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When the Nintendo company began branching out, Miyamoto helped design the company's first original coin-operated ], '']''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/punchout/vol1_page2.jsp|title=Iwata asks – Punch Out!|publisher=Nintendo|accessdate=2010-02-28}}</ref> He first helped the company ] a game with the {{vgy|1980}} release '']''. The game achieved moderate success in Japan, but by {{vgy|1981}}, ]'s efforts to break it into the ]n video game market had been a complete failure, leaving the company with a large number of unsold units and on the verge of financial collapse. In an effort to keep the company afloat, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to ] unsold ''Radar Scope'' units into a new arcade game. He tasked Miyamoto with the conversion,<ref>Kent 157.</ref> with Nintendo's head engineer, ] supervising the project.<ref name="Kent">Kent 158.</ref> When the Nintendo company began branching out, Miyamoto helped design the company's first original coin-operated ], '']''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/punchout/vol1_page2.jsp|title=Iwata asks – Punch Out!|publisher=Nintendo|accessdate=2010-02-28}}</ref> He first helped the company ] a game with the {{vgy|1980}} release '']''. The game achieved moderate success in Japan, but by {{vgy|1981}}, ]'s efforts to break it into the ]n video game market had been a complete failure, leaving the company with a large number of unsold units and on the verge of financial collapse. In an effort to keep the company afloat, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to ] unsold ''Radar Scope'' units into a new arcade game. He tasked Miyamoto with the conversion,<ref>Kent 157.</ref> with Nintendo's head engineer, ] supervising the project.<ref name="Kent">Kent 158.</ref>
] worked with Miyamoto for many years in the company and became his mentor.]] ] worked with Miyamoto for many years in the company and became his mentor.]]
Miyamoto imagined many characters and plot concepts, but eventually settled on a ] between a gorilla, a carpenter, and a girl. He meant to mirror the rivalry between comic characters ] and ] for the woman ]. Bluto evolved into an ape, a form Miyamoto claimed was "nothing too evil or repulsive". This ape would be the pet of the main character, "a funny, hang-loose kind of guy."<ref>Both quotes from Sheff 47.</ref> Miyamoto also named "]" and the 1933 film '']'' as influences.<ref>Kohler 36.</ref> ''Donkey Kong'' marked the first time that the formulation of a video game's storyline preceded the actual ], rather than simply being appended as an afterthought.<ref>Kohler 38.</ref> Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project, but lacked the technical skills to program it himself; instead, he conceived the game's concepts, then consulted technicians on whether they were possible. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, move in different manners, and react in various ways. However, Yokoi viewed Miyamoto's original design as too complex.<ref>Sheff 47–48.</ref> Yokoi suggested using see-saws to catapult the hero across the screen; however, this proved too difficult to program. Miyamoto next thought of using sloped platforms and ladders for travel, with barrels for obstacles. When he asked that the game have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to make the game repeatedly, but the team eventually successfully programed the game.<ref>Kohler 38–39.</ref> When the game was sent to ] for testing, the sales manager hated it for being too different from the ] and ]s common at the time.<ref>Sheff 49.</ref> When American staffers began naming the characters, they settled on "Pauline" for the woman, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's ], ], warehouse manager, ]. The Playable character, initially "Jumpman", was eventually named for ], the warehouse landlord.<ref>Sheff 109.</ref> These character names were printed on the American cabinet art and used in promotional materials. The staff also pushed for an English name, and thus it received the title '']''.<ref>Kohler 212.</ref> Miyamoto imagined many characters and plot concepts, but eventually settled on a ] between a gorilla, a carpenter, and a girl. He meant to mirror the rivalry between comic characters ] and ] for the woman ]. Bluto evolved into an ape, a form Miyamoto claimed was "nothing too evil or repulsive". This ape would be the pet of the main character, "a funny, hang-loose kind of guy."<ref>Both quotes from Sheff 47.</ref> Miyamoto also named "]" and the 1933 film '']'' as influences.<ref>Kohler 36.</ref> ''Donkey Kong'' marked the first time that the formulation of a video game's storyline preceded the actual ], rather than simply being appended as an afterthought.<ref>Kohler 38.</ref> Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project, but lacked the technical skills to program it himself; instead, he conceived the game's concepts, then consulted technicians on whether they were possible. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, move in different manners, and react in various ways. However, Yokoi viewed Miyamoto's original design as too complex.<ref>Sheff 47–48.</ref> Yokoi suggested using see-saws to catapult the hero across the screen; however, this proved too difficult to program. Miyamoto next thought of using sloped platforms and ladders for travel, with barrels for obstacles. When he asked that the game have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to make the game repeatedly, but the team eventually successfully programed the game.<ref>Kohler 38–39.</ref> When the game was sent to ] for testing, the sales manager hated it for being too different from the ] and ]s common at the time.<ref>Sheff 49.</ref> When American staffers began naming the characters, they settled on "Pauline" for the woman, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's ], ], warehouse manager, ]. The playable character, initially "Jumpman", was eventually named for ], the warehouse landlord.<ref>Sheff 109.</ref> These character names were printed on the American cabinet art and used in promotional materials. The staff also pushed for an English name, and thus it received the title '']''.<ref>Kohler 212.</ref>


