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Shigeru Miyamoto

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File:Miyamoto.jpg
Shigeru Miyamoto with Mario, Luigi, Wario, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong stuffed toys

Shigeru Miyamoto (宮本茂) (born November 16, 1952) is the Japanese creator of Donkey Kong and related Mario games as well as the Legend of Zelda series for Nintendo. He is one of the world's most celebrated video game designers, and often called one of the fathers of the modern video game. His titles are characterised by refined control-mechanics and interactive worlds in which the player is encouraged to discover things for himself.

He is currently the Director and General Manager of Nintendo Entertainment, Analysis, and Development (EAD), the corporate sector of Nintendo of Japan.

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. In early US releases, when translation was poorer, he was sometimes credited as Miyahon (a misreading of the kanji 本 in his name).

Other inventions by Miyamoto are the L/R buttons and the analog control stick, which are now standard features on gamepads.

Games

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."
"I don't know what Mario will look like next, maybe he will wear metallic clothing " - Before the release of Super Mario 64.
"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."

External links

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