Christmas 1982, I was five years old, and my parents surprised me with an Atari 2600. But honestly? The real magic didn’t happen until a few years later when we got our NES and I first played Super Mario Bros. I mean, looking back now as a 47-year-old accountant with a basement full of retro gaming stuff, I can see that moment was basically my introduction to genius-level game design, though I had no clue at the time.
I was just a kid in suburban Minneapolis, sitting way too close to our old Zenith TV, discovering that you could go down pipes and find secret areas full of coins. That first underground level blew my mind – there was this whole other world hidden beneath the regular level. I remember calling my friend Mike over to show him, both of us taking turns finding every secret we could. We didn’t know we were experiencing the work of Shigeru Miyamoto, or that this guy would basically define what video games could be for the next forty years.
What’s wild about Miyamoto’s approach is how he made games feel like real places instead of just… I don’t know, digital obstacle courses. The Mushroom Kingdom wasn’t just a backdrop for jumping around – it felt lived-in, you know? Like there were parts of it you hadn’t seen yet, secrets waiting to be discovered. Same with Hyrule in the Zelda games, or even the bizarre worlds in later stuff like Pikmin. These weren’t just game levels; they were places I wanted to explore.
The teaching thing is what really gets me though. Take World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros – and if you’ve never really analyzed this level, trust me, it’s brilliant. That first Goomba is positioned so perfectly that you’re almost guaranteed to walk into it on your first try. Boom, you learn that touching enemies is bad. Then there’s that obvious question mark block hanging over your head, just begging to be hit. You jump, you get a power-up, you learn that exploration pays off. By the time you reach your first pit, the game has already taught you everything you need to survive without a single tutorial or instruction manual page.
I tested this theory about ten years ago when my nephew was visiting. Jake was maybe six at the time, and I handed him the NES controller without saying anything about how to play. Within fifteen minutes, he’d figured out the basic mechanics and was actively looking for secrets. “Uncle Sam, I bet there’s something hidden up there,” he said, pointing at what looked like empty space above some blocks in World 1-2. Sure enough, there was an invisible 1-up block. When I asked how he knew to check, he just shrugged. “Seemed like the kind of place they’d hide something.”
That’s Miyamoto’s magic right there – he creates this sense of curiosity that makes you want to poke at everything, try jumping in weird places, experiment with the world just to see what happens. My friend Tom and I spent an entire weekend in college working through Ocarina of Time, and I swear we felt like actual explorers every time we solved a puzzle or found a new area. The Water Temple nearly broke us (seriously, screw that place), but when we finally got through it, we were high-fiving like we’d conquered Mount Everest.
The whole garden inspiration thing makes so much sense when you think about it. Miyamoto has talked about how his childhood exploring the Japanese countryside influenced his game design, and you can totally see it. The original Legend of Zelda feels like wandering through unknown territory, never quite sure what’s around the next corner. Pikmin makes you see the world from an ant’s perspective, where a bottle cap becomes a valuable treasure and your backyard suddenly seems full of hidden adventures.
I’ve got a small garden behind my apartment building – nothing fancy, just some tomatoes and herbs – but after playing the Pikmin games, I catch myself wondering what tiny dramas might be playing out among the plants that I can’t see. That’s what good game design does: it changes how you look at the real world.
The control thing is huge too. I’ve played hundreds of platformers over the years, but nothing feels quite like controlling Mario. There’s this precision, this responsiveness that just works. After a long session with Super Mario World or Super Mario 64, I’ll switch to some other platformer and immediately notice the difference. It’s like… the other game is fighting me somehow, while Mario games feel like an extension of my hands.
My wife doesn’t really get the gaming thing, but even she noticed this when she tried playing New Super Mario Bros. with me a few years back. “This character moves exactly how I expect him to,” she said. That’s it exactly – Miyamoto’s games respond to your intentions, not just your button presses.
Speaking of Super Mario 64, man, that was a moment. I first played it at a Funcoland kiosk before the N64 launched, and there was actually a small crowd watching people figure out the controls. When I discovered the triple jump, some kid behind me went “Whoa!” and honestly, that’s exactly how I felt. The freedom of movement in 3D space was revolutionary. I went home and looked at my SNES games differently, knowing something fundamental had changed about what games could be.
The transition from 2D to 3D could have killed these franchises. Look at how many beloved series from that era didn’t survive the jump to polygons – Sonic struggled for years, Castlevania took forever to find its footing in 3D, plenty of others just disappeared entirely. But Miyamoto didn’t just successfully translate Mario and Zelda into 3D; he basically wrote the playbook that everyone else would follow. Z-targeting in Ocarina of Time solved camera and combat issues that plagued early 3D games, and it became so standard that modern gamers probably don’t even realize it was once this revolutionary new thing.
