Shigeru Miyamoto: Difference between revisions

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	Miyamoto described childhood experiences such as exploring fields, woods and caves outside ] as an inspiration for '']'' for NES,<ref name="Game spot history">{{cite web \| author=Vestal, Andrew, et al. \| date=14 September 2000 \| title=History of Zelda \| publisher=GameSpot \| url=http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hist_zelda/index.html \| accessdate=30 September 2006}}</ref> and an antagonizing experience with a neighbor's chained dog, which inspired the ] in the ''Mario'' series.<ref>{{cite book \| author=Sheff, David \| title=] \| publisher=] \| year=1993 \| isbn=0-679-40469-4}}</ref>		Miyamoto described childhood experiences such as exploring fields, woods and caves outside ] as an inspiration for '']'' for NES,<ref name="Game spot history">{{cite web \| author=Vestal, Andrew, et al. \| date=14 September 2000 \| title=History of Zelda \| publisher=GameSpot \| url=http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hist_zelda/index.html \| accessdate=30 September 2006}}</ref> and an antagonizing experience with a neighbor's chained dog, which inspired the ] in the ''Mario'' series.<ref>{{cite book \| author=Sheff, David \| title=] \| publisher=] \| year=1993 \| isbn=0-679-40469-4}}</ref>

	==~~Nintendo~~==		==Career==
			===1979-1984===
	Miyamoto was Nintendo's first artist staff, helping design the company's first coin-operated game, ]<ref>http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/punchout/vol1_page2.jsp</ref>.
			] and ] are reunited.]]
			Miyamoto was '']'''s first artist staff, helping design the company's first coin-operated game, '']''.<ref>http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/punchout/vol1_page2.jsp</ref> He also devoloped '']'' in {{vgy\|1980}}. As of the beginning of {{vgy\|1981}}, ]'s efforts to sell in the ]n video game market had failed, culminating with the flop ''Radar Scope''. To keep the company afloat, the then company president ] decided to convert unsold ''Radar Scope'' games into something new. He approached Miyamoto to see if he could design an arcade game. Miyamoto said he could.<ref>Kent 157.</ref> Yamauchi appointed Nintendo's head engineer, ], to supervise the project.<ref name="Kent">Kent 158.</ref> Miyamoto came up with many characters and plot concepts, but he eventually settled on a gorilla/carpenter/girlfriend ] that mirrored the rivalry between ] and Popeye for ].<ref name="Kohler 39"/> Bluto became an ape, which Miyamoto said was "nothing too evil or repulsive". He would be the pet of the main character, "a funny, hang-loose kind of guy."<ref>Both quotes from Sheff 47.</ref> Miyamoto has also named "]" and the 1933 film '']'' as influences.<ref>Kohler 36.</ref> Although its origin as a comic strip license played a major part, ''Donkey Kong'' marked the first time that the storyline for a video game preceded the game's ] rather than simply being appended as an afterthought.<ref>Kohler 38.</ref> Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project. He lacked the technical skills to program it himself, so instead came up with concepts and consulted technicians to see if they were possible. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, move in different manners and react in various ways. Yokoi thought Miyamoto's original design was too complex.<ref>Sheff 47–48.</ref> Another idea Yokoi suggested was to use see-saws to catapult the hero across the screen; this was too difficult to program. Miyamoto then thought of using sloped platforms, barrels and ladders. When he specified that the game would have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to make the game repeatedly.<ref>Kohler 38–39.</ref> 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> and Judy and Lincoln expressed reservations over the strange title. Still, Arakawa swore that it would be big.<ref name="Kent 159"/> American staffers asked Yamauchi to change the name, but he refused. Arakawa and the American staff began translating the storyline for the cabinet art and naming the other characters. They chose "Pauline" for the Lady, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's ], ], warehouse manager, ]. Jumpman was eventually named for Mario Segale, the warehouse landlord.<ref>Sheff 109.</ref> These character names were printed on the American cabinet art and used in promotional materials. ''Donkey Kong'' was ready for release.<ref>Kohler 212.</ref>

