m pretty jealous that my friend Sam got to be part of the interview.

Categories
Design Events Typography

That’s Entertainment!

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Ian Lynam is a Tokyo-based dude I love so much, and embarrassingly it’s just now that I’m catching up on the fantastic essay/exhibition he produced earlier this year called “That’s Entertainment!” Get some background through this TypeThursday interview, and then get online and read through the project’s main essay — and that’s also where you can download plenty of digital material to take in the rest of the project, like all of the posters that were part of the exhibition.

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Categories
Meta

Interview on J-WAVE

I was interviewed the other day for a short program on the Tokyo radio station J-WAVE about some of the things I love about Tokyo. Since it will be edited I’m not sure what will come through, but I did get to mention my meal of choice, tonkatsu spaghetti (that you can get at Nobu, a cozy little pasta joint in Ikebukuro).

It will air this coming Thursday (October 21) from 15:35 to 15:45 Tokyo time, and you’ll be able to listen to it online from the J-WAVE website (or at 81.3 on the FM dial).

Update: The date has been changed, and it will instead air tomorrow (Monday, October 18), but at the same time (15:35-15:45). The show is called RENDEZVOUS, and the segment is called “Foreigner’s Perspectives on Tokyo.”

Categories
Magazines Technology

Interview on iPad and Other Edition

I’m a bit confused by what Other Edition is doing with their digital line-up of magazines. According to their website, you can pay 7 euros to have access to all of their titles — and they are doing quite a few, including Interview, IdN, and V — but so far, if you look at Interview, all of the issues have been available as free downloads for iPad on the iTunes App Store. Is this just for a limited time?

It could be that sponsors are funding these free editions.Take the latest issue of Interview for example. Not only is “The Calvin Klein Issue” part of the official name of the app, but the brand also gets a HUGE feature inside — and when I say huge, I mean it takes up half if not more of the issue — and it’s apparently limited to the iPad edition of the magazine. There’s no real reason to complain though, since you do get — what I assume is — the entirety of the regular issue for free, and there’s nothing forcing you to deal with the CK stuff.

Looking at the magazine formatting, it’s hit and miss. It does have the indexing and thumbnail views we expect, but also adds sharing (by email, Facebook, and Twitter), and a way to rate articles, although I’m not quite sure what this affects as it doesn’t seem to be public.

Also, this is not a quasi-PDF Zinio-like transfer, and all text is sized to be readable, and images take up their own page (and are beautifully rendered). If the size is right, one thing I think it gets wrong with text is that it is always presented in a dense two-column layout (see above) — I understand the look they were going for, but I could do with a bit more breathing room.

Interactive bits appear in the form of the occasional pulsating dot that, after touched, reveals some extra text (above) or larger images (below). There are also a few videos, like a behind-the-scenes look a photo shoot with Blake Lively (the cover interview).

I do find it annoying that not only have they implemented a useless “page turning” animation when you read through (an automated version of the page turn effect you can do in iBooks), but that they also limit you to a swipe to change pages. I much prefer just tapping the side of a page to move to the next one, and there’s no reason that couldn’t have been done here since a single tap on any page has no effect (you need to double-tap to accept menu options).

Although it’s certainly a step above the Zinio stuff — pinch-and-zoom reading is not going to be acceptable for long I think — I’d be curious to see some of the “other” Other Edition digital conversations, to see how different or similar they are to what we get with Interview. I’m also not clear on how subscribing directly with them can give me access to iPad versions of these magazines — as far as I know, the iTunes App Store doesn’t support this yet.