When I think back on the annals of video games, one name inevitably rises to the surface: Shigeru Miyamoto. The founder of Nintendo’s creative department and the brilliant mind behind a horde of iconic titles, Miyamoto has left an indelible mark on the medium. Most of his games—Mario and Zelda, chief among them—aren’t just seminal; they’re works of art, systems of logic and emotion. They’re essentially dreams. I wasn’t aware of the impact Miyamoto and his creations would have on my personal gaming journey when I first interacted with them, but looking back now, it’s blindingly obvious. What sets Miyamoto apart, I realise, is that he doesn’t craft games that are merely entertaining. He makes games that you will never forget.
The first taste I had of Miyamoto’s brilliance was with Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I must have been no older than 10 years old, and the vision of Mario bounding through these colorful, fantastical lands was beyond enchanting. The game’s elegance and simplicity were immediately enticing. Mario’s trek across the Mushroom Kingdom, darting past Goombas, pulverizing Koopas, and saving Princess Peach from the grip of Bowser, was a quest all its own. It wasn’t just about reaching the end, but about savoring the journey there, uncovering hidden secrets, and deftly mastering the controls.
Miyamoto’s talent for crafting instinctive gaming experiences was evident in Super Mario Bros. The controls were precise and reactive, producing movement that felt organic. Game design motivated curiosity and testing, bestowing hidden power-ups and warp zones as prizes for reward. The first hidden block I discovered, containing a 1-Up mushroom, and the first out-of-sight tube that transported me somewhere new, were revelatory moments. Finding them was magical, adding nuances of complexity to otherwise straightforward gameplay.
As I got older, I came to notice this genius Miyamoto’s at least extended to beyond Mario. Another masterpiece from Miyamoto—The Legend of Zelda, lead me to another series of dreaming. Hyrule, a huge world that full of mysterious, valuable treasure and danger. Zelda did not have fixed story line, I could Explore freely, find dungeons, unlock riddles and fight through digestion enemies. Freedom and discovery was such amazing imagination. I spent tons of days and nights to try to find secret door or hidden weapons.
The moment in the Legend of Zelda that I most remember was when I got the master sword for the first time. The quest to find the legendary blade tucked away deep inside the Lost Woods felt like it had elevated Link to a new echelon. The games clever and labyrinthine design turned each and every step forward into a major event, and using the master sword on Ganon’s face for the first time was the most divine element videogames had ever managed to invoke. That Miyamoto can create moments of impact and emotion as rich as this one is a testament to his personal genius as a designer. I find it hard to describe in words the transformation that I went through after that moment but I know that my feelings about videogames as an expressive and established artform were forever altered.
Creating Worlds with Emotion and Integrity
Miyamoto’s creations are famed not only for their gameplay, but for their heart and soul. He has a rare gift for infusing his games with a sense of wonder and delight that connects with players of all ages. This is perhaps most apparent in the Super Mario and Zelda series, but it’s something that is present in all of his work.
Consider, if you will, the domain of Pikmin. The first Pikmin launched for the Nintendo GameCube back in 2001 and utterly captured my heart and brain for a brief, intense few weeks. The setup was simple: Captain Olimar crashes his spaceship on an unknown planet, and recruits the help of the denizens of the place, called Pikmin, in order to rebuild the ship. Decades before “colonial marines” became a thing, Olimar was basically the same thing, except without any of the grimness. He recruits Pikmin just by chucking seeds at them and hoping for the best, and they follow his alien dude around in a floaty little clump, going to fight hostile local wildlife, bring him dead things the wildlife killed, and help him lift things. It was a game that let you dump poison on local ecosystems in a way that no other game would in 2001. Good. Hire it, Pyrocinical.
Recalling my first encounter with a plucked Pikmin, I still recall watching this strange entity come to life and I was intrigued from that point forward. It was something about the way these oddities hopped about. Or maybe it was the dragonfly-like eyes raising its bulbous head skyward. Or even the noises it made; like something from another planet but with a still familiar voice trying desperately to keep me constructive in my pursuits. In any case, Pikmin’s brilliance lay in these creatures’ ability to touch you as intensely as the hero on whom the player’s wishes are focused. From the beginning, I was inextricably attached to my men; from the moment of creation to their, and I do mean their, final nuzzle just to let you know it’s OK. I think it was their simple unity and genial submission to the self-critical, optimally-programmed brain of Captain Olimar upon which the game’s entire experience depends. In other words, if a Pikmin were going to make a mistake in your favor, a la Monopoly, it had better be according to the way you’ve been taught to think. It’s this kind of obedience to the logic of the game that allowed a still appreciative critic to get beyond the “save me!” squalls that would overpower a non-moure from anything else in the world.
