Interview Transcript: Dylan Cuthbert, March 2025
Dylan Cuthbert was one of the first western developers to work for Nintendo, where, with colleagues from Argonaut Software, he helped create Star Fox for the SNES. He went on to work at Sony for a time, then founded his own studio Q-Games, who created the PixelJunk game series. They’re currently hard at work on Dreams of Another, a superbly stylish and interesting game coming soon.
For Retro Gamer number 271, I interviewed Dylan about his long and colorful career. Due to scope of focus and space, some of our interview did not appear in the magazine. Here is the unedited transcript of my conversation with Dylan.
James: Thank you for taking the time to chat. Before I launch into the interview, I’d like to take a moment to thank you for your work, and the many ways that you and your various colleagues have contributed to my life. I hope you know that your work has brought (and continues to bring) much happiness to millions of people.
I did not want to miss the opportunity to thank you personally.
For those who may not be familiar, can you please tell us briefly about how you broke into the game industry, and how you managed to become so closely linked with Nintendo?
Dylan: I saw an ad in the back of a magazine for a job at Argonaut Software, I think it was Personal Computer Weekly, while I was still at school, applied for that, quit school and began working there. One of the first things I worked on was a Z80 emulator that ran on the Amiga, which I knocked up to emulate what we imagined the GameBoy’s architecture was like. It wasn’t too far wrong, and so gave us a head start when we began hacking the real hardware to load up our programs onto it. I developed a small 3D demo called Eclipse which at some point got shown to Nintendo during CES in Vegas. About two weeks later I was flown over with Jez, my boss, to show that to Nintendo HQ in Kyoto. They liked what they saw and signed a deal to develop it into a full game in collaboration with them. To get 3D up and running on such a system I drew upon my experience programming the ZX Spectrum while I was at school.
(NOTE: Speak on whatever you like, but I am particularly interested in X, for the GameBoy, and the story of how that game came to be: reverse engineering the GameBoy hardware, creating a 3D engine for such a rudimentary game system, and how that caught the attention of Nintendo and led to SO MUCH later on.)
James: During your career, you’ve worked with some truly legendary people in the games industry. To name a few from your early days at Nintendo, I’m thinking of Shigeru Miyamoto, Yoshio Sakamoto, the inventor of the GameBoy, Gunpei Yokoi, and many others. Can you talk about the ways that working with such immense personalities in gaming has helped or altered the way that you make games, and I’m wondering if you can think of a particular lesson or experience that you’ve carried with you through your long and impressive career?
Dylan: Miyamoto, Sakamoto, “Hip” Tanaka (now nicknamed Chip Tanaka), Yokoi, Izushi, Totaka (Totakeke), were all instrumental in my early years and I really enjoyed working with them all. They helped settle me into the Nintendo way of making games, which was very different to the way in the UK at the time. The games industry in the UK was still very much a bedroom industry, but here was Nintendo HQ where they had a large complex of buildings and lots of very busy people bustling around. The scale was incredibly different.
Sakamoto helped me understand that we shouldn’t make games too hard, not everyone was as hardcore a gamer as we were. Miyamoto taught me how to re-analyse a feature, and to remove if it just doesn’t fit. No matter how much you are attached to an idea, you need to let it go and move on if it just isn’t working.
James: The Nintendo composer Kazumi Totaka, who created the soundtracks for such games as WaveRace 64, Animal Crossing, Wii Sports, some Zelda games, etc., has incorporated into every one of his games an infamous hidden tune called “Totaka’s Song,” and the first appearance of this hidden song was in your GameBoy game X. Did you know about this when the game first released? When did you first learn of Totaka’s Song?
Dylan: I knew about the hidden song and secret area of the game of course (I programmed it), but I don’t think even he realised that this would be a running meme in a lot of his games, because of course, it was the first. It was just a fun little melody he had knocking around and we had a fun little secret we needed something for.
James: Have you hidden anything into your own games over the years, similar to Totaka’s Song? Is there a Cuthbert signature that has yet to be discovered?
