86-541: Yokoi is Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include: Gunpei Yokoi , designer of the Game Boy and other Nintendo products Hirotaka Yokoi , professional mixed martial arts fighter Shoichi Yokoi , soldier and celebrity Yokoi Shōnan , political reformer Mitsuo Yokoi , a Japanese voice actor (known as "Tesshō Genda") Yokoi Yayū , 18th-century poet [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with
172-547: A hanafuda factory where Yokoi was working and took notice of a toy, an extending arm that Yokoi made for his own amusement during spare time while doing maintenance. Yamauchi ordered Yokoi to develop it as a proper product for the Christmas rush. The Ultra Hand was a huge success, and Yokoi was asked to work on other Nintendo toys, including the Ten Billion Barrel puzzle, a miniature remote-controlled vacuum cleaner called
258-518: A 1992 interview, he said "the important thing is that it feels good when you're playing it" and "that quality is not determined by the story, but by the controls, the sound, and the rhythm and pacing". However, he requires a "compatibility [between] the story and gameplay [because] a good story can smooth over that discrepancy and make it all feel natural". His use of real-time rendered cinematics (not prerendered video) serves both his own rapidly interactive development process with no rendering delays, and
344-440: A career as a manga artist, until developing an interest in video games. With the help of his father, he joined Nintendo in 1977 after impressing the president, Hiroshi Yamauchi , with his toys. He helped create art for the arcade game Sheriff , and was later tasked with designing a new arcade game, leading to the 1981 game Donkey Kong . Miyamoto's games Super Mario Bros. (1985) and The Legend of Zelda (1986) helped
430-402: A career in video games. He was influenced by manga's classic kishōtenketsu narrative structure, as well as Western genre television shows . He was inspired to enter the video game industry by the 1978 arcade hit Space Invaders . I feel that I have been very lucky to be a game designer since the dawn of the industry. I am not an engineer, but I have had the opportunities to learn
516-462: A cave, and, after days of hesitation, went inside. His expeditions into the Kyoto countryside inspired his later work, particularly The Legend of Zelda , a seminal video game. In the early 1970s, Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts with a degree in industrial design. He had a love for manga and initially hoped to become a professional manga artist before considering
602-455: A lake. It was quite a surprise for me to stumble upon it. When I traveled around the country without a map, trying to find my way, stumbling on amazing things as I went, I realized how it felt to go on an adventure like this." He recreated his memories of becoming lost amid the maze of sliding doors in his family home in Zelda ' s labyrinthine dungeons. In February 1986, Nintendo released it as
688-417: A larger world map rather than the bird's eye view of the previous title. The game incorporates a strategic combat system and more RPG elements, including an experience points (EXP) system, magic spells , and more interaction with non-player characters (NPCs). Link has extra lives; no other game in the series includes this feature. The Adventure of Link plays out in a two-mode dynamic. The overworld ,
774-673: A launch game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System . Miyamoto worked through various games on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, one of them Star Fox . For the game, programmer Jez San convinced Nintendo to develop an upgrade for the Super Nintendo, allowing it to handle three-dimensional graphics better: the Super FX chip. Using this new hardware, Miyamoto and Katsuya Eguchi designed
860-456: A linear approach, with the player traversing the stage by running, jumping, and dodging or defeating enemies. It was a culmination of Miyamoto's gameplay concepts and technical knowledge drawn from his experiences of designing Donkey Kong , Mario Bros , Devil World (1984), the side-scrolling racing game Excitebike (1984), and the 1985 NES port of side-scrolling beat 'em up Kung-Fu Master (1984). This culminated in his concept of
946-547: A major role in the development of the Wii , a console that popularized motion control gaming, and its launch game Wii Sports , which helped show the capability of the new control scheme. Miyamoto went on to produce other titles in the Wii series , including Wii Fit . His inspiration for Wii Fit was to encourage conversation and family bonding. At E3 2004 , Miyamoto unveiled The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess , appearing dressed as
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#17328528236511032-427: A movie maker, but rather that my strength lies in my pioneering spirit to make use of technology to create the best, interactive commodities possible, and use that interactivity to give users a game they can enjoy and play comfortably. Miyamoto, and Nintendo as a whole, do not use focus groups. Instead, Miyamoto figures out if a game is fun for himself. He says that if he enjoys it, others will too. He elaborates, citing
1118-534: A platformer set in an expansive world that would have the player "strategize while scrolling sideways" over long distances, have aboveground and underground levels, and have colorful backgrounds rather than black backgrounds. By contrast, Miyamoto employed nonlinear gameplay in The Legend of Zelda , forcing the player to think their way through riddles and puzzles. The world was expansive and seemingly endless, offering "an array of choice and depth never seen before in
1204-402: A rapid and malleable development process with small teams, as when he directed substantial changes to the overall game scenario in the final months of the development of Ocarina of Time . He said, "The reason behind using such a simple process, as I am sure you have all experienced in the workshop, is that there is a total limit on team energy. There is a limit to the work a team can do, and there