''Donkey Kong'' was a success, leading Miyamoto to work on sequels '']'' and '']''. His success earned him work on other Nintendo titles like '']'' and '']''. His next game was based on the character from ''Donkey Kong''. He reworked the character Jumpman into ], and gave him a brother: ]. He named the new game '']''. Yokoi convinced Miyamoto to give Mario some super human abilities, namely the ability to fall from any height unharmed. Mario's appearance in ''Donkey Kong'' – overalls, a hat, and a thick mustache – led Miyamoto to change aspects of the game to make Mario look like a plumber rather than a carpenter.<ref name="historyofmariopg1">{{cite web |title=IGN Presents The History of Super Mario Bros. |url=http://games.ign.com/articles/833/833615p1.html |date=2007-11-08 |publisher=] |accessdate=2008-09-26}}</ref> Miyamoto felt that ] provided the best setting for the game, with its "labyrinthine subterranean network of sewage pipes". The two-player mode and other aspects of gameplay were partially inspired by an earlier video game entitled '']''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Fox |first=Matt |authorlink= |title=The Video Games Guide |publisher=Boxtree Ltd |year=2006 |isbn=0752226258 |pages=261–262}}</ref> To date, ''Mario Bros.'' has been released for more than a dozen platforms.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://toadscastle.net/list-games.html | publisher=Toad's Castle | author=Eric Marcarelli | title=Every Mario Game | accessdate=2008-10-01}}</ref> ''Donkey Kong'' was a success, leading Miyamoto to work on sequels '']'' and '']''. His success earned him work on other Nintendo titles like '']'' and '']''. His next game was based on the character from ''Donkey Kong''. He reworked the character Jumpman into ], and gave him a brother: ]. He named the new game '']''. Yokoi convinced Miyamoto to give Mario some super human abilities, namely the ability to fall from any height unharmed. Mario's appearance in ''Donkey Kong'' – overalls, a hat, and a thick mustache – led Miyamoto to change aspects of the game to make Mario look like a plumber rather than a carpenter.<ref name="historyofmariopg1">{{cite web |title=IGN Presents The History of Super Mario Bros. |url=http://games.ign.com/articles/833/833615p1.html |date=2007-11-08 |publisher=] |accessdate=2008-09-26}}</ref> Miyamoto felt that ] provided the best setting for the game, with its "labyrinthine subterranean network of sewage pipes". The two-player mode and other aspects of gameplay were partially inspired by an earlier video game entitled '']''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Fox |first=Matt |authorlink= |title=The Video Games Guide |publisher=Boxtree Ltd |year=2006 |isbn=0752226258 |pages=261–262}}</ref> To date, ''Mario Bros.'' has been released for more than a dozen platforms.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://toadscastle.net/list-games.html | publisher=Toad's Castle | author=Eric Marcarelli | title=Every Mario Game | accessdate=2008-10-01}}</ref>

Revision as of 00:26, 14 April 2010

Shigeru Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto
Born (1952-11-16) November 16, 1952 (age 72)
Sonobe cho, Kyoto, Japan
Occupation(s)Game designer, EAD General manager
Years active1977–present