			''Donkey Kong was a succes, Miyamoto worked on the sequels '']'' and '']'', both bringing back some elements from the original. He later worked on other Nintendo titles like '']'' and ]. His next game was based on the character from ''Donkey Kong'', Jumpman which became ] and his brother ] called '']''. In ''Donkey Kong'', Mario dies if he falls too far. Yokoi suggested to Miyamoto that he would be able to fall from any height, which Miyamoto was not sure of, thinking that it would make it "not much of a game." He eventually agreed, thinking it would be okay for him to have some super-human abilities. Because of Mario's appearance in ''Donkey Kong'', with overalls, a hat, and a thick moustache, ] thought that he should be a plumber as opposed to a carpenter, and designed this game to reflect that.<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 also felt that the best setting for this game was New York because of its "labyrinthine subterranean network of sewage pipes. The two-player mode and several aspects of gameplay were inspired by an earlier video game called '']''.<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>
	=== Mario series ===
	{{Main\|Mario (series)}}
	As of the beginning of {{vgy\|1981}}, ]'s efforts to sell in the ]n video game market had failed, culminating with the flop '']'' in {{vgy\|1980}}. To keep the company afloat, company president ] decided to convert unsold ''Radar Scope'' games into something new. He approached Miyamoto to see if he could design an arcade game. Miyamoto said he could.<ref>Kent 157.</ref> Yamauchi appointed Nintendo's head engineer, ], to supervise the project.<ref name="Kent">Kent 158.</ref> In this game was created Jumpman(later known as ]) which would eventually start in ] and ]. The series has had many games through the consoles. The criticlly aclaimed game was ] which is called one of the greatest games of all times for bringing gameing into ].<ref name="sales">{{cite web \|url=http://www.ownt.com/qtakes/2003/gamestats/gamestats.shtm \|title=All Time Top 20 Best Selling Games \|publisher=Ownt.com \|date=2005-05-23\|accessdate=2007-11-01\|archiveurl= http://web.archive.org/web/20060221044930/http://www.ownt.com/qtakes/2003/gamestats/gamestats.shtm \|archivedate=2006-02-21}}</ref>

			===1985-1990===
	Several other sub-series of ''Mario'' video games have been released. The '']'' franchise began with '']'' for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and is currently the most successful and longest-running kart-racing franchise.<ref name="Sutra M#1">{{cite web \| last = Jenkins \| first = David \| title = Mario Tops Best Selling Game Franchise List \| publisher = ] \| date = 10/01/2007 \| url = http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12349 \| accessdate = 2009-01-01}}</ref> 1996's '']'' for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System is the first ''Mario'' role-playing game;<ref>{{Cite web\| last = East\| first = Tom\| title = Virtual Console Review: Super Mario RPG\| publisher = ]\| date = September 19, 2008\| url = http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=5883\| accessdate = February 17, 2010}}</ref> six games have followed, including three in the ''Paper Mario'' series ('']'' for the Nintendo 64, '']'' for the Nintendo GameCube, and '']'' for the Wii) and three in the ''Mario & Luigi'' series ('']'' for the Game Boy Advance and '']'' and '']'' for the ]).
			After ''Mario Bros.'' Miyamoto worked on diffrent games includeing '']'' and '']'' alongside his old friend Gunpei Yokoi. He later made another game based on ''Mario'' called '']'' which was a great succeses gaining a lot of great reception. It also popularized the side scrolling genre of video games, the game has sold 40.24 million copies, making it the best-selling video game in the ''Mario'' series. <ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.gamecubicle.com/features-mario-units_sold_sales.htm\|title=Super Mario Sales Data: Historical Unit Numbers for Mario Bros on NES, SNES, N64...\|publisher= GameCubicle.com\|accessdate=2008-08-27}}</ref> Soon Miyamoto would create another game called '']'', in ''Mario'', Miyamoto downplayed the importance of the ] in favor of simply completing the game.<ref name="gamespot history">{{cite web\|last=Vestal\|first=Andrew\|coauthors=Cliff O'Neill; and Brad Shoemaker\|date=2000-11-14\|title=History of Zelda\|publisher=]\|url=http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hist_zelda/index.html\|accessdate=2006-09-30}}</ref> This concept was carried over to ''The Legend of Zelda''. Miyamoto was also in charge of deciding which concepts were "''Zelda'' ideas" or "''Mario'' ideas." Contrasting with ''Mario'', ''Zelda'' was made non-linear and forced the players to think about what they should do next with riddles and puzzles.<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.ntsc-uk.com/feature.php?featuretype=int&fea=ShigeruMiyamoto\|title=Shigeru Miyamoto Interview\|date=2005-01-01\|publisher=ntsc-uk\|last=Bufton\|first=Ben\|accessdate=2006-09-23}}</ref> With ''The Legend of Zelda'', Miyamoto wanted to take the idea of a game "world" even further, giving players a "miniature garden that they can put inside their drawer."<ref name="gamespot history"/> He drew his inspiration from his experiences as a boy around ], where he explored nearby fields, woods, and caves, and through the ''Zelda'' titles he always tries to impart to players some of the sense of exploration and limitless wonder he felt.<ref name="gamespot history"/> "When I was a child," he 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."<ref name="Sheff 51">Sheff (1993), p. 51</ref> The memory of being lost amid the maze of sliding doors in his family's home in ] was recreated in ''Zelda''{{'}}s labyrinthine dungeons.<ref name="Sheff 52">Sheff (1993), p. 52</ref> In February 1986, Nintendo released the game as the launch title for the ]'s new ] peripheral. ''The Legend of Zelda'' was joined by a re-release of '']'' and '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', and '']'' in its introduction of the Disk System. It made full use of the "disk card" media's advantages over traditional ROM cartridges with a disk size of 128 ]s, which was expensive to produce on cartridge format.<ref name="gamespot history"/> Due to the still-limited amount of space on the disk, however, the Japanese version of the game was only in ]. It used rewritable disks to ], rather than ]. 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 NES's PCM channel in the cartridge version. It also used the microphone built into the Famicom's controller that was not included in the NES.<ref name="InsideFamicom">{{cite web\| url = http://www.pcworld.com/article/148391-7/inside_nintendos_classic_game_console.html\| title = Inside Nintendo's Classic Game Console\| first = Benj\| last = Edwards\| date = 2008-08-07\| publisher = '']''\| accessdate = 2008-11-11}}</ref> ''The Legend of Zelda'' was a ] for Nintendo, selling over 6.5 million copies.<ref>{{cite web \| url=http://www.the-magicbox.com/game032504.shtml \| title=March 25, 2004 \| date=2004-03-25 \| publisher=The Magic Box \| accessdate=2007-04-01 \| archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20051126100623/http://www.the-magicbox.com/game032504.shtml \|archivedate=2005-11-26}}</ref>

