What's happening with HAL? Are they the developer of Kirby and, if not, is there another Smash Bros. game in development? In addition, will Nintendo be partnering with Namco, Sega, or any other companies, in terms of including their licenses in a new Smash Bros. game?

MIYAMOTO: Is that what you're asking? [Laughs] Unfortunately, I can't discuss in detail anything that HAL Labs is working on at the moment. What I can say is that they have increased in size recently and, in conjunction with that, they have increased the number of projects they are working on - the amount of work that they're doing. So that's some good news. As far as us having Namco's characters appear in another Smash Bros., we haven't actually discussed anything like that at this point. I personally always like to joke about putting Sonic in Smash Bros. [Laughs]

Is HAL the developer of Kirby's Air Ride?

MIYAMOTO: Yeah, HAL is working on that.

Can you clarify who is the developer of Wario World?

MIYAMOTO: I don't know if I can say this. Tell you what; Wario World is being developed by Nintendo in conjunction with a second party that we've worked with in the past. [Laughs]

You implemented your hobby of gardening into Pikmin. Have you been thinking of ways to implement your new dog into future games?

[Laughter]

MIYAMOTO: Yeah, I think maybe we'll put a dog in Pikmin that will come running out and just gobble up the Pikmin.

[Laughter]

I don't specifically take my hobbies and try to find a way to tie them to a game or anything but one thing that I think is very interesting about dogs and raising dogs is, and it's really funny, I always wonder why people think the way they do towards dogs and why dogs think the way they do towards people. Dogs obviously don't understand words really and yet people talk to them as if they do. And I find myself doing this as well and I sound like a complete fool saying complete sentences to my dog, which it doesn't understand, whatsoever. So I think for me, right now, having and interacting with a dog is really just a game for me.

The same way that you were able to implement playing in a cave in Kyoto into Zelda, I'm sure you see something with a relationship with a dog that none of us have seen. What new things has the dog brought to your life and your thinking?

MIYAMOTO: I definitely think that something like that has the high possibility of popping up in a game idea somewhere. Probably, if we do it, it won't be a dog in the game.

[Laughter]

The Zelda: Ocarina of Time pre-order disc has been a pretty big success. Do you think that you might ever do that with a future game?

MIYAMOTO: The Zelda pre-sale was actually kind of a unique case in the sense that we had actually gone through the trouble of developing Ura Zelda (Master Quest) in Japan and we ultimately never released it, primarily because the contents of the game had not changed enough from Ocarina of Time to provide enough value in the product, we thought. But the people who worked on it really wanted to get the game out there and we did too. We actually looked at many possible ways to do that including tying up with magazines and trying to sell it through magazines. But ultimately we never really found a way of providing that to the consumer.

This time around with the release of Wind Waker and the fact that we'd gone from a cartridge-based media on the N64 to a disc-based media caused a [cost] drop so significantly that we found we could take this N64 game, put it on the GameCube disc, put it in high-resolution, and let people play through the Ocarina of Time game again and then follow it up with the Master Quest at a relatively low cost. So there were some unique circumstances with Zelda. It would certainly be possible to do it with other games but we just haven't thought about doing with anything else at this point.

To follow-up, you know, we've never gotten to play Star Fox 2.

[Laughter]

MIYAMOTO: Star Fox Adventures was very different from any of the other Star Fox games that we've made. We actually were working on that, after the fact, I thought it would have been kind of nice if we had done something similar with Star Fox 64 for that game. I'll give that Star Fox 2 idea some thought though. [Laughs]

Now that Nintendo and Rare have parted ways, where does that leave the Donkey Kong series? Has Nintendo taken that back and are you going to leave the Rare art style of Donkey Kong as opposed to the old Miyamoto-style?

MIYAMOTO: I don't know if I can say this. I guess I can say this. We are working on a Donkey Kong game. Really, it's our policy with the separation with Rare to not allow that to open any holes in Nintendo's library or lineup. It's not as if we got into some big fight with Rare or anything, we just had some different opinions about business models and where we were headed. We obviously have a strong relationship with Rare and got along very well with them. So when we did finally part with them, we were able to clean up all the rights and issues surrounding all the characters and franchises very easily.

Will we see the new Donkey Kong game at E3?

MIYAMOTO: [Laughs] Unfortunately, I can't answer that question.

You've just come back from a tour of Europe and now you're in Las Vegas doing PR for Zelda as well. What kind of responses are you getting on The Wind Waker from people who have actually played the game?

MIYAMOTO: Actually, the response we've been getting has been drastically different and I think the reason for that is because very few people in Europe have actually played much of the game yet. So in Europe, it's a really kind of a lot like some of the feedback we had gotten when we first showed pictures of the game where people are just overwhelmingly concerned about the graphic style and haven't had a chance to see how it's working with the gameplay.

Whereas, conversely in the United States, where most everybody has actually played the game or gotten to see it, they finally understood why we chose the graphics style we have. It's much more positive. In Europe, a lot of the press has actually played it and they understand it and now essentially a lot of them are asking us how they can help convince people that they need to try this game.

In Japan, after people played Wind Waker, we had a lot of feedback that the collection of Triforce pieces in the game was kind of difficult or tedious so we actually touched that up and made some changes to that part of the spec for the U.S. version and that will be reflected in the first build of that coming out [in March]. It's just a few small changes but hopefully that'll improve some of the feedback we get. [Laughs]

You made an appearance at the Virgin Megastore in London to huge successes. Might you in the future do something like that in the U.S. or perhaps in Japan?

MIYAMOTO: I was very surprised by the turnout for the public appearance and autograph session at the [Virgin Megastore]. Actually, Britney Spears had done one just before I did and a thousand people came to mine and that was more than she had attracted. So that was very flattering. [Laughs] Actually, the staff was very helpful. They were worried that maybe if they didn't have enough people there, then maybe it wouldn't look good so they kind of planned to have some people lining up early and said that I could take up to fifteen minutes for each person but in the end it turned out that there were way more people than anyone expected. At this point, I don't have plans to do any more. I'd be too embarrassed to do it in Japan. [Laughs]

[Laughter]