In this vein, the finest moment of Pikmin is when your fiercely adorable team goes off to work at destroying an iron gate or to assuage a chauvinistic Bulborb family where your powers had gotten overwhelmed. You’re right—your Pikmin are surely going to be consumed, but they march on, voices rotting, little strides struggling with weight their midsection should be able to lug from Styx to Hades and back. No many how many rows of unjail, a la Breakout or Arkanoid or anything else, you can come up with they’d better walk for, and no matter how many walls of warm-blooded flesh they must ascend, they’ll crawl upward. If you delete a row of boxes, the Pikmin creators build a beer bottle; once it’s empty, they take it upon themselves to replace the entire paradigm. And then, after your 20 have magically multiplied to 100, and your controller is vibrating in the floor, and you slice my cherry to end the day, the most miraculous thing happens, and if it’d actually worked the way the designers originally intended, it might’ve made me sob in old age. They all converge on the onion’s base, and I dare you not to shed a tear when the last one leaps forward, flag atop his head, to prove his loyalty one more time. My favorite thing about the game is that every day, your Pikmin are shitbagging bums. Haymarket rioters. 14-year-old burnouts. Physicists who teach long division. Jobless, starving Viet Cong. And then, come sunset, they remember who you are right quick. Because, in battle, any loss is the player’s, not just Olimar’s. You believed, too. I still miss them. After all we went through, I hope they did well for themselves. Miyamoto has such an ability to create characters from the controller/console bond his games provide. I’m not one of “us,” per se, having last conquered a game more difficult than Pong in 1977, but even I can recognize the achievement here. In my memory, this is Olimar’s. Because the rest of my Pikmin? Well, they’re mine.
Another game that demonstrates Miyamoto’s skill at creating emotionally resonant experiences is Animal Crossing. A rather uniquely esoteric game, the premise is that you move into a new town filled with animals. And you live there, catching bugs, fishing, hands-on decorating your house, and dealing with the villagers of your town that you either grow to love and care for or plants and become their worst dream. When I first played it on the GameCube, it struck me with impressions of a relaxing, open-ended game. There were no real objectives or goals, no stages to complete to save the princess or rescue a kingdom from a disastrous fate. There was just the joy of “living” in this whimsical, forever-evolving world.
What makes Animal Crossing so appealing is its simplicity and the sense of community it fosters. Each villager has his or her own personality and quirk, making every interaction feel meaningful. I remember looking forward to the littlest moments in the game, catching
a rare fish, finding a new piece of furniture for my house, or just chatting with my favorite villagers. The game’s real-time clock and turning of the seasons made it all the more immersive, a living, breathing world that I could visit whenever I wanted. It can be so
easy for games to feel cold and unwelcoming, but Mr. Miyamoto manages to create this warm and inviting world in which I want to spend all my time.
In order to drive progression, one must go beyond traditional limits through creative thoughts and the implementation of new ideas – this entrepreneurial mindset has always fascinated me. Developments in technology and their implications are no exception either. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance at a rapid pace, we are entering an era of perpetual innovation in various fields, leading to new opportunities and possibilities. I am eager to live and work in such an era.
Over the course of his career, Miyamoto has always been willing to challenge our preconceptions of what a video game could be, testing new ideas and new technologies to their limits. One of his most famous experiments, perhaps the best example of this kind of innovation, came with the release of Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64 system in 1996. It was an incredible leap forward for the series and the medium, and it rewrote the book on how moving Mario would feel. Just as Super Mario Bros. had gone far in defining a 2D language of how to move a character around, so, too, did Super Mario 64 teach us how we would interact with a 3D video game for years to come.
