Shigeru Miyamoto

This article is written from the Real Life point of view

Shigeru Miyamoto
Born	November 16, 1952 (age 71)
Place of Birth	Sonobe (now Nantan), Kyoto
Occupation	Senior marketing director, Nintendo general manager, Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development.
Spouse	Yasuko Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto (宮本 茂 Miyamoto Shigeru, born November 16, 1952) is a Japanese video game designer. He is the creator of the Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Nintendogs, Wave Race, and Pikmin video game series for Nintendo game systems.

Biography

He is one of the world's most famous game designers and is often called the father of modern video gaming. His titles are characterized by refined control-mechanics and imaginative worlds in which you are encouraged to discover things for yourself, as well as basic storylines, which had been almost unheard of before he introduced one of the first, featuring Mario.

Employed by Nintendo, then a Hanafuda manufacturer, as an artist, in 1980 he was given the task of designing one of their first coin-op arcade games. The resulting title was Radar Scope, which was not as big a success as Nintendo was hoping for. He later redesigned the game into Donkey Kong which was a huge success and the game's lead character, Jump Man — now called Mario — has become Nintendo's mascot. Miyamoto quickly became Nintendo's star producer designing many franchises for the company, most of which are still active and very well-regarded.

He is currently the Director and General Manager of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD), the corporate sector of Nintendo of Japan. In 1998, Miyamoto became the first person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame.

Involvement with Metroid and Retro Studios

Contrary to popular belief, Shigeru Miyamoto is not the creator of the Metroid; Gunpei Yokoi and Yoshio Sakamoto started the franchise, and the latter has continued to produce the 2D Metroid series. He was a producer of the Metroid Prime series, however. According to Mike Wikan, Miyamoto took a hands-off approach during the development of Metroid Prime. It was common knowledge among Retro Studios staff that Miyamoto was willing to risk them possibly developing a bad Metroid game. According to John Whitmore, "Miyamoto didn't care if we killed it."

Miyamoto gave an interview at E3 2002 regarding Prime. He said that he met the Retro Studios team three years prior (1999) and upon seeing their talents, knew he wanted them to make the game. Miyamoto was involved very early on as a producer, while three members of Nintendo EAD served as de-facto directors from Japan. He believed that fans, especially in Japan, would welcome the new first-person perspective despite skeptical sentiments in the fandom. Additionally, Miyamoto admitted to not understanding how the Morph Ball works, as an industrial designer, in reality.

He play-tested the Frigate Orpheon and within five minutes named a dozen elements to fix, all of which Retro Studios agreed with. This included the scale of Samus Aran in the world, as the camera made her appear to be slightly shorter than in the final game.

Following the conclusion of the initial Metroid Prime series, Retro Studios developed Donkey Kong Country Returns. Miyamoto offered guidance and feedback, and memorably told a team of the developers, in English, "Please take care of DK. He is my friend."

Bryan Walker met with Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata in December 2010. Iwata thanked Retro for their hard work on Returns, and asked Miyamoto if he could recall whether any game had all international versions release early - he could not.

External links

• Miyamoto on MobyGames
• Interview