1290-421: A series of handheld puzzle games named Gunpey as a tribute to their original creator, Yokoi. Shigeru Miyamoto Shigeru Miyamoto ( Japanese : 宮本 茂 , Hepburn : Miyamoto Shigeru , born November 16, 1952) is a Japanese video game designer , producer and game director at Nintendo , where he serves as one of its representative directors as an executive since 2002. Widely regarded as one of
1376-521: A similar philosophy. In the handheld market, Yokoi's refusal to adopt a color display for the Game Boy, in favor of long battery life, is cited as the main reason it prevailed against Sega's Game Gear and Atari's Lynx . Satoru Iwata , CEO of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015, claimed that this philosophy has been passed on to the disciples of Yokoi, such as Miyamoto, and it continues to show itself in Nintendo's then current use of technology, with
1462-449: A smaller team required only 18 months to finish Majora's Mask . Miyamoto worked on a variety of Mario series spin-offs for the Nintendo 64, including Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party . Miyamoto produced various games for the GameCube , including the launch game Luigi's Mansion . The game was first revealed at Nintendo Space World 2000 as a technical demo designed to show off
1548-532: A team consisting of a partnership between Nintendo and Square ; it took nearly a year to develop the graphics. The story takes place in a newly rendered Mushroom Kingdom based on the Super Mario Bros. series . Miyamoto also created The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the third entry in the series. Dropping the side-scrolling elements of its predecessor, A Link to
1634-417: A video game." With The Legend of Zelda , Miyamoto sought to make an in-game world that players would identify with, a "miniature garden that they can put inside their drawer." He drew his inspiration from his experiences as a boy around Kyoto , where he explored nearby fields, woods, and caves; each Zelda game embodies this sense of exploration. "When I was a child," Miyamoto said, "I went hiking and found
1720-552: A whole. Additionally, The Adventure of Link was one of the first games to combine role-playing video game and platforming elements to a considerable degree. Soon after, Super Mario Bros. 3 was developed by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development ; the game took more than two years to complete. The game offers numerous modifications on the original Super Mario Bros. , ranging from costumes with different abilities to new enemies. Bowser's children were designed to be unique in appearance and personality; Miyamoto based
1806-691: Is Gunpei Yokoi: The Life & Philosophy of Nintendo's God of Toys . In 2003, Yokoi posthumously received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Game Developers Association . GameTrailers placed him on their lists for the "Top Ten Game Creators". An art gallery in Japan created an art exhibit in 2010 titled "The Man Who Was Called the God of Games" featuring all his key Nintendo works. In 1999, Bandai began releasing
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#17328528236511892-527: Is "regarded by many as possibly the most important game designer of all time." GameTrailers called him "the most influential game creator in history." Miyamoto has significantly influenced various aspects of the medium. The Daily Telegraph credited him with creating "some of the most innovative, ground breaking and successful work in his field." Many of Miyamoto's works have pioneered new video game concepts or refined existing ones. Miyamoto's games have received outstanding critical praise, some being considered
1978-455: Is a limit to my own energy. We opted not to use that limited time and energy on pre-rendered images for use in cinema scenes, but rather on tests on other inter-active elements and polishing up the game". For these reasons, he opposes prerendered cutscenes. Of Ocarina of Time , he says "we were able to make use of truly cinematic methods with our camera work without relying on [prerendered video]." Miyamoto has occasionally been critical of
2064-462: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Gunpei Yokoi Gunpei Yokoi ( 横井 軍平 , Yokoi Gunpei , 10 September 1941 – 4 October 1997) , sometimes transliterated as Gumpei Yokoi , was a Japanese toy maker and video game designer . As a long-time Nintendo employee, he was best known as creator of the Game & Watch handheld system, inventor of the cross-shaped Control Pad ,
2150-787: The Game Boy , the latter of which became a worldwide success. Another of his creations, the Virtual Boy , was a commercial failure . Nintendo has denied that the Virtual Boy's poor performance in the market was the reason for Yokoi's subsequent departure from the company, holding that his retirement was "absolutely coincidental" to the market performance of any Nintendo hardware. According to his Nintendo and Koto colleague Yoshihiro Taki, Yokoi had originally decided to retire at age 50 to do as he pleased but had simply delayed it. According to David Sheff 's book Game Over , Yokoi never actually intended for
2236-479: The Mario franchise by Illumination . Miyamoto was heavily involved with the design and construction of Super Nintendo World , a themed area featured at Universal Studios Japan and Universal Studios Hollywood and under construction at Universal Studios Singapore and Universal Epic Universe . Miyamoto oversaw the design and construction of the land and its attractions and acted as Nintendo's public representative on