	===The Legend of Zelda series===
	{{Main\|The Legend of Zelda}}
	''The Legend of Zelda'' was principally inspired by Miyamoto's explorations as a young boy in the hillsides surrounding his childhood home in ], ]<ref>{{cite web\|author=Johnson, Carl\|publisher=Miyamoto Shrine\|url=http://www.miyamotoshrine.com/theman/bio/index.shtml\|title=Biography\|accessdate=February 12, 2006}}</ref> where he ventured into forests with secluded lakes, caves, and rural villages. According to Miyamoto, one of his most memorable experiences was the discovery of a cave entrance in the middle of the woods. After some hesitation, he apprehensively entered the cave, and explored its depths with the aid of a lantern. Miyamoto has referred to the creation of the ''Zelda'' games as an attempt to bring to life a "miniature garden" for players to play with in each game of the series.<ref>{{cite web\|url= http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hist_zelda/index.html \| title=The History of Zelda\|date=2000-09-14\|publisher= GameSpot\|author=Andrew Vestal\| accessdate=2006-09-25}}</ref> The game games feature a mixture of puzzles, action, adventure/battle gameplay, and exploration. These elements have remained constant throughout the series, but with refinements and additions featured in each new game. The player is frequently rewarded for solving puzzles or exploring areas. Most Zelda games involve locating and exploring dungeons, in which puzzles are solved and enemies fought, then defeating the dungeon's boss. Each dungeon usually has one major item inside, which is usually essential for solving many of the puzzles in that dungeon and often plays a crucial role in defeating that dungeon's boss. One that is considerd the best of the series is ] which has been critclly aclaimed. The series has been in almost every console that nintendo has realesed.

	==Personal life==		==Personal life==

Revision as of 19:24, 22 February 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 active	1977-Present

Shigeru Miyamoto (宮本茂, Miyamoto Shigeru) (born November 16, 1952 in Sonobe, Kyoto, Japan) is a Japanese video game designer and producer who has been employed at Nintendo since 1977. He has been called the "father of modern video games" and "the Walt Disney of electronic gaming" for helping create the Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Pikmin and F-Zero franchises and games such as Nintendogs and Wii Music.

Early life

Miyamoto described childhood experiences such as exploring fields, woods and caves outside Kyoto as an inspiration for The Legend of Zelda for NES, and an antagonizing experience with a neighbor's chained dog, which inspired the Chain Chomp in the Mario series.

Career

1979-1984

At the game's end, Jumpman and the Lady are reunited.