Shigeru Miyamoto (宮本 茂, Miyamoto Shigeru) (born November 16, 1952) in Sonobe, Kyoto, Japan) is a Japanese video game designer and producer. Miyamoto was born and raised in the Kyoto Prefecture; the natural surroundings of Kyoto inspired much of Miyamoto's later work. He is mainly known for his work at the video game production company Nintendo, where he created some of the most successful video game franchises of all time, including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Animal Crossing, Pikmin and F-Zero. He currently manages the Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development branch, which handles many of Nintendo's top-selling titles. Miyamoto's games have been seen on every Nintendo video game console, with his earliest work appearing on arcade machines. His games have received critical praise from many reviewers, and he has been the recipient of various awards. Miyamoto is married and has two children.

Early life

Miyamoto was born in the Japanese town of Sonobe, Kyoto on November 16, 1952. Miyamoto's later work was greatly influenced by his childhood experiences in the town. From an early age, he began to explore the forest around his home. On one of these expeditions, Miyamoto came upon a cave, and, after days of hesitation, went inside. Miyamoto's expeditions into the Kyoto countryside, inspired his later work, particularly the Nintendo Entertainment System version of The Legend of Zelda. Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts with no job lined up.

Career

1979–1984

When the Nintendo company began branching out, Miyamoto helped design the company's first original coin-operated arcade game, Sheriff. He first helped the company develop a game with the Template:Vgy release Radar Scope. The game achieved moderate success in Japan, but by Template:Vgy, Nintendo's efforts to break it into the North American video game market had been a complete failure, leaving the company with a large number of unsold units and on the verge of financial collapse. In an effort to keep the company afloat, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to convert unsold Radar Scope units into a new arcade game. He tasked Miyamoto with the conversion, with Nintendo's head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi supervising the project.

File:Yokoi.jpg
Gunpei Yokoi worked with Miyamoto for many years in the company and became his mentor.

Miyamoto imagined many characters and plot concepts, but eventually settled on a love triangle between a gorilla, a carpenter, and a girl. He meant to mirror the rivalry between comic characters Bluto and Popeye for the woman Olive Oyl. Bluto evolved into an ape, a form Miyamoto claimed was "nothing too evil or repulsive". This ape would be the pet of the main character, "a funny, hang-loose kind of guy." Miyamoto also named "Beauty and the Beast" and the 1933 film King Kong as influences. Donkey Kong marked the first time that the formulation of a video game's storyline preceded the actual programming, rather than simply being appended as an afterthought. Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project, but lacked the technical skills to program it himself; instead, he conceived the game's concepts, then consulted technicians on whether they were possible. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, move in different manners, and react in various ways. However, Yokoi viewed Miyamoto's original design as too complex. Yokoi suggested using see-saws to catapult the hero across the screen; however, this proved too difficult to program. Miyamoto next thought of using sloped platforms and ladders for travel, with barrels for obstacles. When he asked that the game have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to make the game repeatedly, but the team eventually successfully programed the game. When the game was sent to Nintendo of America for testing, the sales manager hated it for being too different from the maze and shooter games common at the time. When American staffers began naming the characters, they settled on "Pauline" for the woman, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's Redmond, Washington, warehouse manager, Don James. The playable character, initially "Jumpman", was eventually named for Mario Segale, the warehouse landlord. These character names were printed on the American cabinet art and used in promotional materials. The staff also pushed for an English name, and thus it received the title Donkey Kong.

Donkey Kong was a success, leading Miyamoto to work on sequels Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3. His success earned him work on other Nintendo titles like Excitebike and Devil World. His next game was based on the character from Donkey Kong. He reworked the character Jumpman into Mario, and gave him a brother: Luigi. He named the new game Mario Bros.. Yokoi convinced Miyamoto to give Mario some super human abilities, namely the ability to fall from any height unharmed. Mario's appearance in Donkey Kong – overalls, a hat, and a thick mustache – led Miyamoto to change aspects of the game to make Mario look like a plumber rather than a carpenter. Miyamoto felt that New York City provided the best setting for the game, with its "labyrinthine subterranean network of sewage pipes". The two-player mode and other aspects of gameplay were partially inspired by an earlier video game entitled Joust. To date, Mario Bros. has been released for more than a dozen platforms.

