Shigeru Miyamoto was born in 1952 in the Japanese town of Sonobe, Kyoto. His parents lived modestly, and his father taught English.
From an early age, Miyamoto explored the natural areas around his home. He discovered a cave, and went inside only after summoning up the courage over several days. His expeditions into the Kyoto countryside inspired his later video game work, especially The Legend of Zelda.
In the early 1970s, Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts with a degree in industrial design. Miyamoto had a love for manga, and initially wished to be a professional manga artist. Ultimately, he was inspired to enter the video game industry by the 1978 arcade hit Space Invaders. Miyamoto was influenced by manga’s classic kishōtenketsu narrative structure, and cowboy Western television shows.
Through a mutual friend, Miyamoto’s father arranged an interview with Nintendo’s president, Hiroshi Yamauchi. Miyamoto was hired as an apprentice in 1977 in the planning department.
Miyamoto’s first task was creating the art for the coin-operated arcade game, Sheriff. Then, he helped Nintendo develop a game after the 1980 release of Radar Scope. While Radar Scope was moderately successful in Japan, Nintendo failed to break the game into North America, leaving the company with a large number of unsold units and on the verge of financial collapse. Yamauchi decided to convert unsold Radar Scope units into a new arcade game, tasking Miyamoto with the conversion.
Miyamoto imagined many characters and plot concepts, but eventually settled on a love triangle between a gorilla, a carpenter, and a woman, meant to mirror the rivalry between Bluto and Popeye for Olive Oyl (Nintendo’s intention to gain rights to Popeye had failed). Bluto evolved into an ape, and Miyamoto was also partially influenced by Beauty and the Beast and King Kong.
Miyamoto lacked the skills to program the game himself, so he consulted technicians to determine whether his ideas were realistically possible. The head game designer, Gunpei Yokoi, thought Miyamoto’s ideas of making the characters different sizes and moving in different manners was too complex. Miyamoto then thought of having sloped platforms and ladders for travel, with barrels for obstacles. When he asked that the game have multiple stages, the programming team complained that Miyamoto was asking them to make the game repeat. Eventually, the team successfully programmed the game. The sales manager of Nintendo of America complained that the gameplay varied significantly from the maze and shooter games that were successful at the time. American staffers began naming the characters: the woman was named “Pauline” for Polly James, wife of Nintendo’s Redmond, Washington, warehouse manager; “Jumpman,” was eventually named for Mario Segale, the warehouse landlord; and the gorilla was given the English name “Donkey Kong.”
Donkey Kong was a success, leading Miyamoto to work on sequels, including Donkey Kong Jr. in 1982 and Donkey Kong 3 in 1983. In January 1983, Donkey Kong was awarded the Best Single-player video game award and the Certificate of Merit as runner-up for Coin-Op Game of the Year.
In Mario’s next game, Miyamoto gave Mario a brother, Luigi. Miyamoto named the game Mario Bros. Yokoi convinced Miyamoto to give Mario superhuman abilities. Mario’s appearance in Donkey Kong, including overalls, a hat, and a thick mustache, led Miyamoto to change aspects of Mario Bros. to make Mario and Luigi resemble plumbers. Miyamoto thought New York City was the best setting for Mario Bros., with a “labyrinthine, subterranean network of sewage pipes.” Games in the Mario Bros. franchise have been released for more than a dozen platforms.
In 1985, Nintendo released its first home video game console, the Family Computer (in America, released as the Nintendo Entertainment System). Miyamoto produced two of the most popular titles for the console and in the history of video games: Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. In both games, Miyamoto focused more on gameplay than high scores. Super Mario Bros. was the culmination of Miyamoto’s developed gameplay concepts and technical knowledge from his design experiences, resulting in the development of a platformer set in an expansive world so the player had to strategize while scrolling sideways above- and underground, with colorful backgrounds. Miyamoto employed nonlinear gameplay in The Legend of Zelda, forcing the player to think through riddles and puzzles in an expansive and seemingly endless world. Before Nintendo’s next console, Miyamoto developed one sequel for The Legend of Zelda and two sequels for Super Mario Bros., including the series’ first overworld map.
A merger between Nintendo’s various internal research and development teams led to creation of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development (Nintendo “EAD”), which Miyamoto headed. EAD had approximately 15 months to develop F-Zero, a launch game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Miyamoto was responsible for the controller design of the SNES, including the left and right shoulder buttons that were an industry first and have since become common. Miyamoto also produced Super Mario World as a launch game, which introduced Yoshi.
Miyamoto mentored Satoshi Tajiri, guiding Tajiri during the creation process of Pokémon Red and Blue, the initial video game in the Pokémon series. Miyamoto also acted as the producer and worked on social gameplay concepts such as trading. Pokémon has since become one of the most popular entertainment franchises in the world.
For Nintendo 64, Miyamoto developed several games, including Super Mario 64, for which Miyamoto was principal director. He developed the free-roaming 3D design and camera system, and guided the design of the controller in tandem with the game. Miyamoto led a team of several directors to produce The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which went on to garner the highest video game reviews of all time and has been hailed as “flawless” and a “new benchmark for interactive entertainment.” The game was also called a “walking patent office” due to the number of features the game contained that subsequently became “industry standard.”
Miyamoto played a major role in the development of the Nintendo Wii console, which popularized motion control gaming as the first wireless motion-controlled video game console. Miyamoto overssaw the production of Wii Sports, the launch title for the Wii that demonstrated the capabilities of the new control scheme.
To date, more than 1 billion copies of games featuring franchises created by Miyamoto have been sold.
Following the death of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in 2015, Miyamoto was appointed acting Representative Director for several months, and “Creative Fellow.” He provided expert advice to Iwata’s successor as a “support network” and continues to provide feedback and guidance to game directors during development.
In 2018, Miyamoto was announced as a producer on The Super Mario Bros. Movie by Illumination. The movie, released in 2023, became the third-highest-grossing animated movie of all time, grossing $1.35 billion during its theatrical run, and the highest-grossing film based on a video game.
Miyamoto has not employed focus groups during game production. He figures out if a game is fun for himself, believing that others will enjoy a game if he does. Miyamoto designs a game that he can love as a creator, rather than making a game that can sell or a game that would be popular. He then tests games with friends and family.
Rather than focusing on hyper-realist graphics, he has been more focused on game mechanics and gameplay, including the controls, the sound, and the rhythm and pacing.
The New Yorker has described Miyamoto as Nintendo’s “guiding spirit, its meal ticket, and its playful public face,” suggesting that Nintendo might not still exist without him. Next Generation described him as “the most successful game developer in history.”
Miyamoto and his wife had two children, who played video games in their youth, but were encouraged to go outside as he did. Instead of playing video games in his spare time, Miyamoto plays the guitar, mandolin, and banjo, and is an avid fan of bluegrass.
He has been quoted as saying, “Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock and roll.”