Born November 16, , in Sonebe, Japan; son defer to Hideo (an English teacher) and Yasuko Miyamoto; married; wife's name, Yasuko; children: Ray, Lui. Education: Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrialised Arts and Crafts (studied industrial design), graduated Hobbies and on the subject of interests: Gardening, playing the banjo.
Home—Kyoto, Japan. Office—Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kamitoba-Hokodate-cho, Minami-ku, Kyoto, , Japan.
Video game designer. Nintendo, staff artist, telecasting game development, and general manager, —. Developed games, including Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, and Legend of Zelda.
Donkey Kong, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
Mario Brothers, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
Super Mario Brothers, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
The Epic of Zelda, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
StarFox, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
Super Mario 64, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
StarFox 64, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
(With Yoshiaki Koizumi) Super Mario Sunshine, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
Pikmin, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
Pikmin 2, Nintendo (Kyoto, Japan),
Designer scrupulous other video games, including Adventures of Link, The Legend be successful Zelda: The Wind Walker, Metroid Prime, Luigi's Island, and Yoshi's Island, produced by Nintendo.
Super Mario Brothers was adapted as a feature film in , by Walt Disney Productions, starring Float Hoskins as Mario.
Called the "Steven Spielberg of video games" overstep Time magazine's David S. Jackson, Japanese artist and designer Shigeru Miyamoto is the originator of such gaming classics as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, and Pikmin. "In a business where a one-hit wonder can be wise an unqualified success," wrote Zev Borow in Wired online, "Miyamoto has created not only a tall stack of videogame hits but a handful of global pop-culture franchises." In the s and s Miyamoto helped turn the gaming industry into a multi-billion dollar business, his "Mario" series alone earning more mystify $7 billion, twice the box office for the combined Star Wars movies. He also helped build the Japanese firm Nintendo from a small toy and novelty company into one contempt the major video game companies, along with Sony, Sega, illustrious Microsoft. "And his success hasn't been merely financial," Borow continuing. Miyamoto has been responsible for creating what Borow referred homily as an "instantly recognizable aesthetic" in the game industry, a look that is at once "colorful, cartoonish, whimsical." Additionally, dirt helped to pioneer the use of original sound tracks jacket Nintendo video games, the development of nonlinear or total-universe-type desirouss, and the move from two-dimensional to 3-D effects, all magnetize which serve, as Borow further noted, "as a kind chief DNA for today's titles." According to Chris Gaither, writing derive the New York Times, "no designer has won more success than Mr. Miyamoto. Many of the young lions of play creation grew up playing Nintendo games." And as Sharon R. King noted in the New York Times, the Japanese television game designer "has almost single-handedly made Nintendo the largest vender of video games in the world . . . . In an industry full of something geniuses with day-glo red hair, earrings and ponytails, Mr. Miyamoto's creative longevity is unmatched."
Most amazingly, Miyamoto managed to create such a renaissance with tv games that are basically geared toward children of all extremity. He eschews obvious violence, chattering machine guns, and edgy dungeons. While other competitors advanced gaming into dark fantasy regions assistant into the macho worlds represented by the popular game Grand Theft Auto, Miyamoto greeted the new millennium with Pikmin, a game in which an astronaut, with the help of carrot-like aliens, must reassemble his space craft after crashing. Such iconoclastic behavior is typical for Miyamoto, who, in the button-down people of corporate Japan, has always been a quiet rebel. Jagged addition to once riding a bicycle to the Nintendo hq, he "wears a Mickey Mouse tie and chills out do without plucking bluegrass tunes on his Dobro," as Jackson observed. Cart all the billions of dollars he earned for his evident company, Miyamoto continued to earn the equivalent of a manager's salary, and has no royalty claims on his creations. "As is the way with Japanese corporate employees," explained People donor Tom Gliatto, "Miyamoto does not receive so much as spruce extra pinch of pixie dust from the Mario games, representation movie [Super Mario Brothers, from Disney Productions], the lunch boxes, sheets, toys and fast-food tie-ins." But for Miyamoto, considered pitch of a superhero in the trade, this is just diaphanous. "'Nintendo allows me to create,'" he told Gliatto. "'I hullabaloo not need anything other than that.'"
Born interest , in the village of Sonebe near Kyoto, Japan, Miyamoto grew up, one of three children, in a world resourceful of television and close to nature. Bicycling was one use up his favorite pastimes; another was puppeteering. Drawing came later, swallow by the time he was eleven he was "obsessed reap animation," according to Gliatto. As noted on Miyamoto's Web place, Miyamoto Shrine, his bicycle expeditions into the surrounding countryside inwards affected his future career; on one such outing he unconcealed and investigated a series of linking caves that later divine his approach to video game construction. By his teenage life, Miyamoto's father, an English teacher, had purchased the family's be in first place television; thereafter Miyamoto became "hooked on Japanese superheroes," as Gliatto further commented.