1985–1989

After Mario Bros., Miyamoto worked on several different games, including Ice Climber and Kid Icarus alongside Yokoi. He soon made another Mario game titled Super Mario Bros.. Miyamoto began work on a new game, The Legend of Zelda. In both the Mario and Zelda series, Miyamoto decided to focus more on gameplay than on high scores, unlike many games of the time. Miyamoto took a new direction with The Legend of Zelda, using nonlinear gameplay that forced the player to think his way through riddles and puzzles. With The Legend of Zelda, Miyamoto sought to make an in-game world that players would identify, a "miniature garden that they can put inside their drawer." He drew his inspiration from his experiences as a boy around Kyoto, where he explored nearby fields, woods, and caves; each Zelda title embodies this sense of exploration. "When I was a child," Miyamoto said, "I went hiking and found a lake. It was quite a surprise for me to stumble upon it. When I traveled around the country without a map, trying to find my way, stumbling on amazing things as I went, I realized how it felt to go on an adventure like this." He recreated his memories of becoming lost amid the maze of sliding doors in his family home in Zelda's labyrinthine dungeons. In February 1986, Nintendo released the game as the launch title for the Nintendo Entertainment System's new Disk System peripheral. The Legend of Zelda was joined by a re-release of Super Mario Bros. and Tennis, Baseball, Golf, Soccer, and Mahjong in the introduction. This peripheral had 128 kilobytes of space, a vast increase over the cartridge format's capacity. Due to the still-limited amount of space on the disk, however, the Japanese version of the game was only written in the alphabetic katakana, rather than using any pictographic kanji. Rewritable disks saved the game, rather than using a password system. The Japanese version used the extra sound channel provided by the Disk System for certain sound effects; most notable are the sounds of Link's sword when his health is full, and enemy death sounds. The sound effects used the Nintendo Entertainment System's PCM channel in the cartridge version. It also used the microphone built into the Famicom's controller that was not included in the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Miyamoto worked on the sequel for Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Bros. 2 (known as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels outside Japan) reuses gameplay elements from Super Mario Bros., though the game is considered much more difficult than its predecessor. Because of the perceived difficulty, the game did not see a North American release until much later. Instead, another game was labelled Super Mario Bros. 2 in this market; in the game, Mario and his companions are out to stop the evil frog Wart in the dream land of SubCon. In Japan, Super Mario Bros. 2 was originally made as Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, and later converted into a Mario game for other markets. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link bears little resemblance to the first game in the series. The Adventure of Link features side-scrolling areas within a larger world map rather than the bird's eye view of the previous title. The game incorporates a strategic combat system and more RPG elements, including an experience points (EXP) system, magic spells, and more interaction with non-player characters (NPCs). Link has extra lives; no other game in the series includes this feature. The Adventure of Link plays out in a two-mode dynamic. The overworld, the area where the majority of the action occurs in other The Legend of Zelda games, is still from a top-down perspective, but it now serves as a hub to the other areas. Whenever Link enters a new area such as a town, the game switches to a side-scrolling view. This mode is where most of the action takes place, and it is the only mode in which Link can take damage and be killed. Link also enters this mode when attacked by wandering monsters. Whenever the player traverses the various environments of Hyrule, enemy silhouettes appear and pursue him. Of the three random creatures that appear, there are three types which correspond to the relative difficulty of the monsters in battle mode: a small, weak blob denoting easy enemies, a large, strong biped denoting harder enemies, and a Fairy, which will put Link on a single screen with a free Fairy to refill his health. This separate method of traveling and entering combat is one of many aspects adapted from the role-playing genre.

