Shigeru Success Story

Nevertheless, despite the industry's infancy, Miyamoto took a job at the Nintendo Company, a small company specializing in playing cards and board games. The company had caught sight of the huge wave in video gaming, and hoped to make itself a key player in the industry. Miyamoto helped the struggling company enter the Japanese arcade market, and later the United States gaming market.

After early failures, Nintendo hit success with the Donkey Kong arcade game, one of Miyamoto's own creations and by all admissions a nightmare of programming and design. The game was far more complex than anything that had preceded it, differing from the shooter-style games that had previously dominated the industry.       

"To create a new standard, you have to be up for that challenge and really enjoy it"-Shigeru Miyamoto
 

Career

Nintendo's success extended into the home gaming market, and with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System, Miyamoto experienced a new design freedom. He created landmark titles like The Legend of Zelda, a dungeon-crawling adventure game that drew upon his experiences in his hometown as a child, exploring local forests and sneaking into uninhabited caves.

Other franchises also took off for Miyamoto. The Super Mario game series became Nintendo's flagship gaming franchise, selling hundreds of millions of titles throughout its lifetime. Metroid, a science fiction space game, and Starfox, an innovative three-dimensional shooter soon followed, bringing new franchises and merchandising opportunities to the successful Nintendo Corporation.

Shigeru Miyamoto with Steven Spielberg 

Miyamoto's career has, however, had its downsides. The disastrous licensing deal between his own company and Phillips resulted in fan backlash against his creations, and the company's overbearing and arrogant stance on used games in the early 1990s created many enemies. However, Miyamoto's instincts always caused him to learn from these experiences rather than to ignore them.

While Nintendo's CEOs have changed over the last few decades, and Miyamoto has never occupied a leading financial management position within the company, he's undoubtedly Nintendo's greatest creative contributor. From his innovative titles during the early years of gaming to his polished and critically acclaimed later games, his career is one that's inspired thousands of other game designers.                                                                                                                                                                       

Shigeru Miyamoto Receives Prince of Asturias Award