Shigeru Miyamoto
born in Kyote in 1953

The man behind Mario!

Miyamoto is a true genius that has been developing all the brilliant Mario games and has also had his magic hand in the developing of the Zelda, Kirby and Donkey Kong series and most of the other brilliant games that Nintendo has made! He is still working on new Nintendo games and has a finger in nearly all the games that are being developed to nintendo´s newest console, the Nintendo 64. Some has said: "Shigeru is to video gaming what John Lennon is to Music!" In June Shigeru became the first person to get into the The Interactive Academy of Arts and Sciences´s Hall of Fame! This is a price that is given only to the ones that has developed new and extraordinary things within the digital industry.

THE BEGINNING
Miyamoto grew up in Sonebe, a small town outside Kyoto where he spent his time exploring the surroundings around his house and playing baseball with his friends.In the evenings he intended heroic dance dramas and he was a master of making various puppet shows. Since his family didn't have a TV or a car Shigeru didn't saw movies that often, instead he read a lot and painted. He was also a skilled cartoonist and organized a cartoon club at his school.

"Video Games are bad for you? That's what they said about Rock 'n Roll." -Shigeru's comment when he heard a report about Video Games, made by the watchdog organization Action for Children's Television...

Miyamoto was first a student at the Kanazawa Munici College of Art and Crafts. His interests in music and guitar playing took much of his time so it took Shigeru 5 whole years to graduate since he only attended class half the time! After his graduation he didn't know what he wanted to do and he knew that he wouldn't survive a ordinary boring and monotone job for a too long time. Shigeru then asked his father to contact one of his old friends, Hiroshi Yamauchi (who ran and still runs Nintendo). Hiroshi agreed but pointed out to him that "We needs engineers not painters". In 1977, two years after his graduation at the age of 24, Shigeru was called to Yamauchi's office. At first Hiroshi was skeptical but when Miyamoto their next meeting showed him some of his ideas for toys Yamauchi hired him as the company's first staff artist although that Nintendo didn't need one at the time! Instead he was an apprentice at the planning department until one day in 1980 when Hiroshi called him to his office told him to start working as a games designer, creating artwork for their arcade games etc.

Donkey Kong
His first project (1980) was to continue on a sad shoot em up game named Radarscope, but Miyamoto trashed the whole project and with the guidance of Gunpei Yokoi he started working on a Popeye game but when their license for the Popeye name fell Shigeru decided to do something on the Beauty and the Beast them and he came up with Donkey Kong starring the new character Mario (although that he wasn´t named Mario yet)! How did he come up with the name Donkey Kong then? We'll the Kong part came from the popular movie King Kong and he came up with the Donkey part when he looked in an english/japanese dictionary for a translation of the japanese word for stupid/goofy. Donkey Kong soon became Nintendo´s first real smash hit! After that Shigeru was assigned to design new Game&Watch games. He did a simpler version of Donkey Kong and he also got the chance to do a Popeye games.

"Miyamoto, it was soon apparent, had the same talent for video games as the Beatles had for music. It's impossible to calculate Miyamoto's value to Nintendo, and it's not unreasonable to question whether Nintendo would have succeeded without him" - From GAME OVER -Nintendo's battle to dominate an industry by David Sheff

Miyamoto gets his own R&D team!
In 1984 Shigeru got his own team called Joho Kaihatsu (Entertainment-team) or the R&D4 team with whom he has done all the Mario and Zelda games. Many great NES games followed like Zelda 1&2, Mario Bros, SMB1,2,3 just to mention some... When Shigeru after a while was promoted and became a Producer he became very proud and honoured. Now he had the same title as his big idol George Lucas! Apart from the sentimental bit some new changes was also made in his routines. Instead of just working on one game at the time Shigeru was now the producer of several big games at once.

