Growing up in Sonobe, Japan, Shigeru Miyamoto’s first love was to create a career as a manga artist. As he grew older, he developed a desire to create video games as influenced by his father. But what is one thing that he likes to do during his free time?
Shigeru Miyamoto was known as a video game designer, producer, and director of some of the most famous games like Super Mario Brothers. He has an unusual pastime of guessing the dimensions of objects, then checking to see if he was correct.
The Life and Career of Shigeru Miyamoto
In 1977, as Miyamoto joined Nintendo and furnished his crafts, he developed multiple highly acclaimed video games that dominated the gaming industry. Miyamoto was responsible for games such as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, and more.
I feel that I have been very lucky to be a game designer since the dawn of the industry. I am not an engineer, but I have had the opportunity to learn the principles of the game from scratch, over a long period of time. And because I am so pioneering and trying to keep at the forefront, I have grown accustomed to first creating the very tools necessary for game creation.
Shigeru Miyamoto
(Source: Shigeru Miyamoto)
The Impact of Shigeru Miyamoto’s Work
Miyamoto’s rise in stardom in the industry does not stand alone with just earning a fortune. Over the years, he also influenced a lot of early developers, who credited him as the father of modern video games and even as the Spielberg of video games. His works were a pioneer in the industry and that’s why many of the new and modern games of today were mostly based on his creations.
People have paid me a lot of lip service, calling me a genius storyteller or a talented animator, and have gone so far as to suggest that I try my hand at movies, since my style of game design is, in their words, quite similar to making movies. But I feel that I am not a movie maker, but rather that my strength lies in my pioneering spirit to make use of technology to create the best, interactive commodities possible, and use that interactivity to give users a game they can enjoy and play comfortably.
Shigeru Miyamoto
In 1998, Miyamoto was honored as the first person inducted into the Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame Academy. He was made a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres in 2006. He was also featured in TIME Asia’s 60 Years of Asian Heroes in the same year.
Miyamoto approaches the games playfully, which seems obvious, but most people don’t. And he comes things from the players’ point of view, which is part of his magic.
Will Wright, The New Yorker
Did Shigeru Miyamoto Retire?
Miyamoto is currently 69 years old and is well into retirement age. However, in an interview in 2019, he insisted that he was not even considering ending his career yet. As of today, Miyamoto still works for Nintendo and is focused on making the world a kinder place. (Source: IGN Southeast Asia)