Earlier this year, Nintendo released The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which featured the film debuts of Yoshi and Star Fox‘s Fox McCloud, both of whom also starred in brand new games released later in the year.

In an interview with Famitsu (translated via VGC), Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that this was, unsurprisingly, not a coincidence. Miyamoto says that both the Star Fox remake as well as Yoshi and the Mysterious Book were developed in-part due to the main characters being confirmed to appear in the Super Mario Galaxy Movie to capitalize on some synergy between the projects. This influence also sometimes works in reverse, with Miyamoto saying that work on Princess Peach Showtime had Nintendo thinking she should be more active in the first Super Mario Bros. film.

“I don’t decide the entire lineup myself, but sometimes decisions are made based on specific needs, For example: ‘We have an idea to include Fox in the script for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, so we should make a new Star Fox game.’”

“We started production on the first Mario movie (The Super Mario Bros Movie) and Princess Peach: Showtime around the same time, and we had discussions like ‘since we have this game in the works, shouldn’t we make Peach more active in the movie as well?’

“We also decided early on that Yoshi would appear in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, so we kicked off development on Yoshi and the Mysterious Book to ensure there was a Yoshi game available.

“It varies by case, but I think we will continue to move forward while maintaining a positive relationship between our games and other media initiatives.”

“We also decided early on that Yoshi would appear in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, so we kicked off development on Yoshi and the Mysterious Book to ensure there was a Yoshi game available.”

That said, Miyamoto clarified that Star Fox’s appearance in the Super Mario Galaxy Movie was a special case, and Nintendo’s standard policy is not to have crossovers of this sort with the exception of Super Smash Bros and Pikmin.

“Basically, Nintendo’s IPs follow the rule that ‘characters from different worlds must not cross over’, with the exception being Smash Bros. As for Pikmin, we’ve also decided that its characters can appear in any other character’s world.

“We’d previously held back on this partly because once you start, there’s no end to it, and also due to issues with licensing merchandise and other reasons. But with Fox, there was a compelling reason for him to appear in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and we thought: ‘If this were a manga, wouldn’t it be more interesting to have this kind of crossover?’

“So that decision was made fairly early on, and even though we broke the rules we’d followed up until now, it was surprisingly well received. “If characters like Samus were to show up though, it would definitely get a bit too complicated, so I don’t think it’s a matter of just throwing anything out there.”

Even so, Miyamoto’s statements lend support to speculation that if Nintendo has announced a major film or media project, there is probably going to be a major game released to tie into it. More recently, we have seen the announcement of The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, which coincides with The Legend Of Zelda Live-action film.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.