Itoi: I found this out while making a clone of myself (in Animal Crossing) — it feels like I’m making my own creation inside this.

Iwata: Oh, inside Animal Crossing?

Itoi: Yes, that seems to be the only way to explain it. I’ve used game-playing to make a creation all my own.

Iwata: [laughs] Do you remember way back when we were extremely busy working on MOTHER 2 and you said, “I came up with an incredible idea for MOTHER 3?”

Itoi: Yeah. [laughs]

Iwata: The reason I bring that up is because I think many of your ideas for MOTHER 3 share things in common with Animal Crossing.

Itoi: Now that you mention it, you might be right. When we were working on MOTHER 2, RPGs were all basically “road movies.” The main character would set out on a journey and go from town to town. By laying this out in a spiraling fashion, an RPG’s structure would start to resemble a simple board game.

Iwata: Yes.

Itoi: But I felt that there was a limit to this road movie/board game style of moving from one spot to the next. Kind of like, “Okay, I made it this far, but what’s happened to the people in the last town?”

Iwata: Uh-huh.

Itoi: That’s when I thought of an RPG in which you stay in a certain town for a long time. You’d be a detective who would get hired to follow someone’s wife to see if she’s having an affair, or you’d be asked to catch a shoplifter. You’d do things like that while living in the second floor of a run-down supermarket. That’s about the level of detail I’d come up with already. Information would change every day while you wandered around, and you would solve small cases based on that information. As you’d repeat this, you’d get caught up in a large incident. Once you got the information to solving the big incident, you’d be able to go to the next town and work there. You wouldn’t get stronger by beating stronger and stronger enemies; the things you could do would increase as you went around the same place over and over. The game would have character relations, and the people would all have their own lives. This way, we could do all sorts of things in the game. For example, someone who recently hung laundry out to dry would be wearing those clothes the next day. I wanted to make an RPG in which you could grow closer to the people as time went on.

Iwata: Right.

Itoi: Actually, MOTHER 3 took shape shortly after, and in the game, you’re in a village called Tazmily for a long time. That came from this idea. I had hoped to include other things that didn’t adhere to the “road movie” pattern. I really wanted to do a lot more of that sort of thing.

Iwata: I guess that idea always remained deep in your mind then, huh?

Itoi: Yes, maybe so.

Iwata: Animal Crossing is the realization of that idea, which I guess is why you were able to create your newest work of art known as Nikonikori Village. (Editor’s note: That’s Itoi’s town in Animal Crossing.)

Itoi: For which I’m very happy. [laughs]

Source to original interview