Dylan: In X I included a cheat code, it’s not really a signature, I simply formed the word ST-A-R-B-U-R-ST from the keys of the GameBoy and if you type that while you are in the pause screen it will jump you to the end credit sequence of the game. (which has another great soundtrack by Totaka)
James: Star Fox, which you programmed, has been well-covered, but I’m wondering if you can talk a bit about this game. What is your most prominent memory of creating Star Fox with Argonaut and the people at Nintendo?
Dylan: Going for McVities chocolate biscuits at the local convenience store at 3 in the morning is one of my best memories. The schedule was a bit tight and we were waiting for final bug reports. Miyamoto and everyone else were there, and Miyamoto had a hankering for his favorite student-era snack, which happened to be McVities chocolate biscuits, which, weirdly enough, were sold in Japan back then. Sadly you can’t find them here anymore.
James: I recently interviewed Giles Goddard for Retro Gamer #266, where we discussed Stunt Race FX, specifically. I don’t think you worked on Stunt Race FX, correct? Would this be the time period during which you were working on Star Fox 2?
Dylan: I was working on Star Fox 2 during that period. In order to help teach the staff at Nintendo more about 3D, we split the team into two and added a few Japanese programmers. Giles was working in a little area adjacent to the Star Fox one.
James: Star Fox 2 was infamously canceled in 1995, despite being a finished game. At that time, was it disappointing to have worked on such a big-name game only for it to be locked away in Nintendo’s vault? And did you have any thoughts or feelings when the game was finally released with the SNES Mini hardware in 2019?
Dylan: Yes, although I was ready for a new adventure at that point so it didn’t phase me too much. I do wish it had been released but at the same time, the PlayStation had just launched and was obviously far superior at 3D graphics, so I wouldn’t have liked our game to be compared to that. I was very happy the game did finally get released!
Star Fox 3D was essentially a remake, rather than a port or remaster. Here my daughter is about to play.
James: After your time at Nintendo, you moved on to work with Sony. Can you talk a bit about this time period?
Dylan: I joined PlayStation in the US, just a few months after the PlayStation had launched over there and began working on “Captain Blasto” which eventually became simply “Blasto”. That was quite a big cultural difference to the UK and Japan and I enjoyed American life immensely. I did find that the hours were much longer and harder than Nintendo’s, with a lot more pressure on milestone dates. Nintendo didn’t set dates until a game felt like it was ready, which led to more creativity and experimentation.
James: Do you have any interesting memories around your time working on Blasto, a somewhat overlooked action platformer which featured the voice talents of Phil Hartman? (Note: I loved this game)
Dylan: The team, which was a mix of Brits and Americans, was a blast. We all had very strong personalities so there were a lot of clashes, but at the same time, we were all young and that’s the kind of thing that keeps you on your toes, and even with tight schedules we pulled out all the stops to be as creative as possible. Blasto was a great 3D engine, with even individual polygons in the world having little scripted programs attachable to them. The PlayStation was a fun machine to develop for.
James: Broadly speaking, what has it been like to live and work in Japan for so long?
Dylan: I’m still loving it. I did enjoy my time in the US but nothing beats Kyoto I think. It just has such an eclectic mix of ancient and modern, classic and contemporary. It also has incredible food, and quite a cosmopolitan feel. It’s larger in population than Manchester yet still maintains a tight smaller town feel because of its density and because of the mountains and rivers that are nearby.
James: I’m wondering as a personal aside, likely not to be featured in the interview, but you were working in the industry at the time of the Dreamcast. I’m curious if you had any interest in that hardware, or Sega at large?
Dylan: I kept an eye on it, but never had a chance to develop for it. I was a big fan of games such as Daytona and Virtua Racer from a few years before then, and of course Crazy Taxi and the Harley Davidson game that preceded that. I just never really got the opportunity.
James: After working at Sony, you founded Q-Games in 2001. What was it like to go independent at that time?
Dylan: Since I was a kid I had always wanted to make my own games studio, it was like a standard dream for bedroom coders in the early 1980s, and one I managed to realise. The PlayStation 2 had just come out and I had just released a game for it (Ape Escape 2001) and I was ready to move back to Kyoto. At the time I had built up quite a name for myself within PlayStation so I decided it would be the right time to take the gamble. I took my idea to Akira Sato, one of the VPs, and he encouraged me and even set up an initial R&D contract to get us going (something I hadn’t asked for).
