Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto (born November 16, 1952) is a Japanese video game designer, producer and game director at Nintendo. He is the creator of video game franchises such as Mario and The Legend of Zelda.

Quotes

Challenge for the player is the most important thing. In the Mario games for example, the player can go back and try to finish the game without collecting a single coin. I think great video games are like favorite playgrounds, places you become attached to and go back to again and again. Wouldn't it be great to have a whole drawer full of "playgrounds" right at your fingertips?
- "The Man Behind Mario", The Nintendo Mario Mania Player's Guide [1991]

A good idea is something that does not solve just one single problem, but rather can solve multiple problems at once.
- Source: Interview with Shigeru Miyamoto Eurogamer.net, published on 31 March 2010

I could make Halo. It's not that I couldn't design that game. It's just that I choose not to. One thing about my game design is that I never try to look for what people want and then try to make that game design. I always try to create new experiences that are fun to play.
- Source [1]

A game that keeps a smile on the player's face is a wonderful thing. Nintendo's theme for 2006 will be "Create new fun". Spread the fun of games to everyone. To do this, we must return to the beginning, to recapture the essence that made people who enjoy games even now enjoy them in the first place.
- Source: Famitsu

Any new media or industry that grows rapidly is going to be criticized. That's just because the older, more established media have been around, and a lot of adults can be very conservative. They may not have an open mind to new things that weren't around when they were growing up, and are replacing the things they grew up with... over the years I've seen this standard image of a child playing a video game in which the child is alone in a darkened room, with his face very close to the TV, with the light of the TV reflecting off his face, holding the controller and just staring at the TV. I'd really like to be able to change that image of video games into something that's a little more positive.
- Source: Gamasutra.com (members only)

Games are a trigger for adults to again become primitive, primal, as a way of thinking and remembering. An adult is a child who has more ethics and morals, that's all. When I am a child, creating, I am not creating a game. I am in the game. The game is not for children, it is for me. It is for an adult who still has a character of a child.
- Source: Next Generation Magazine

I don't know what Mario will look like next; maybe he will wear metallic clothing with a red hat.
- 1991, before the release of Super Mario 64.

I don't like all the attention. I think it's better to let my work do the talking.
- Source: Digital Trends

The PSP will not be able to display anything that you cannot do on a current system.
- Source: USA Today

What if everything that you see, is more than what you see? The person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it or accept that there is more to the world than you think. Perhaps it is really a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things.
- Source: Nintendo Power

Necessity is the mother of invention. I love solving things like that. Because there wasn't enough memory, thinking of an economical way to make the movements look right was like solving a puzzle, and I had a lot of fun.
- Source: [2]

So you know cats are interesting. They are kind of like girls. If they come and talk to you it's great. But if you try to talk to them it doesn't always go so well.
- Source [3]

It isn't about "games", for me, personally, and it never really was. It was about creating something- anything- far bigger than yourself.
- Source: GDC 2011

When we’re doing an action game, we make the second level first. We begin making level 1 once everything else is completed.
- Source: [4]

If you release a game in a bad state, you will always regret it.
- Source: 2016 Interview about Star Fox Zero with TheJWittz at 11:15 Text quote

I think the first is that a game needs a sense of accomplishment. And you have to have a sense that you have done something, so that you get a sense of satisfaction of completing something. When I approach the design of my games, what I have to think about is how I'm showing a situation to a player, conveying to them what they're supposed to do. In Mario you keep going to the right to reach your end goal. In Donkey Kong you keep climbing up to rescue the captured princess. The last is the immersive quality of the game being able to feel it's a world you're immersed in, that you've become a hero. That you've become brave. Even if you're actually crying.
- How the inventor of Mario designs a game - Vox January 12, 2017

I would say the games that we're working on now, like the new Zelda: Twilight Princess, have hardcore content. And if you look at the Revolution's controllers, there's a nunchaku-style controller expansion that's really well suited to first-person shooters.
- Source: 2006 Issue of Maxim (Note: "Revolution" was the working name for the Wii)

Originally, I wanted a machine that would cost $100. My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn't used NAND flash memory [to store data such as games and photos] and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded.
- Source: November 16, 2006 Business Week interview

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