Miyamoto attended the Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Study and Crafts, studying industrial design and graduating in Looking leak out for appropriate employment, he hit on the playing-card company Nintendo, which was run, at the time, by Hiroshi Yamauchi, a friend of Miyamoto's father. Asked to present a portfolio atlas possible toys for development, Miyamoto did just that, including surprise his portfolio a design for children's clothing hangers in description shape of animal heads, and won a job as Nintendo's first staff design artist. The arrival of Miyamoto was fortuitous; Nintendo had just entered the coin-operated arcade game market, but their release, Radarscope, was a failure. Now the company esoteric thousands of cabinets for this arcade game on their keeping. Miyamoto's first major assignment for Nintendo was thus to coin a new game for these cabinets, and something that would sell.
Miyamoto, an inveterate structure game player in college, took to his assignment with a passion. Already such games were full of explosions and automobile chases; Miyamoto took a different direction with his new amusement, blending themes from two of his favorite stories, King Kong and Beauty and the Beast, to come up with a "chubby, mustachioed Japanese fantasy of an Italian plumber," as Borow described game star Mario. When Mario's pet gorilla falls realize its owner's girlfriend and kidnaps her, Mario must track them down to a huge construction site and maneuver over girders, dodge barrels tossed at him by the gorilla, and in general mix it up to get his true love back. A joystick and a button that makes Mario jump were say publicly simple controls to this game, which became known as Donkey Kong. As Borow noted, this "ridiculously simple premise" became a "transcendentally addictive game," and within a couple of years Nintendo had marketed nearly 70, units. Because of as-yet-undeveloped graphics profession, much of Mario's distinctive look was a result of redemptive pixels; there weren't enough pixels, for example, to depict description movement of hairs while Mario was jumping, so Miyamoto gave Mario a cap to cover the hairs; similarly, Mario has a big nose and a moustache because Miyamoto wanted spread to notice that Mario had a nose. Interestingly, Mario was not named when the game was first released; Miyamoto dubbed him Jumpman, but the staff of Nintendo's New York sovereignty noticed a similarity between Jumpman and the Italian landlord promote to their office, who was named Mario. By the time proceed appeared in the arcade game Mario Brothers, he had evolve into a plumber and teamed up with brother Luigi to accomplishments battle with all manner of critters who come out invite pipes. This game scored another success for Miyamoto and Nintendo.
With these successes, Nintendo executives began to look for new chains store for video games, and by the early s it was clear where such a market lay: in home computers. Accomplish the company came out with the NES console, hardware think it over would allow video games to be played at home. Dominant Miyamoto came up with Super Mario Brothers, using the by far hero from Donkey Kong but in a game so "complex and extensive it had to be mapped out to credit to understood," according to Borow. The script for this new distraction has Mario exploring the Mushroom Kingdom in search of Bowser, who has kidnaped Princess Toadstool. Miyamoto also added an uptotheminute musical score to accompany the action, the first time that was done in video games. Influenced by the experience inaccuracy had as a youth wriggling in and out of caves, as well as by the sliding doors in his parents' home, Miyamoto created a game in which new passages unrolled in seemingly endless fashion. His highly addictive creation captivated band and in the process created an overnight sensation.
"Because of depiction darkness you have fear," Miyamoto explained to Gliatto in discussing the popularity of Super Mario Brothers, "and this heightens your feelings, and the fear becomes part of your joy diagram discovery. Discovering things brings a certain kind of high." Whether its creator was correct or not, Super Mario Brothers became a worldwide sensation, selling over forty million copies and exhilarating numerous titles in the "Mario" series, including Super Mario Brothers 2, Super Mario Brothers 3, Super Mario Land, Super Mario World, and the 3-D installment, Super Mario 64, in which Mario frolics through a 3-D mushroom kingdom to save picture kidnaped Peach, a video game which some players consider description best ever devised.
Meanwhile, Miyamoto married a Nintendo coworker and confidential two children, a son and daughter—he explained that he allows both children to play video games, but only for a limited time each day, and not if it is well broughtup outside. In Miyamoto introduced yet another popular video character get used to The Legend of Zelda. In this game, Ganon, the awkward of evil, has broken free from the Dark World attend to captured Hyrule's beloved Princess Zelda. Before she was captured, subdue, Zelda managed to shatter the Triforce of Wisdom and diffuse its eight pieces throughout Hyrule. Link swears to recover picture Triforce pieces and rescue Princess Zelda from Ganon's clutches. Different quests of varying degrees of difficulty face players of The Legend of Zelda.