James: One of the first games that Q-Games developed was Star Fox Command. What was it like returning to Star Fox after a decade? And then later you directed Star Fox 64 3D, which is one of the best ports of any game that I’ve played on any system. What was it like to go from a programmer on the first game, to Director on this version?
Dylan: Nintendo approached us after we had taken a few ideas for different games to them a year or two earlier, even developing one of them, called “Digidrive”. They felt we were just about the right size (15 ppl) to take on something like a mobile version of Star Fox, especially considering my involvement in the first two installments.
I enjoyed being the director, and working with Imamura in the role of producer was a great experience. The experimentation and brainstorming was a lot of fun.
Star Fox 64 3D was a great project, I hesitate to call it a port because we actually had to re-work it a lot, re-modeling and re-texturing the entire game in the process.
James: I’d like to talk about PixelJunk. The series began with PixelJunk Racers, followed by the amazing tower defense game, PixelJunk Monsters, then Eden and Shooter, SideScroller, and 4am. Each of these games has such a unique presentation and philosophy, and it seems that the entire series is one of experimentation. Can you talk a bit about how this all came about?
Dylan: We were working behind the scenes on the PS3, developing the XMB interface and the music visualisers, when there was mention that there would be an online store available on the PS3 where people could buy games that were download-only and that this would open up the doors for smaller companies like Q to develop and publish their own games on the platform. So we signed up immediately for that, and because the PS3 was the first system that supported 1080p HDMI output I decided to re-visit 2D gaming and pull upon all my memories from childhood, but this time with a full range of decent colours and pixel perfect high resolution, that’s why “hd” is hidden in the PixelJunk logo.
Hand model = my older daughter <3
James: PixelJunk Eden, in particular, struck a chord with me. The blend of music and simple but meditative and interesting game design reminds me of such games as REZ and Lumines. How did Eden game come to be, how did you end up working with Tomohisa Kuramitsu (Baiyon), and what are your feelings toward this game?
Dylan: From the beginning of the series I planned that the third title should be “artsy fartsy” in some way, more of an experimental title, and I was looking for a local artist who might be interested in collaborating on something like that. Some friends mentioned that there was a local DJ who was an artist and was also really interested in getting into the games industry in some way. I then met him by accident at a christmas party nearby, realised he was the guy who some people had mentioned and asked him to bring in his art so we could take a look at it. He brought in a bunch of crazy looking art, and something about one piece which looked like ink dripped plants caught my imagination - it reminded me of an old ZX Spectrum game I loved called Bugaboo the Flea. This got me thinking about how that game could be melded with modern looking art like that and PixelJunk Eden was born. Baiyon was a musician too so it really helped cement the whole mix of art, music and gameplay together.
James: Were you ever worried that the PixelJunk games would be poorly received due to their unusual styles?
Dylan: I just assumed everyone was like me and likes to be surprised and inspired by different things all the time. After making many more games, I realise that many people prefer more of the same thing over and over again, but I just can’t cater to them, I have to be looking for something new and interesting to do.
James: Does Q-Games own the rights to the PixelJunk games? Is there any possibility that a collection of the games could be distributed as a physical release?
Dylan: Yes, all the PixelJunk games’ rights are held by Q-Games. I’m not sure we’d do a physical release now as some of the games are old, but I don’t rule out returning to some of the entries in the series at some time in the future.
James: What is the future of PixelJunk?
Dylan: We have a brand new PixelJunk title we will be announcing very soon, directed by Baiyon. It’s nothing like PixelJunk Eden so keep an eye out for that!
James: Is it true that Q-Games designed the Sony XMB (Xross Media Bar content management UI)? And the LiveArea UI for PS Vita? Can you tell me a bit about this?
Dylan: We collaborated with the Sony Design Center on the Sony XMB, developing its look for the PS3. We also worked on the visuals and UI for the Vita too yes, including the flip page effect. Our crowning achievement was getting the Earth visualiser into the PS3 though, we really enjoyed making that one.
James: What is it like to work at Q-Games? Do you have any advice for people who want to work in game development?
