In an interview with LocoRoco designer Tsutomu Kouno, Gamasutra manages to get some pretty interesting facts out of him. The interview focuses on the design of LocoRoco, which Kouno says he sketched out while riding on a train. He talks about how he designed the game for ease of play:

I definitely wanted the game to be accessible to children. I also wanted it to be something people outside Japan could pick up and "get" without too much explanation, simply by pressing L and R. 

Kouno has worked on some other pretty big titles at Sony. Do you remember The Legend of Dragoon? That was his first gig. He also worked on Ico. As for his influences, he cites old PC games Hydlide and Xanadu. Oh, and the movie Short Circuit. In school, Kouno actually built a robot of his own, based on the ones from the movie. And then he brought it to school to show it off. What a badass.

Read the full interview at Gamasutra.