The first time I played Super Mario 64, it took my breath away. Princess Peach’s Castle, which serves as the hub world, was a triumph of design with its barrier that held your progress at bay, it’s secrets, and its magical portals to rich, diverse worlds. Moving Mario around in 3D space felt revolutionary. Instead of offering a static long jump, another feature let you continue to gain height by balancing back and forth in a kind of vault. The game’s camera was a revelation. Playing suddenly became about more than speed and reflexes. Super Mario 64 grabbed you by the hand and let you look around. Miyamoto’s team had crafted not just an amazingly beautiful and imaginative world, but also one that was fantastically fun to explore.
The excitement of uncovering new techniques and aptitudes, for example, the wall hop or the triple hop, added layers of profundity to the gameplay. Every level was a jungle gym loaded up with challenges, puzzles, and foes to overcome. I spent incalculable hours attempting to gather every one of the 120 Power Stars, each offering a remarkable test. Super Mario 64 wasn’t only a game; it was an encounter that reclassified what computer games could be.
Also apparent in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is Miyamoto’s inclination toward innovation. Released in 1998 for the Nintendo 64, it transitioned the time-honored Zelda series into the realm of third dimension, producing a sprawling odyssey that continues to be recognized as one of the greatest video games ever created. I was absolutely captivated by the breadth of the game’s universe, the complexity of its dungeons, and the sheer strength of its narrative.
One of the features of Ocarina of Time that really stuck out was the time travel. I had to jump between the present and future versions of Hyrule as Link and experience different puzzles, enemies, and more in both. And sometimes, actions in the past could change what happened in the future or vice versa, leaving a really interesting puzzle. The story, though, was possibly the most interesting part of Ocarina of Time. Going from a bewildered young boy to a strong, adult warrior while fighting against Ganondorf really laid it all out. And even though by 2016, we’re all used to the presentation in that final battle, the deep breaths and Ganon’s rage felt more cinematic and more epic 19 years ago.
Miyamoto did not abandon his pursuit of novelty after the Nintendo 64. He introduced motion controls into mainstream console gaming with the release of the Nintendo Wii in 2006 and Wii Sports, a collection of sports-themed minigames. In doing so, he showcased the unique capabilities of the Wii Remote, allowing players to directly interact with the game in entirely new ways. Wii Sports was an explosive hit that appealed to both gamers and non-gamers alike. I can remember my own family playing Wii Sports with me; it was tennis and bowling matches, laughing and cheering one another as we played. The game was designed to be approachable, and its intuitive controls made it perfect for parties, bridging the gap between casual and hardcore gaming.
The Long-lasting Heritage
We can never really know how significant Miyamoto’s effect on the gaming industry is. Many, many developers began their careers inspired by the worlds he created. It’s not just that Super Mario, or Zelda, or even Pikmin are loved franchises; they are parts of our shared cultural heritage that have changed how we think about and play video games.
Miyamoto’s creations from the 80s still feel just as fun and fulfilling today, which is simply amazing. Thanks to his brilliant knack for crafting games and giving them meaning, they continue to resonate with new players years and years later. I revisit old gems like Super Mario Bros. and Ocarina of Time not just out of nostalgia, but because I always have a blast playing them. They never get old.
At the root of Miyamoto’s method of game design lies a profound belief in play. He has always felt that games should be fun, that players should derive joy and wonder from what he creates. It is his ethos of design that is evident in all of the games he made, from the magical realms of Mario to the austere worlds of Link, to his visual presets: they are meant to gratify, provoke, uplift. And this is why they are so enduring.
When we look back on Miyamoto’s long career, it’s obvious that his influence goes far beyond any one game. He’s helped define not only Nintendo, but every console the company has ever released. His imagination and creativity empowered a company to take risks and create some of history’s most iconic and loved products. Countless developers modeled themselves after him, trying to capture what it was about his games that sent the imagination soaring.
An unforgettable moment connected with Miyamoto’s lasting impression is attending a gaming convention where he was speaking as a guest. Hearing him chat about his mental state during game creation and the connections he made between his own life and each creation was a truly breathtaking experience for me. He was so sincere and energetic, and it was strange but I think he really, truly loves his job. He loves generating happiness for players everywhere. And his pledge to his work and his wishes to bringing delight to players worldwide is why he is a true legend.
