Having been in development for roughly five years, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword finally arrived for the Wii, and series creator Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed some more interesting insight into its development. The game's creators recently discussed how the game's hub-world was inspired by Mario games, and how director Hidemaro Fujibayashi was given creative license to break away from the traditional Zelda formula.

Perhaps one of the more interesting quotes to come out of Miyamoto's recent interview with Japanese news site Famitsu (via 1UP) has to do with how some of Skyward Sword's structural elements were considered prior to the determination that it would in-fact be a Zelda title. "To put it in an extreme way," he said, "the ideal for me is to build the play structure up to a certain point, then decide whether to make it Zelda or Mario. It's like building up the engine and chassis, then deciding later what sort of car you want to use it on."

Technically, Skyward Sword was in development for five years, Miyamoto confirmed, before qualifying that "the first two of those were spent with assorted experimentation, so essentially it was three years." "We went through kind of a long experimentation period, I suppose," he admitted.

Though perhaps more evolutionary then revolutionary, it's pretty clear that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword attempts to harness a lot of the series' core spirit, and infuse it into a new experience. According to our recent review of the game, the developers appear to have succeeded, for the most part. "I think we were able to bring multiple things that are important to Zelda into a single package," Miyamoto concluded. "We've evolved Zelda without having to turn it into an epic thing."