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subdirectory_arrow_right Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (Game)
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In May 1995, an interview with series creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Rare co-founder Tim Stamper about the development of Donkey Kong Country (DKC) was published in the magazine Electronic Games, conducted by game journalist Steven L. Kent. Kent later claimed on an episode of G4's docuseries "Icons" that Miyamoto was angry during this interview, channelling it into bitter criticisms of DKC's gameplay and the Western market's praise of its pre-rendered graphics, and that Stamper "sat there and took it, even though really the anger wasn't meant to be at Stamper". Miyamoto clarified in a 2010 interview with IGN that he did like the game despite these rumored criticisms, and that he worked closely with Rare and Stamper during development.

Years after the interview's publication, Kent would print an alleged portion of a later interview with Miyamoto in his 2001 book "The Ultimate History of Video Games", claiming that the anger had stemmed from "touchy" internal discussions regarding Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. The hand-drawn crayon art style of that game was said to be a result of the alleged anger over DKC's graphics causing him to rebel against Nintendo's internal evaluation committee, who wanted Yoshi's Island to use pre-rendered graphics. Part of the Miyamoto quote reads:

"In comparison with the graphics of [DKC], there was not enough punch to Yoshi's Island. That was what I was told by the marketing people. I intensified my hand-drawn touch on Yoshi's Island from the initial part of the program. Everybody else was saying that they wanted better hardware and more beautiful graphics instead of this art."

Yoshi's Island director Takashi Tezuka would deliver a less angered statement that may be related to these claims in a September 1995 interview with the magazine Dengeki Super Famicom. He claimed that the choice in art style was done for sentimental reasons, as the developers believed that all video games from that point on would likely utilize 3D graphics, and wanted Yoshi's Island to be a bow-out for 2D graphics:

"We deliberately chose not to go for realistic graphics like [DKC]: we wanted take a chance and do the opposite. Probably every game from here on out is going to look more like [DKC]… that being the case, we decided to go against the trend one last time and make something with a heartwarming, handmade visual style."
person DidYouKnowGaming calendar_month February 25, 2013
Electronic Games Issue #32 (Volume 3, Issue #8) - May 1995 (pages 48-52 in the magazine):
https://archive.org/details/electronic-games-1995-05/page/48/mode/1up

G4 "Icons" (Season 3, Episode 8) on Donkey Kong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2EOpDWKOrI#t=819s

"The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon–The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World" by Steven L. Kent (page 518 in the book):
https://retrocdn.net/images/9/9c/UltimateHistoryofVideoGames_Book_US.pdf

Dengeki Super Famicom 09/1995 developer interview [link and info provided by Rocko & Heffer]:
https://shmuplations.com/yoshi/

Original DidYouKnowGaming blog post:
http://didyouknowgaming.com/post/41895525229/yoshis-island-and-donkey-kong-country-source

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