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Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto is the creator of some legendary franchises like Mario and Zelda. That doesn’t mean his kids only played Nintendo games, however. Miyamoto said in a recent interview with The New Yorker that they also played a lot of SEGA titles like Out Run and Harrier. Rather than being jealous, he said this inspired him to try harder, “so that they preferred the ones I made.”

Miyamoto said that his children didn’t care much about his job and have “never felt pressure to follow a certain path or to be a certain way”, adding: “I don’t think that they have felt any undue burden because of who their father is.”

Miyamoto also touched on the topic of having kids maintain a healthy relationship with games and ensuring that they don’t play too long. He said on that front:

Super Mario 64

Nintendo fans that have kept up with the history of Mario know that at one point, Luigi was going to be playable in Super Mario 64. The team originally hoped to make multiplayer possible, but it just wasn’t technically feasible in the end.

Shigeru Miyamoto opened up a bit about Super Mario 64’s development in an interview with The Guardian. Regarding limitations the team faced, Miyamoto said:

The Washington Post recently spoke with four key developers behind the Mario franchise. Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, Yoshiaki Koizumi, and Kenta Motokura spoke about the different entries and series in general.

Here’s a roundup for some of their comments:

Shigeru Miyamoto

As part of Super Mario’s 35th anniversary, CNN was able to speak with some of the series’ creators. Among them was Shigeru Miyamoto, who opened up about why the character was made a plumber.

Miyamoto stated:

Netflix has a new video game documentary coming out next week. In the final episode, there’s talk about the relationship between Nintendo and Argonaut Software and the making of Star Fox on the SNES. Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard, two developers who worked on the game, spoke about the development experience.

According to Goddard, the Big N “never had anybody outside Nintendo working in the building. They actually made a separate office for us in one room on our own, basically segregated out.”

We also have some interesting words from Cuthbert, who said that famous developer Shigeru Miyamoto was only allowed to smoke in the area that Star Fox was being developed. Cuthbert noted during the episode:

Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime had plenty of meetings with Shigeru Miyamoto over the years while working at the company. However, their very first encounter was understandably memorable. Reggie very much knew about Miyamoto and his historic career, but Miyamoto had no idea who Reggie was at the time.

Reggie recounted the story of meeting Miyamoto during an episode of the Talking Games podcast. It came about early on in his career when he was being shown for the DS for the first time. Reggie had made a comment about the importance of the handheld’s touch screen without realizing Miyamoto was in the room. After this, he quickly became aware that the legendary game designer heard what he said, and Reggie’s knees began to shake. Fortunately, Miyamoto liked Reggie’s comment, and he was able to get off on the right foot.

That’s only a summary of the story. Here’s the full transcript from the podcast:

Before Rockstar San Diego became what it is today – with acclaimed games like Red Dead Redemption under its belt – the team was previously known as Angel Studios. At one point, an opportunity arose in which Nintendo was almost involved with one of their projects. Shigeru Miyamoto actually stopped by the studio to check out the game, which ended up being scrapped in the end.

Founder Diego Angel spoke about the experience in an interview with Polygon. The game in question was Buggy Boogie, a project for the N64. Not much is known about the project, but it was previously stated by former software director Clinton Keith that it involved “vehicles that would eat other vehicles and adopt their powers and morph.”

As for meeting with Miyamoto, Angel told Polygon:

Shigeru Miyamoto has been responsible for some of the most iconic game franchises ranging from Mario to Zelda. These days though, he’s not quite involved in Nintendo development as he used to be. Miyamoto could be interested in making a new, smaller-scale title down the road, but told Famitsu in the Japanese magazine’s latest issue that he’s busy with other projects.

Here’s our full exchange between Miyamoto and Famitsu:

After the negative reception of the Super Mario Bros. film in 1993, Nintendo put the breaks on pursuing movies. Yet now after so much time has passed, the Big N is giving things another shot. Illumination is on board to create a brand new Mario-based movie with Despicable Me producer Chris Meledandri. Nintendo is overseeing the process and Shigeru Miyamoto is heavily involved.

As part of a lengthy interview in Famitsu this week, Miyamoto spoke about meeting Meledandri for the first time and how that eventually led to the Mario film. One of the important parts of their conversation was when Meledandri brought up a past failure, which convinced Miyamoto that he could be trusted.

Here’s our full translation of the interview excerpt:

In Famitsu’s recent 12-page interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, he was asked about Nintendo’s plans moving forward. Considering Nintendo has been diversifying their interests in the past few years at a brisk pace, the public is eager to hear about Nintendo’s activity.

Here’s our translation of the excerpt:

Miyamoto: We want to expand our video game characters to a variety of settings – not just in games, all while keeping their value. In other words, we’ll be collaborating with various other companies. If we’re able to accomplish that, we can create more opportunities for people to make contact with our characters on a much larger scale than usual.

We’ve translated many other highlights from the interview here, here and here. Look forward to more translations in the coming days.


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