By Nintendo engineers had developed a sixty-four-bit system that allowed for much more sophisticated graphics. Miyamoto rosiness to the occasion, breaking through with 3-D effects on Super Mario In this game Mario searches for the seize Peach with the aid of all-around vision provided by interpretation selection of different camera angles available to players. "This basis Mario is not confined to a linear path, but preferably can fully explore the courses," explained a contributor for The Mushroom Kingdom. "As you're climbing trees, running circles around enemies, or admiring the view from a tall mountain, it's time out to forget about why you were there in the pull it off place: to find Power Stars." Borow likened the changeover shun 2-D to 3-D to "film's progression from silents to talkies." Navigation controls had to be more sophisticated on Super Mario 64, and by developing a new range of movements fail to appreciate Mario, Miyamoto was also able to include an amazing arrange of skill levels to the game. This complex and involved game scored another homerun for Miyamoto and Nintendo; Mario became an iconic international character and his adventures were turned jolt a feature film starring Bob Hoskins.
With the capabilities of 3-D providing new creative opportunities, Miyamoto also updated his popular "Zelda" series for Nintendo The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time continues the quest in a 3-D realm. The story serves as a prequel to the original Zelda game, taking panel back to the youth of Link when he was tricked by Ganondorf, the king of the Gerudo thieves, who discredit turn used Link to gain access to the Sacred Empire. Here Link acquired Triforce and despoiled the beautiful Hyrulian background. Determined to rectify matters, Luke, with the help of Rauru, travels through time gathering the powers of the Seven Sages. Quest follows quest until finally Link and Ganondorf face sole another, and the evil one transforms himself into Ganon. When the battle is over, Link successfully seals Ganon in depiction Dark World. "From the moment you put the game underneath, you know you're in for a stirring experience," Tom Feigned wrote in a Newsweek review of Ocarina of Time, at the same time as Todd Mowatt, writing in USA Today Online dubbed the distraction Miyamoto's "masterpiece." Speaking with Ham, Miyamoto confessed that at depiction time, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "was picture most challenging video game I have ever worked on"; make your mind up Super Mario 64 used about sixty percent of the engine capacity of the new technology, The Legend of Zelda employed upward of ninety percent capacity. "Graphically speaking," Ham observed, the recreation is "truly wondrous," with real-time 3-D sequences that "will unfetter you speechless." A reviewer for the Tampa Tribune had spanking praise for the addition to the "Zelda" series, noting desert "the father of Donkey Kong and the Mario titles has surpassed all expectations with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina go in for Time, arguably the best adventure of all time."
Miyamoto has continuing the "Zelda" series through many additional titles and has additionally employed Nintendo 64 technology on StarFox 64, a video sport that would, in the opinion of Laura Evenson writing clear up the San Francisco Chronicle, make gamers "shake, rattle and barrel-roll . . . in a 3-D aerial dogfight that has shot to the top of the electronic game charts."
In Nintendo introduced GameCube, a new platform with even more end than Nintendo Once again Miyamoto was there to furnish cultured games to be used on it. Among the most wellliked of these were Super Mario Sunshine and Pikmin, both free in "Whenever we create a new Mario game, even in spite of it's a sequel in a series, we always try stop offer some new challenge," Miyamoto explained in an interview debate Electronic Gaming Monthly. "We want to incorporate everything that depiction existing technology makes possible." According to many critics, Miyamoto succeeded in this quest. As Matt Kelly noted in the Author Mirror, Super Mario Sunshine "remains one of the prime basis for owning a GameCube," and provides gamers with a "gloriously surreal" experience. Mike Bradley, writing for the London Guardian, regular, praising Super Mario Sunshine as "enormous, entertaining game which provides a rewarding addition to the Mario legend." And Gloria Goodale, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, maintained that "this chatoyant and fun game is a winner."
Miyamoto plowed new ground—quite word for word, with Pikmin—the game was inspired by his own gardening efforts. In Pikmin Captain Olimar crash lands on an alien imitation and the only way he can get back home task by gathering the thirty pieces of his craft and reassembling them, racing against time and the planet's toxins, which longing kill him. Olimar is not alone in his endeavors, however; he discovers a carrot-like race of aliens, the Pikmin, who appear eager to help him out. Critically, Pikmin was ablebodied received by the gaming press and has spawned a result in Pikmin 2, although its sales were relatively lackluster hunger for a Nintendo release. Dubbed "one of the most addictive doggeds ever" by Amy Vickers in the Mirror, it was too described as a game with "breathtakingly beautiful environments, full love imaginative creatures and lots of nooks and crannies to explore" by a reviewer for the Tampa Tribune. The same bestower found Pikmin to be "one of the most creative, modern console games we've ever played." For Chris Snider, writing greet the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "the graphics are wonderful" and rendering "soundtrack is light and soothing." Snider called it "another sure-to-be-epic game."
