AN ATHLETIC GAME DESIGNER THE COLOR OF A RHINOCEROS BEETLE

Our discussion has gotten a little off-topic, and Kiyotake-san has turned bright red.

Kiyotake: Heh heh heh. (Smiles)

Didn't you originally play rugby?

Kiyotake: Right now, I play soccer with the company club. And the coaching is done by Osawa.

Sakamoto: Isn't that like him? Coaches wear ties, and Kiyotake looks Brazillian! (Laughs)

Osawa: Kiyotake looks like a foreign exchange player! (Laughs)

Go to Nintendo during lunch break, and you can see people going outside with a soccer ball...

Kiyotake: We practice every day.

Osawa: Since most of our scores were good this season, I think we might move up to the third division.

Are you in fourth division now?

Kiyotake: Right. We're fourth division among Kyoto corporate employees.

Osawa: (To Kiyotake-san) We hope so! (Laughs) Right now, we've played three matches, and we're two wins, one loss. As coach, I want us to keep doing our best.

By the way, Kiyotake-san's athletic spirit is also present in his games.

Kiyotake: That's right. Although I was influenced by it during development of the GB game Tennis (1989), when we did sports, we weren't able to angle the ball, so that's why we used timing, among other things. Even to do a drop shot, you would say, "Hit it like this." But if I did it that way, the players' bodies didn't have an athletic feel, and I didn't think that was normal. Therefore, I attached Samus's pose from Metroid, and I also represented them running, so personally, I feel it isn't that hard to draw with an athletic feel.

Sakamoto: I think that's symbolic of Samus's Screw Attack. "Well, let's have her attack with a body blow!" (Laughs)

Osawa: Wario also uses a body blow! (Laughs)

Sakamoto: So that's how Kiyotake solves problems with his body! (Laughs)

Osawa: That's because he's an athletic designer! (Laughs) Nintendo is big, but Kiyotake is an ultra-conservative sports-minded designer.

For starters, you seldom see a designer as dark as he is! (Laughs)

Sakamoto: (Seriously) He's getting even darker.

Osawa: And yet, recently, his color's faded. Has he gotten accustomed to living in the city? (Laughs)

Sakamoto: On active days, he looks like a kabutomushi.*

*Kabutomushi - the Japanese rhinoceros beetle.

All: (Laughs uproariously)

Sakamoto: In the middle of summer, he glistens! (Laughs)

Osawa: Yeah, yeah! He glistens like a mud pie! (Laughs) What's more, when sunlight strikes him, he looks like a silhouette. He walks around like a silhouette that put on clothes! (Laughs) You can't tell his hair from his neckline.

Ah ha ha ha! (Smiles) Kiyotake-san, do you have anything to say to refute that?

Kiyotake: That's what everyone says! (Laughs)

Osawa: As for me, I was his junior at university.

Kiyotake: We were in the same seminar.

Osawa: We were taught by the same instructor. We went to Kyoto Seika University, and Sakamoto and Yamamoto went to Osaka University of Arts.