Soon after, Super Mario Bros. 3 was developed by a group within Nintendo's Research & Development Team 4; the game took more than two years to complete. An early idea changed Mario into a centaur, but was dropped in favor of a raccoon tail that allows limited flying ability. Other costumes with different abilities were added to his repertoire, and levels were designed to take advantage of these abilities. New enemies were included to add diversity to the game, along with variants of previous enemies, like Goombas, Hammer Bros., and Koopa Troopas. Bowser's children were designed to be unique in appearance and personality; Miyamoto based the characters on seven of his programmers as a tribute to their work and efforts. The Koopaling's names were later altered to mimic names of well-known, Western musicians in the English localization. In the game, the player navigates via two game screens: an overworld map and a level playfield (pictured left). The overworld map displays an overhead representation of the current world and has several paths leading from the world's entrance to a castle. Paths connect to action panels, fortresses and other map icons, and allow players to take different routes to reach the world's goal. Moving the on-screen character to an action panel or fortress will allow access to that level's playfield, a linear stage populated with obstacles and enemies. The majority of the game takes place in these levels, with the player traversing the stage by running, jumping, and dodging or defeating enemies.

1990–2000

A merger between Nintendo's various internal research and development teams led to the creation of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (Nintendo EAD), which was headed by Miyamoto. F-Zero was one of the launch titles for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; Nintendo EAD had approximately fifteen months to develop the game. Miyamoto worked through various games on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, one of them Star Fox. For the game, programmer Jez San convinced Nintendo to develop an upgrade for the Super Nintendo, allowing it to handle three-dimensions better, the Super FX chip. Using this new hardware, Miyamoto and Katsuya Eguchi designed the Star Fox game with a degree of 3D. Argonaut Games recommended using space ships in the new game, but Nintendo wanted a "arcade-style shooting" video game. Yoichi Yamada, a level designer for many Nintendo games, laid out and edited the Star Fox maps. With another Super Nintendo title, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Miyamoto led a team consisting of a partnership between Nintendo and Square Co.; it took nearly a year to develop the graphics. The story takes place in a newly rendered Mushroom Kingdom based on the Super Mario Bros. series. Square reported the game was about 70% complete in October 1995. They created all the interior elements such as columns and stairways and exterior elements using Advanced Computer Modelling (ACM) techniques. Special lighting effects create the shadows and reflections that were meant to improve the 3D elements.

When the Nintendo 64 console was released, Miyamoto began making games for the new system, mostly from his previous franchises. His first game on the new system was Super Mario 64; he began with character design and the camera system. Miyamoto and the other designers were initially unsure of which direction the game should take, and months were spent selecting an appropriate camera view and layout. The original concept involved a fixed path much like an isometric type game, before the choice was made to settle on a free-roaming 3D design. Although the majority of Super Mario 64 would end up featuring the free-roaming design, elements of the original fixed path concept would remain in certain parts of the game, particularly in the three Bowser encounters. One of the programmers of Super Mario 64, Giles Goddard, explained that these few linear elements survived as a means to force players into Bowser's lair rather than to encourage exploration. The second game was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Miyamoto was the principal director of Super Mario 64. He produced his next game: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and led a team of several directors. Individual parts of Ocarina of Time were handled by multiple directors – a new strategy for Nintendo EAD. However, when things progressed slower than expected, Miyamoto returned to the development team with a more central role. The team was new to 3D games, but assistant director Makoto Miyanaga recalls a sense of "passion for creating something new and unprecedented". Miyamoto initially intended Ocarina of Time to be played in a first-person perspective, so as to enable the players to take in the vast terrain of Hyrule Field better, as well as being able to focus more on developing enemies and environments. However, the development team did not go through with it once the idea of having a child Link was introduced, as Miyamoto felt it necessary for this Link incarnation to be visible on screen. Other ideas were not used due to time constraints.

Miyamoto worked on many Mario series spin-offs like Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party. He also made another Zelda game called The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which he also produced. By re-using the game engine and graphics from Ocarina of Time, a smaller team required only 18 months to finish Majora's Mask. According to director Eiji Aonuma, they were "faced with the very difficult question of just what kind of game could follow Ocarina of Time and its worldwide sales of seven million units", and as a solution, came up with the three-day system to "make the game data more compact while still providing deep gameplay". He also produced Star Fox 64.

