GDC 2007 Adds Nintendo's Aonuma On Zelda. Kondo On Music

Author: by Staff

The organizers of Game Developers Conference 2007 have revealed two major new Nintendo lectures for the March event, with Eiji Aonuma discussing the Zelda franchise and a rare appearance from Mario and Zelda composer Koji Kondo. Eiji Aonuma, who recently finished overseeing Zelda: Twilight Princess and has worked on the series since The Ocarina Of Time, is offering a lecture titled “Reflections of Zelda”, which is described as follows: “Aonuma explains the development team's formidable task of progressing the epic franchise across multiple generations of Nintendo systems. This is a rare opportunity to learn behind-the-scenes development challenges and triumphs from Link's latest installments.” Seminal Nintendo composer Kondo's presentation is titled “Painting an Interactive Musical Landscape”, and described as follows: “During this in-depth session, Kondo illustrates how his method of composing interactive music is unique by dissecting various examples of sounds and music from the Super Mario and Legend of Zelda series. Although the art and science of videogame music has changed dramatically during the last 20 years, his work has remained consistent and allows Nintendo's musical soundtracks to soar. Learn what inspires Kondo to create musical masterpieces as epic as the tales they accompany.” These latest additions to the event's line-up follow other lectures announced earlier this week, including Tsutomu Kouno presenting a postmortem of LocoRoco, Castlevania's Koji 'Iga' Igarashi discussing the 'Light and Darkness of 2D Gaming', and Id boss Todd Hollenshead talking on games and the piracy problem. Further major announcements on the Game Developers Conference 2007 (which is created by the CMP Game Group, as is Gamasutra) are expected over the next few days.