Re:Comments (Score 1)

I agree with you, being focused is a key toa good product... but you're oversimplifying the two games... sure they're both platformers we could say if we want and we could stop there... What I mean about vision and creativity is being able to either start a new genre ( like Mario 64 did... Crash wasn't a pure 3D platformer and, in all its beauty, not even was Nights ) or to bring an existing genre to a new step and that's what he always did with the Mario series ( Yoshi's island ) or with Zelda ( Zelda: the ocarina of time )... he knows how to challenge the player, how to let him enjoy the experience and immerse in the game... he's the one who direct the effort of the programmers in the right direction. People who work under him are left in parts of the projects to experiments and he, like a good designer, chooses what path is best for the game and try to help the people under him to learn how to do that... Mario 64 was a challenge: bringing the series in full 3D was a huge step and there was the danger of killing the series... the game had to be just perfect... As I said before, he must have put a lot of work also in the initial design of the game, he had a view of how Mario should move around and the basic puzzles and the structure of the game sure he had an open mind and he was able to move accordingly with the progresses of his team... so in this sense I strongly disagree with John Carmack on the initial design issue ( it might not be the most important thing, but it is not THAT unuseful )