Character design is another area where Miyamoto just gets it. Mario’s mustache and overalls, originally solutions to the graphical limitations of early hardware, became iconic elements that work just as well today. Link’s green tunic immediately says “fantasy hero” without needing explanation. Even the secondary characters – Bowser, Ganondorf, all the various Mario enemies – have these instantly recognizable silhouettes that stick in your memory.
But it goes beyond just how they look. Playing as Luigi feels different from Mario – he’s got that higher jump but more slippery movement that actually changes how you approach levels. The different transformation masks in Majora’s Mask don’t just change your appearance; they fundamentally alter how you interact with the game world. These aren’t cosmetic differences; they’re experiential ones.
The hardware integration stuff is where Miyamoto really shows his understanding of what makes games special. While other developers create experiences that could work on any system, Miyamoto designs specifically for whatever weird hardware Nintendo is cooking up. The DS touch controls in Phantom Hourglass, the motion controls in Wii Sports, even recent stuff like Nintendo Labo with its cardboard constructions – these aren’t gimmicks slapped onto existing game ideas. They’re experiences built from the ground up around specific hardware capabilities.
I’ll admit, I was skeptical about the Wii Remote when Nintendo first showed it off. Seemed like a novelty that would get old fast. Then I brought Wii Sports home and watched my parents – who had never shown any interest in video games beyond occasionally asking why I was “still playing those things” – immediately understand how to bowl without any explanation. My mom developed her own technique, started asking if we could play “just one more game.” That’s when I realized what Miyamoto was really doing: using hardware innovation to expand who could enjoy games, not just how they could be played.
Same thing happened with Nintendo Labo a couple years ago. I brought it home thinking it was probably just an expensive gimmick, but three hours later my living room was covered in cardboard pieces and I was genuinely amazed at how well the fishing rod I’d built translated my movements into the game. That same sense of wonder I’d felt as a kid finding secret areas in Zelda was back, only now it bridged physical and digital play in ways I hadn’t imagined.
What really gets me about Miyamoto’s career is how he’s never seemed to rest on his reputation. Pikmin was a completely new franchise introduced when he was already a legend, showing he was still willing to experiment with fresh ideas. Even now, in his seventies, he’s involved in projects that push boundaries and try new things. There’s this sense of playful curiosity that hasn’t dimmed despite decades of success.
His influence on the industry is impossible to overstate. Every indie platformer with thoughtful level design owes something to Mario. Every open-world game that trusts players to explore at their own pace carries Zelda’s DNA. The entire concept of 3D action-adventure games was essentially defined by his work in the 90s. But beyond these technical influences, I think Miyamoto’s biggest legacy is proving that games should be joyful experiences that welcome players in rather than pushing them away.
I’m in my late forties now, got two teenagers who think my retro game collection is mostly weird and outdated, but I still go back to Miyamoto’s games regularly. Not just for nostalgia – though there’s definitely some of that – but because they’re still genuinely fun to play. Super Mario World holds up against any modern platformer I’ve tried. A Link to the Past is still more engaging than most current adventure games. There’s a timelessness to the design that transcends technological limitations.
My friend’s eight-year-old daughter came over last month and I let her try Mario Kart 8. Within minutes she was laughing and having a blast, completely absorbed in the game. “It feels like the game is being nice to me,” she said, which is probably the best description of Miyamoto’s design philosophy I’ve ever heard. His games don’t just challenge you; they play with you, respond to you, surprise and delight you in ways that feel almost conversational.
In an industry that often gets caught up in photorealistic graphics, massive open worlds, and increasingly complex systems, Miyamoto’s work reminds me that the heart of gaming isn’t technical achievement – it’s human joy. The guy created some of the most beloved characters in pop culture, revolutionized how we think about game design, and helped establish video games as a legitimate form of entertainment. But honestly? His greatest achievement might be simpler than all that: he proved that play itself has value, that curiosity deserves rewards, and that games can speak to the kid in all of us without talking down to us.
Forty-plus years after I first picked up a controller, I’m still discovering new things in games I’ve played dozens of times, still feeling that spark of joy when a jump feels just right or a puzzle clicks into place. That’s the real magic of Shigeru Miyamoto’s creations – they don’t just entertain us; they remind us what it feels like to wonder, to explore, to play. And honestly, at 47 years old with a receding hairline and a day job calculating tax returns, I need that reminder more than ever.
Samuel’s been gaming since the Atari 2600 and still thinks 16-bit was the golden age. Between accounting gigs and parenting teens, he keeps the CRTs humming in his Minneapolis basement, writing about cartridge quirks, console wars, and why pixel art never stopped being beautiful.
