Mario as Revolution launch title?

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says he's "pushing very strongly" for Mario to be one of the Revolution's launch titles.

Speaking in an interview with G4TV conducted during the Tokyo Game Show t'other week, Iwata-san said: "Personally I am pushing very strongly on Mr. Miyamoto to make Mario one of the launch titles for the Revolution."

The full interview will be broadcast on G4TV tomorrow, but that excerpt is already online. During brief snippets from the interview, Iwata-san also reiterated what he said during his TGS keynote – that Nintendo wants to expand the gaming populace with the Revolution controller, which he believes is far less intimidating than the controllers currently offered by games consoles.

The news that Nintendo wants Mario to be a launch title isn't exactly, er, news, so to speak. Back at this May's E3, Nintendo said it hoped to have Mario, as well as Metroid, Zelda and Donkey Kong, ready for the system's launch in 2006.

However very little has been seen or heard of the next Mario game, even though it's known to have been in development for some time. We'd expect it to be a big fixture at E3 next May, although Iwata-san's TGS comments suggest that we'll get it when it's ready and not a moment sooner – however much he needles development legend Shigeru Miyamoto to get his backside in gear.

Speaking of Miyamoto-san, he's just been to New York to appear at the Nintendo World store where he'll sign autographs and help promote Nintendogs on DS. Hopefully he enjoyed himself – he looked a bit tired when we practically ran into him at Narita airport last Friday. If anybody's interested, his suitcase wasn't very big.