Dylan: At Q you need to be willing to brainstorm and collaborate in sometimes very painful ways, this all goes back to the Miyamoto method of game design. Sometimes we need to re-work ideas completely if they aren’t working. This is seen as part of the process here and it can be very different at other companies I feel. When we develop a feature for a game, we take a hard critical look at it and give it a thorough test, and if it doesn't click, we re-work it. My motto is “if something needs to be done, something needs to be done” and excuses don’t cut it, because as Miyamoto is famously quoted as saying “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”, so we’d all better do what needs to be done to make our game the best.
James: In 2021, Sony closed down Japan Studio, their in-house game studios which created some of the company’s best-loved experimental and smaller games for nearly 30 years (I think of Patapon, Puppeteer, LocoRoco, Gravity Rush, EchoChrome, and so many more). Do you think that there’s less appetite for experimental and smaller scale games within the big game companies these days? What do you think this means for the game industry? Does it mean anything? Do Indie companies simply have more room to run? Please elaborate if possible.
Dylan: I think this was a huge mistake by PlayStation as it is this exact genre of games that brings in new gamers to the platform, and it is this genre that is missing. The success of a game like Astrobot shows that games that experiment can do well, and some of the games you’ve listed up were huge hits such as LocoRoco. By closing down that studio they have lost a generation of Japanese developers.
James: In 2016, you directed The Tomorrow Children, which I feel was under-appreciated at the time. Can you discuss the development of this game? The visuals are stunning, and I know that a lot of technology went into creating this title.
Dylan: We developed our own 3D engine from scratch for this title as we wanted to utilize the full Compute power of the PS4. We took renders from a tool called Octane Render that would take 10-20 seconds to complete, looked at them, and tried to work out ways we could get a similar look, but at a proper frame rate. We came across a technology called Cascaded Voxel Cone Ray Tracing in a little paper from Siggraph that looked like, maybe, it had promise, even though no-one had got it running faster than a few frames a second at that point.
Over a couple of years we fleshed out that technology and we got it performant, squeezing every single last cycle of power out of the Compute pipeline that we could find. It gave us effects such as multiple bounces of light, sub-surface scattering, reflections and semi-translucency, all with a dynamic world, not a static one.
James: In 2022, Q-Games secured the rights to The Tomorrow Children and re-released it. Was this a personal goal of yours?
Dylan: Yes, I worked for years to get the IP given back to us after the game was shut down many years ago. It was frustrating to have a game that many people had enjoyed, and for which the average playtime was in the hundreds of hours for, just removed like that.
Because the technology was original the game looks just as good today as it did back then.
James: You have been involved in the creation of more than 35 games beginning in the late 1980s. As technology has advanced over this time, video games have undergone transformative change, becoming more ambitious, immersive, and incorporating stunning technology which was literally the stuff of dreams when you began your career.
If you could go back and remake any of your older games using today’s technology, which would you choose, and can you share why?
Dylan: The original Star Fox would be fun to go back to I think. Also, something like PixelJunk Shooter could be very interesting if revisited in 3D with 3D fluids, but right now games are very expensive to make, so we have to balance funding with our lofty goals. Another one I would like to re-visit is PixelJunk 4am, that was just a little too ahead of its time and because it used the Move controller it was limited too much right from the get-go.
James: Would you ever like to revisit one of your older games in VR? Do you have any interest in VR in any capacity?
Dylan: I think there are still opportunities for some fun experiences in VR, we have developed a number of scrapped ideas for VR over the years and of course we launched Dead Hungry in the early days. So I don’t rule it out, but I think the market is difficult to read and I don’t want to make a game that people don’t discover or get to play.
James: You were given a Special Thanks credit from Fumito Ueda on The Last Guardian. Can you tell us if you had any involvement in creating that game?
Dylan: No but I have always been friends with Ueda, ever since he showed me his first demo of Ico on the PlayStation 1. We sometimes meet up and discuss things.
James: How do you feel about the future of video games at this point in time? What is next for you and Q-Games?
Dylan: I think there is a bit of a tipping point happening - which you can see from the enormous amount of layoffs in the West in the games industry. It is getting harder and harder to make a game that lifts its head out up above the sea of other games. I think people in the industry will need to get scrappier and hungrier and less complacent, and learn how to push themselves to make something that truly stands out. Following Miyamoto’s method can get you some of the way there, but we also all need to search hard to find that spark of inspiration that gives us the next hit and ignites the audience again.