Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto is the creator of Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Pikmin, Star Fox, and Nintendogs. He has contributed to many other series that Nintendo is known for, as well. He is the most recognizable game creator in both Nintendo and the video game industry.

Biography
Shigeru Miyamoto was born in Sonebe, Japan on November 16, 1952. Miyamoto has a wife, Yasuko, who used to be General Manager of Nintendo of Japan back in 1977. They have two children together, although none of them seem interested in working at Nintendo. Although Miyamoto has developed a number of extremely popular videogame franchises and icons over the years, he usually doesn't play videogames in his free time, choosing instead to play the guitar and banjo and spend time with his family.

When Miyamoto was young, he used to explore the woods around his home. One day, he was shocked to find an entrance to a cave. He came back again and again until one day, when he mustered up enough courage to go inside. Another time, he was exploring on the mountains, and he came upon a lake, which to him, as he later explained, looked like a "vast ocean." These experiences inspired Miyamoto later to create The Legend of Zelda, and as a result, they appear many times in the series. Also, he was once attacked by a dog whos owner yanked it back with a chain. This inspired him to create the Chain Chomp in the Mario series.

Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Munici College of Industrial Arts, and in 1977, he had his father contact an old friend of the family, Hiroshi Yamauchi. When Miyamoto initially met Yamauchi, he was told to return with toy ideas. He did just that, and so the young Shigeru Miyamoto was hired as a staff artist for Nintendo.

Within the next few years, Miyamoto would design the outer look of Nintendo's Racing 112, Blockbuster, Color TV Game 6, and Color TV Game 15. He drew the characters for Nintendo's Space Fever, Sheriff, and Space Firebird. He also created the actual arcade cabinet art for Sheriff and Radarscope.

Around 1980, Minoru Arakawa, Yamauchi's son-in-law, created Nintendo of America (NoA) in New York in order to distribute Nintendo's arcade games. Sheriff and Space Fever didn't do amazingly, and when Nintendo of America spent oodles and oodles of cash on buying 3,000 units of Radarscope, Arakawa believed it would do amazingly in the U.S. Unfortunately he was wrong, and the arcade unit ended up a failure.

NoA was able to sell 1,000 units, but they had 2,000 units containing a game that wouldn't sell. With their cash running out, a game had to be put into these units that could generate some cash, and so Hiroshi Yamauchi asked Miyamoto to create the game, for he was the only one available.

With the assistance of Gunpei Yokoi, Miyamoto conceptualized and developed Donkey Kong after Yokoi's own ideas involving a seesaw didn't work out and a Popeye license that Nintendo tried to snag fell through. Miyamoto created and drew the characters of the game, who were Jumpman, Lady, and of course, Donkey Kong.

When NoA played the game, they were worried it wouldn't catch on with American audiences. However, it was the only game that they had, so they prepared it for its US release. "Lady" was renamed "Pauline" after Don James' (NoA's warehouse manager) wife, Polly James. Jumpman was renamed Mario, after NoA's landlord, Mario Segale, burst in demanding the rent

NoA tested Donkey Kong out at two bars in Seattle. They checked on the unit the next day, and they found around $30 worth of quarters jammed into the coin box.

This happened for a week straight.

The retailers obviously asked for more units, and so the game technically went on sale in July 1981. By the end of June in 1982, 60,000 units of the game had been sold, making profits of around $180 million.

Donkey Kong was one of the most innovative games of all time, introducing a complete narrative for the first time in videogames. Its characters spawned a number of sequels and franchises. The game is listed as #25 on the Killer List of Videogames'Top 100 Videogame list.

In 1983, Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan, and brought it to the United States in the form of the NES in 1985. One of the flagship titles of the NES was another game designed by Miyamoto, called Super Mario Bros. It is said to be the best selling videogame of all time, although that is mostly attributed to the fact that it was packaged with the NES.

Miyamoto went on to create many sequels to Super Mario Bros., including (but not limited to) Super Mario Bros. 3, which is credited as being the best selling standalone game in history, Super Mario World, which introduced the franchise to the Super Famicom/SNES, Super Mario 64, which is said to have revolutionized the 3D platformer, and is said by some to be the greatest game ever created, and now, Super Mario Galaxy, which is said to be the true sequel to Super Mario 64.

In the meantime, Miyamoto also created another mega-selling, hugely popular franchise for Nintendo, which he called The Legend of Zelda. Premiering on the Famicom Disk System (an add-on to Japan's Famicom) and the NES, The Legend of Zelda was a very unique game for its time. Not only did it introduce different elements of non-linearity, but it also allowed you to save game information on the cartridge, which was revolutionary at the time. The game was extremely successful, selling 6.5 million units.

Since the original, The Legend of Zelda has seen many sequels, including (but not limited to) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which was, to much controversy, radically different than the original, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which returned to the style of the original and brought the series to the Super Famicom/SNES, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which is often hailed as the greatest game of all time, even over Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, which used a controversial cel-shaded art style, and now, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which is said by Reggie Fils-Aime (President of Nintendo of America as of July 2006) to be, "...by far, the best Zelda game we've ever made."

Both the Zelda and Mario franchises have been amazing sellers, with Mario selling almost 275 million units and Zelda selling 47 million units as of 2005.

But Miyamoto has not only been involved with Mario and Zelda over the years. He was involved in many other well-known franchises as well, including Star Fox, Pikmin, Nintendogs, F-Zero, Earthbound, Metroid Prime, and Animal Forest.

Of particular notability is Nintendogs, whose concept was created based on Miyamoto 's experiences with his own dog. The game has been released on the Nintendo DS in six different versions worldwide, and as current Nintendo President Satoru Iwata announced on March 23, 2006, Nintendogs has sold 6 million units worldwide.

In 1998, Miyamoto was the first person to be accepted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame.

Rumours spread over the internet in 2002 that he had died of heart problems, fortunatly this was not true.

In March of 2005, Miyamoto was one of the first people to be honored with a star on the Walk of Game, San Francisco's equivalent of Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

On March 13, 2006, Shigeru Miyamoto was knighted into the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres with fellow game developers Michel Ancel and FrÃ©dÃ©rick Raynal.

As of 2006, Miyamoto is Director and General Manager of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development along with long-time Nintendo veteran Takashi Tezuka, and it is the largest of Nintendo's divisions. Nintendo EAD develops the majority of Nintendo's games, including Mario, Zelda, and Pikmin titles.

Characters Created

 * Mario
 * Donkey Kong
 * Link
 * Luigi
 * Peach
 * Bowser
 * Yoshi
 * Zelda
 * Captain Olimar

Awards
At the 1998 Game Developers Conference, Shigeru was given two Lego-Made trophies for his work in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He gave the second to the man responsible for most of the Legend of Zelda's original American translating.

Cameos

 * Final Fantasy 3 - In the graveyard, one of the tombstones said "Shigeru Miyamoto."