2000–2007

When the Nintendo GameCube was released Miyamoto made various games, including the launch title Luigi's Mansion. The game was first revealed at Nintendo Space World 2000 as a technical demo designed to show off the graphical capabilities of the GameCube. Miyamoto made an original short demo of the game concepts, and Nintendo decided to turn it into a full game. Luigi's Mansion was later shown at the E3 in 2001 with the Nintendo GameCube console. Miyamoto continued to make additional Mario spinoffs in these years. He also produced the 3D game series Metroid Prime, after the original designer Yokoi, a friend and mentor of Miyamoto's, died. In this time he developed Pikmin and its sequel Pikmin 2. He also worked on new games for the Star Fox, Donkey Kong, F-Zero and Legend of Zelda series on the both the Gamecube, the Gameboy Advance and the Nintendo DS systems. He helped in many games on the DS, including the remake of Super Mario 64, Super Mario 64 DS, and the new game Nintendogs.

2006–Present

At E3 2005, Nintendo released a small number of Nintendo DS game cards containing a preview trailer for Twilight Princess. They also announced that Zelda would appear on the Wii, then codenamed the "Revolution", but it was not clear to the media if this meant Twilight Princess or a different game. The team, including Miyamoto, worked on a Wii control scheme, adapting camera control and the fighting mechanics to the new interface. A prototype was created that used a swinging gesture to control the sword from a first-person viewpoint, but was unable to show the variety of Link's movements. When the third-person view was restored, Aonuma thought it felt strange to swing the Wii Remote with the right hand to control the sword in Link's left hand, so the sword control was transferred to a button. Miyamoto confirmed the Revolution controller-functionality in an interview with Nintendo of Europe and Time reported the same soon after. However, support for the Wii controller did not make it into the GameCube release. At E3 2006, Nintendo announced that both versions would be available at the Wii launch, and had a playable version of Twilight Princess for the Wii. Later, the GameCube release was pushed back to a month after the launch of the Wii. He help on the development of Wii Sports, Wii Fit and he created Wii Music. Another Wii game he made was Super Mario Galaxy. The concept for Super Mario Galaxy's game play originated from ideas taken from Super Mario 128, a tech demo shown at Nintendo Space World in 2000 to exemplify the processing power of the Nintendo GameCube. The demo's director (and director of Super Mario Galaxy), Yoshiaki Koizumi, desired that one of the demo's distinguishing features, spherical-based platforms, would be used in a future game, but was held back in belief that such a feat would be "impossible for technical reasons". Miyamoto decided to work on the next large-scale Mario game after Nintendo EAD Tokyo finished development on Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat in late 2004, pushing for the spherical platform concept to be realized. A prototype of the game's physics system took three months to build, then it was decided that the game's use of spherical platforms would best be suited to planetoids in an outer space environment, with the concept of gravity as a major feature. During development, the designers would often exchange ideas with Miyamoto, who made suggestions for the game design. Miyamoto ended up being more involved in the development of Galaxy than he did with Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. The game is seen in 2D, some of the characters and objects are 3D polygonal renderings on 2D backgrounds, resulting in a 2.5D effect. He will soon release Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Personal life

He has a Shetland Sheepdog named Pikku that provided the inspiration for Nintendogs. He is also a semi-professional dog breeder. He has been quoted as stating, "Video-games are bad for you? That's what they said about Rock 'N' Roll." Miyamoto also has stated that he has a hobby of guessing the measurements of objects, then checking to see if he was correct, and apparently carries a tape measure with him everywhere. He has a wife and two children, and owns a cat.

Impact

Many of Miyamoto's games have received critical praise. Super Mario Bros. 3 was a commercial success. Levi Buchanan of IGN considered Super Mario Bros. 3's appearance in the film The Wizard as a show-stealing element, and referred to the movie as a "90-minute commercial" for the game. Super Mario 64 was the best-selling Nintendo 64 game, and as of May 21, 2003, the game has sold eleven million copies. At the end of 2007, Guinness World Records reported sales of 11.8 million copies. As of September 25, 2007, it is the seventh best-selling video game in the United States with six million copies sold. By June 2007, Super Mario 64 had become the second most popular title on Wii's Virtual Console, behind Super Mario Bros. Ocarina of Time also got praised by critics. Edge magazine referred to it as the Nintendo 64's "key launch title". The game placed second in Official Nintendo Magazine's "100 greatest Nintendo games of all time". Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess where also critically acclaimed by critics for the graphics and the gameplay. Twilight Princess was released to universal critical acclaim and commercial success. It received perfect scores from major publications such as CVG, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Game Informer, GamesRadar, and GameSpy. On TopTenReviews, it has received an average score of 3.86 out of 4, the highest among all games in the Zelda franchise. In the PAL region, which covers most of Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Western Europe, Twilight Princess is the best-selling Zelda game ever. During its first week, the game was sold with three out of every four Wii purchases. The game had sold 4.52 million copies on the Wii as of March 1, 2008, and 1.32 million on the GameCube as of March 31, 2007.

