|
Shigeru Miyamoto (宮本茂) (born
November 16,
1952) is the creator of
Donkey Kong and related
Mario games as well as the
Legend of Zelda series for
Nintendo. He is considered to be one of the fathers of
video games and usually cited as the greatest game designer of all
time. His titles are characterised by refined control-mechanics and
interactive worlds in which the player is encouraged to discover things
for themselves.
Employed by Nintendo (then a toy company) as an artist, in 1980 he was
given the task of designing one of their first coin-op arcade games. The
resulting title
Donkey Kong was a huge success and the game's lead character
Mario has become Nintendo's mascot. Miyamoto quickly became Nintendo's
star producer and built a large stable of franchises for the company, most
of which are still active and very well-regarded.
At odds with standard industry practices, Miyamoto showed unwillingness
to rehash existing titles and would rarely create a sequel without
significantly evolving the game into a fresh experience. However, this is
somewhat less true now than it was in the heyday of the
Super Famicom; the increasing complexity of game development has meant
that he is now spread rather thinner over more titles and only a few
GameCube titles have shone through as true Miyamoto games, most
notably the
Pikmin series.
Biography
Shigeru Miyamoto was born in Sonobe-cho,
Kyoto,
Japan. As a young boy, Miyamoto loved to draw, paint pictures, and
explore the landscape surrounding his home. In
1970, he enrolled in the Kanazawa Munici College of Industrial Arts
and Crafts, and graduated five years later, though he would later remark
that his studies often took a backseat to doodling. In
1977, Miyamoto, armed with a degree in industrial design, scored a
meeting with
Hiroshi Yamauchi -- a friend of his father, and the head of
Nintendo of Japan. Yamauchi hired Miyamoto to be a "staff artist," and
assigned him to apprentice in the planning department.
In
1980, the fairly new American branch of Nintendo released
"Radarscope," an arcade game they hoped would kickstart a long reign of
success, but instead turned out to be a huge flop. To stay afloat,
Nintendo of America desperately needed a smash-hit game. Hiroshi Yamauchi
assigned Miyamoto-- the only person available-- the task of creating the
game that would make or break the company.
After consulting with some of the company΄s engineers (Miyamoto had no
prior programming experience), and composing the music himself on a small
electronic keyboard, Donkey Kong was born.
Donkey Kong was an overnight success. Out of the three characters
Miyamoto created for the game-- Donkey Kong, Mario, and Pauline-- Mario has
found the most success, and since his debut in Donkey Kong he has appeared
in more than 100 games spanning over a dozen gaming platforms.
Miyamoto is usually listed as "producer" in the credits of Mario games.
The few exceptions include the Mario Land series, which he had virtually
nothing to do with.
Quotes
- "What if everything you see is more than what you see - the
person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a
secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't?
You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the
world than you think. Perhaps it is really a doorway, and if you choose
to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things."
- "Video Games are bad for you? That's what they said about Rock
'N' Roll. "
- "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever"
|