Miyamoto was Nintendo's first artist staff, helping design the company's first coin-operated game, Sheriff. He also devoloped Radar Scope in Template:Vgy. As of the beginning of Template:Vgy, Nintendo's efforts to sell in the North American video game market had failed, culminating with the flop Radar Scope. To keep the company afloat, the then company president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to convert unsold Radar Scope games into something new. He approached Miyamoto to see if he could design an arcade game. Miyamoto said he could. Yamauchi appointed Nintendo's head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi, to supervise the project. Miyamoto came up with many characters and plot concepts, but he eventually settled on a gorilla/carpenter/girlfriend love triangle that mirrored the rivalry between Bluto and Popeye for Olive Oyl. Bluto became an ape, which Miyamoto said was "nothing too evil or repulsive". He would be the pet of the main character, "a funny, hang-loose kind of guy." Miyamoto has also named "Beauty and the Beast" and the 1933 film King Kong as influences. Although its origin as a comic strip license played a major part, Donkey Kong marked the first time that the storyline for a video game preceded the game's programming rather than simply being appended as an afterthought. Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project. He lacked the technical skills to program it himself, so instead came up with concepts and consulted technicians to see if they were possible. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, move in different manners and react in various ways. Yokoi thought Miyamoto's original design was too complex. Another idea Yokoi suggested was to use see-saws to catapult the hero across the screen; this was too difficult to program. Miyamoto then thought of using sloped platforms, barrels and ladders. When he specified that the game would have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to make the game repeatedly. 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, and Judy and Lincoln expressed reservations over the strange title. Still, Arakawa swore that it would be big. American staffers asked Yamauchi to change the name, but he refused. Arakawa and the American staff began translating the storyline for the cabinet art and naming the other characters. They chose "Pauline" for the Lady, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's Redmond, Washington, warehouse manager, Don James. 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. Donkey Kong was ready for release.

Donkey Kong was a succes, Miyamoto worked on the sequels Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3, both bringing back some elements from the original. He later worked on other Nintendo titles like Excitebike and Devil World. His next game was based on the character from Donkey Kong, Jumpman which became Mario and his brother Luigi called Mario Bros.. In Donkey Kong, Mario dies if he falls too far. Yokoi suggested to Miyamoto that he would be able to fall from any height, which Miyamoto was not sure of, thinking that it would make it "not much of a game." He eventually agreed, thinking it would be okay for him to have some super-human abilities. Because of Mario's appearance in Donkey Kong, with overalls, a hat, and a thick moustache, Shigeru Miyamoto thought that he should be a plumber as opposed to a carpenter, and designed this game to reflect that. Miyamoto also felt that the best setting for this game was New York because of its "labyrinthine subterranean network of sewage pipes. The two-player mode and several aspects of gameplay were inspired by an earlier video game called Joust. To date, Mario Bros. has been released for more than a dozen platforms.

1985-1990

After Mario Bros. Miyamoto worked on diffrent games includeing Ice Climber and Kid Icarus alongside his old friend Gunpei Yokoi. He later made another game based on Mario called Super Mario Bros. which was a great succeses gaining a lot of great reception. It also popularized the side scrolling genre of video games, the game has sold 40.24 million copies, making it the best-selling video game in the Mario series. Soon Miyamoto would create another game called The Legend of Zelda, in Mario, Miyamoto downplayed the importance of the high score in favor of simply completing the game. This concept was carried over to The Legend of Zelda. Miyamoto was also in charge of deciding which concepts were "Zelda ideas" or "Mario ideas." Contrasting with Mario, Zelda was made non-linear and forced the players to think about what they should do next with riddles and puzzles. With The Legend of Zelda, Miyamoto wanted to take the idea of a game "world" even further, giving players 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, and through the Zelda titles he always tries to impart to players some of the sense of exploration and limitless wonder he felt. "When I was a child," he 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." The memory of being lost amid the maze of sliding doors in his family's home in Sonobe was recreated in Zelda's labyrinthine dungeons. In February 1986, Nintendo released the game as the launch title for the Family Computer'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 its introduction of the Disk System. It made full use of the "disk card" media's advantages over traditional ROM cartridges with a disk size of 128 kilobytes, which was expensive to produce on cartridge format. Due to the still-limited amount of space on the disk, however, the Japanese version of the game was only in katakana. It used rewritable disks to save the game, rather than passwords. 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 NES's PCM channel in the cartridge version. It also used the microphone built into the Famicom's controller that was not included in the NES. The Legend of Zelda was a bestseller for Nintendo, selling over 6.5 million copies.

Personal life

Although a game designer, Miyamoto spends little time playing games, preferring to play the guitar and banjo. He has a Shetland Sheepdog named Pikku that was 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.

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 Shigeru 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.

Selected gameography

Main article: List of Nintendo games created by Shigeru Miyamoto

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