Influences for Shigeru, in his game designing.
Shigeru takes much of his ideas for his games from folklore, books, popular Tv series but also much from his own experiences as a kid.
For example: the the warpzones in SMB comes from Star Trek. The Super Mushrooms comes from Alice in the Wonderland. The dungeons in the Zelda games was inspired by his Family's in Sonebe with it's many sliding doors and maze like design. His memory of his parent's attic which he often used as a haven has inspired him to create many of the safe places in his Mario games. His games encourages the players to explore and try to find new secret areas by rewarding them we they do find one. If there's one thing the Mario and Zelda games are famous for it's all their secrets!
 
The Origin of Zelda
Miyamomto has openly admitted that "The Legend of Zelda" game series was based on both the fantasy of young children to explore those woods out beyond your house (ala Narnia), and the movie "Legend". The movie "Legend" was released just before "The Legend of Zelda" was made, back in 1986. "Legend" was directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Bladerunner, Gladiator), and starred Tom Cruise. I encourage all Zelda fans to watch the movie. Besides the title being similar, the story is also: Young scrawny elf like boy is sent out by various dwarves and pixies to delve into the dark dungeons and rescue the princess captured by the evil Gannon like demon. In his way are many smaller demons and the such. It also has the exact same mythological and medival fantasy feel to it. But, don't get all upset, it's not like he copied it. Let's just call it "inspiration". Kind of how "Alice in Wonderland" was an inspiration for Super Mario Bros. (and the movie, along with combining already existing characters and themes). The best is inspired by the best.
Thanks to Ed "ible" Price for this piece of information.
 

THE SNES
When the SNES was developed Shigeru and his team got 15 months to develop both Super Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings and Zelda III, pretty tight or what! After that, his main task at Nintendo has been to improve all sorts of games, but Shigeru has also produced some games, for example Super Mario World 2, and Super Mario RPG.

"An adult is a child who has more ethics and morals. That's all" - Shigeru Miyamoto

THE N64
To the release of the Nintendo 64 he was set to develop the consoles flagship Super Mario 64 but was at the same time involved in almost all the other companies N64 games at the same time! Now he is currently working on the soon to be released The Legend of Zelda -The Ocarina of Time and F-Zero 64 just to mention some titles. Shigeru is truly a bussy man! 

PERSONAL INFO
Miyamoto has got a wife named Yasuko (who worked in Nintendo's general administration department when he met her) and 2 kids. Miyamoto has other hobbies than videogames: he plays softball, swims, skies and plays guitar and piano.

Many have been the artists/celebrities that have pilgrimaged to see Mr. Miyamoto. A name worth mentioning is Paul McCartny who when he was on a Japan tour turned the Mount Fuji down to go and see Miyamoto instead!

He is very surprised how fast the development of computer and videogames have gone (who isn´t). In an interview in 93- 95 he said that he was looking forward to be working on 3D-games. He has also said "I like to create trends not follow them!" His favourite video game character isn´t Mario, as you might think, but Pac-Man because as he sad it -"it´s excellence in graphics expression of digital operation and accurate time judgment"  which basically means that it´s a hell of a good game that require good reflexes or something like that! The game he enjoyed the most to produce is the conversion of Sim City to the SNES. The first Zelda game was the most difficult game to develop. Shigeru's all time favourite game to produce are Super Mario Bros 1 and Donkey Kong because they both revolutionized the whole videogame market.

Shigeru is very attached to his characters and often gets very nervous when other people uses them. On the question "what is the secret behind a good game?" he replied: "You has to lay down much work on the game and be willing to let the private life suffer a bit too" (This appears to be the key in creating good websites too!). Shigeru never releases a game if it doesn´t "feel good" or unfinished. Many games hasn´t been released because of that they didn´t felt right and he always tries to satisfy the player and surprise them.

Shigeru doesn´t have much spare time to play games on his sparetime but he likes to test new games. This is what he said when someone asked him about the Sonic-games in 1993 or something: "I haven´t been able to play them much but I think that Sonic is the best of all the Mario-copies".

If there's one person we admire it´s Shigeru Miyamoto!