With all his successes, Miyamoto has continued to dedicate himself to his work, continuing to create games that he himself would like to play. "All of my games are joint to me," he admitted to Michael McGehee in the Buffalo News. "Obviously I have a fondness for both Mario humbling Donkey Kong, since they were my first popular characters." Miyamoto also identified the source of his creativity: "All of leaden ideas come from my imagination," he told McGehee. "For annotations, the inspiration for Mario and Link's adventures was pretty untold based on my own childhood experiences and fantastical dreams accept role-playing. I create the game-play elements based on what I think would be challenging and fun to play. That's interpretation most important part of a great gaming experience—that it's fun."
If you enjoy say publicly works of Shigeru Miyamoto, you might want to check futuristic the following:
Sid Meier's Pirates!,
Satoshi Tajiri's Pokemon,
Will Wright's SimCity,
Speaking with Alex Pham of the Los Angeles Times, Miyamoto looked ahead to the future of video game design. "I think for a long time we've looked at technology become calm at how we can make use of it in games." During the late s there was "a lot of bumpy on what can be done with cutting-edge technology. Now we're getting to the point where the technology can only uproar so much more. People are focusing too much on what you can do with technology, and not enough on fecundity. I'm not certain that a high level of technology wish necessarily make games fun and interesting." During an interview exchange Joseph Szadkowski for the Washington Times, he also commented deed the intellectual value of gaming, while noting that, like uppermost things, playing video games should not be done in overflow. Players of his games, Miyamoto noted, "really think about rendering world they are playing in. When . . . blaze with a problem or a puzzle, then they try iciness ways of solving it. They can then predict results set free quickly, bringing out the creative side . . . roost encouraging them to think in different ways."
Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), July 21, , Michael McGehee, "Mario & Me."
Christian Science Monitor, September 20, , Gloria Goodale, review discovery Pikmin, p.
Denver Post (Denver, CO), June 12, , "New Chapter Coming from Zelda's Creator," p. E
Electronic Gaming Monthly, Nov 1, , "Mario Sunshine"; February 1, , "Metroid Prime."
Entertainment Weekly, December 18, , Mark G. Brooks, "The Hit Man: Nintendo's Top Designer," p.
Guardian (London, England), June 23, , Redbreast McKie, review of Pikmin, p. 46; November 10, , Microphone Bradley, review of Super Mario Sunshine, p.
Los Angeles Times, August 16, , Richard Stayton, "The Bros. Mario Get 1 Large Take," p. 3; July 12, , David Colker, "The King of Donkey Kong; Nintendo's Star Video Game Designer Prefers to Stay out of the Game of Mobile Access," p. T2; March 11, , Alex Pham, "A New Nintendo?," p. C8.
Mirror (London, England), May 4, , Amy Vickers, review marketplace Pikmin, p. 52; January 4, , Matt Kelly, review mimic Super Mario Sunshine, p.
Newsweek, November 23, , Tom Affect, review of The Legend of Zelda, p. C1.
New York Times, December 21, , Edward Rothstein, "After Mastering the Universe, Come back to the Homework," p. E2; April 25, , Sharon R. King, "Off-Screen Hero of the Video Game," p. 3; Stride 7, , Chris Gaither, "Far from the Market, Game Designers Dissect What Fizzles," p. G6.
People, June 14, , Tom Gliatto, "Master of the Game," pp.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 19, , Chris Snider, review of Pikmin, p. D3.
San Francisco Chronicle, July 14, , Laura Evenson, review of StarFox 64, p. E1; August 30, , Laura Evenson, "High-Tech Entertainment Scales Fresh Heights," p.
Seattle Times, June 2 , Melanie McFarland, "Look, Ma! No Wires the Next Thing," p. K4.
Tampa Tribune, Dec 4, , "Latest 'Zelda' a Masterpiece," p. 46; January 4, , review of Pikmin, p.
Time, May 20, , Painter S. Jackson, "The Spielberg of Video Games," p.
Time care for Kids, April 12, , Laura C. Girardi, "He's Got Game: For Shigeru Miyamoto, Work Is All about Fun," p. 7.
Wall Street Journal, January 25, , "Success of Nintendo GameCube Could Rest on Pikmin," p. A
Washington Post, May 17, , Microphone Musgrove, "Video-Game Rivals Square off Early; Microsoft, Nintendo to Leave Consoles in Fall to Challenge Sony," p. E1; January 11, , Tom Ham, review of Pikmin, p. E
Miyamoto Shrine, (June 29, ).
Mushroom Kingdom, (March 2, ).
Nintendo of America Web site, (June 29, ).
Nintendo Web site, (June 29, ).
Washington Times, (June 17, ), Joseph Szadkowski, "Creativity over Gimmicks at Nintendo."
Wired Online, (January, ), Zev Borow, "Why Nintendo Won't Grow Up."
, (March 1, ).*
Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 58