Miyamoto's other franchises, such as Star Fox, were also well received. At the time of the game's release, the use of filled, three-dimensional polygons in a console game was very unusual, apart from a handful of earlier titles, including Sega Genesis ports of Atari's arcade driving game, Hard Drivin', and their helicopter shooter, Steel Talons. Due to its success, Star Fox has become a Nintendo franchise, with five more games and numerous appearances by its characters in other Nintendo games such as Super Smash Bros. series. Star Fox was awarded Best Shooter of 1993 by Electronic Gaming Monthly. Metroid Prime in which he acted as a producer was one of the most acclaimed games on the gamecube. Metroid Prime became one of the best-selling games on the GameCube. It was the second best-selling game of November 2002 in North America, behind Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and hit 250,000 units in just one week. The game has since sold more than $50 million in revenue. It also sold more than 78,000 copies in Japan and more than 250,000 copies in Europe, thus entering the Player's Choice line in the PAL region. Prime was also critically acclaimed, including numerous Game of the Year awards. It was praised for its detailed graphics, with special effects and varied environments, moody soundtrack and sound effects, level design, innovative gameplay centered on exploring as opposed to the action of games such as Halo while staying faithful to the Metroid formula. Lack of focus on the story made Entertainment Weekly compare the title to a "1990s arcade game, filled with over the top battle sequences, spectacular visual effects – and a pretty weak plot"; and backtracking was cited by GamePro, which said that inexperienced players "might find it exhausting to keep revisiting the same old places over and over and over". On GameRankings, Prime is the fifth-highest rated game ever, with an average score of 96.26% (as of June 2009), making it the highest ranked game of the sixth generation. The video game countdown show Filter named Prime as having the Best Graphics of all time.

Awards and recognition

The name of the main character of the PC game Daikatana, Hiro Miyamoto, is an homage to Miyamoto. The character Gary Oak from the Pokémon anime series is named Shigeru in Japan and is the rival of Ash Ketchum (called Satoshi in Japan). Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri was mentored by Miyamoto. In 1998, Miyamoto was honored as the first person inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. In 2006, Miyamoto was made a Chevalier (knight) of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres.

On November 28, 2006, Miyamoto was featured in TIME Asia's "60 Years of Asian Heroes," alongside Hayao Miyazaki, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Bruce Lee and the Dalai Lama. He was later chosen as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of the Year in both 2007 and also in 2008, in which he topped the list with a total vote of 1,766,424. At the Game Developers Choice Awards, on March 7, 2007, Miyamoto received the Lifetime Achievement Award "for a career that spans the creation of Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda to the company's recent revolutionary systems, Nintendo DS and Wii." Both GameTrailers and IGN placed Miyamoto first on their lists for the "Top Ten Game Creators" and the "Top 100 Game Creators of All Time" respectively.

In a survey of game developers by industry publication Develop, 30% of the developers chose Miyamoto as their "Ultimate Development Hero". Miyamoto has been interviewed by companies and organizations such as CNN's Talk Asia and NextLevel.com. He won the BAFTA Fellowship Award on March 19, 2010. Miyamoto is also the first interactive creator nominated for the highest recognition in the Spanish-speaking world, The Prince of Asturias Award

See also

References

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  5. Kent 157.
  6. Kent 158.
  7. Both quotes from Sheff 47.
  8. Kohler 36.
  9. Kohler 38.
  10. Sheff 47–48.
  11. Kohler 38–39.
  12. Sheff 49.
  13. Sheff 109.
  14. Kohler 212.
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  21. Sheff (1993), p. 52
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