2322-555: The Nintendo Entertainment System dominate the console game market. His games have been flagships of every Nintendo video game console , from the arcade machines of the late 1970s to the present day. He managed Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis & Development software division, which developed many Nintendo games, and he played an important role in the creation of other influential games such as Pokémon Red and Blue (1996) and Metroid Prime (2002). Following
2408-399: The Nintendo Entertainment System ), Miyamoto made two of the most popular titles for the console and in the history of video games as a whole: Super Mario Bros. (a sequel to Mario Bros. ) and The Legend of Zelda (an entirely original title). In both games, Miyamoto decided to focus more on gameplay than on high scores, unlike many games of the time. Super Mario Bros. largely took
2494-549: The Star Fox game with an early implementation of three-dimensional graphics. Miyamoto produced two major Mario games for the system. The first, Super Mario World , was a launch game. It features an overworld as in Super Mario Bros. 3 and introduces a new character, Yoshi, who appears in many other Nintendo games. The second Mario game for the system, Super Mario RPG , went in a somewhat different direction. Miyamoto led
2580-799: The Star Fox , Donkey Kong , F-Zero , and The Legend of Zelda series on both the GameCube and the Game Boy Advance systems. With the help of Hideo Kojima , he guided the developers of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes . He helped with many games on the Nintendo DS, including the remake of Super Mario 64 , titled Super Mario 64 DS , and the new game Nintendogs , a new franchise based on his own experiences with dogs. At E3 2005, Miyamoto showed off Nintendogs with Tina Wood , where he promised to show her "a few more tricks" backstage. Miyamoto played
2666-411: The role-playing game (RPG) genre. In a 1992 interview, when asked whether Zelda is an RPG series, he declined but classified it as "a real-time adventure"; he said he was "not interested in [games] decided by stats and numbers [but in preserving] as much of that 'live' feeling as possible", which he said " action games are better suited in conveying". In 2003, he described his "fundamental dislike" of
Yokoi - Misplaced Pages Continue
2752-441: The surname Yokoi . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yokoi&oldid=1215998802 " Categories : Surnames Japanese-language surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
2838-410: The 15 most influential games of all time, for being an early example of open world , nonlinear gameplay , and for its introduction of battery backup saving , laying the foundations for later action-adventure games like Metroid and role-playing video games like Final Fantasy , while influencing most modern games in general. In 2009, Game Informer called The Legend of Zelda "no less than
2924-490: The 1960s. Through a mutual friend, Miyamoto's father arranged an interview with Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi . After showing some of his toy creations, he was hired in 1977 as an apprentice in the planning department. Miyamoto helped create the art for the coin-operated arcade game , Sheriff . He first helped the company develop a game after the 1980 release Radar Scope . The game achieved moderate success in Japan, but by 1981, Nintendo's efforts to break it into
3010-616: The American cabinet art and used in promotional materials. The staff also pushed for an English name, and thus it received the title Donkey Kong . Donkey Kong was a success, leading Miyamoto to work on sequels such as Donkey Kong Jr. in 1982, and Donkey Kong 3 in 1983. In January 1983, the 1982 Arcade Awards gave Donkey Kong the Best Single-player video game award and the Certificate of Merit as runner-up for Coin-Op Game of
3096-561: The Chiritory, a baseball-throwing machine called the Ultra Machine , and a " Love Tester ". He worked on toys until the company decided to make video games in 1974, when he became one of its first game designers, only preceded by Genyo Takeda . While traveling on the Shinkansen , Yokoi supposedly saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then got
3182-496: The North American video game market had failed, leaving them with a large number of unsold units and on the verge of financial collapse. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to convert unsold Radar Scope units into a new arcade game. He tasked Miyamoto with the conversion, about which Miyamoto has said self-deprecatingly that "no one else was available" to do the work. Nintendo's head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi , supervised
3268-581: The Past introduced to the series elements that are still commonplace today, such as the concept of an alternate or parallel world, the Master Sword , and other new weapons and items. Shigeru Miyamoto mentored Satoshi Tajiri , guiding him during the creation process of Pocket Monsters: Red and Green (released in English as Pokémon Red and Blue ), the initial video games in the Pokémon series. He also acted as
3354-658: The RPG gameplay system, he has occasionally praised certain aspects of RPGs, such as Yuji Horii 's writing in the Dragon Quest series, the "interactive cinematic approach" of the Final Fantasy series, and Shigesato Itoi 's dialogue in the Mother series. Time called Miyamoto "the Spielberg of video games" and "the father of modern video games," while The Daily Telegraph says he
3440-498: The RPG genre: "I think that with an RPG you are completely bound hand and foot, and can't move. But gradually you become able to move your hands and legs... you become slightly untied. And in the end, you feel powerful. So what you get out of an RPG is a feeling of happiness. But I don't think they're something that's fundamentally fun to play. With a game like that, anyone can become really good at it. With Mario though, if you're not good at it, you may never get good." While critical of
3526-507: The Wii has also been pointed to as an example of Yokoi's "lateral thinking" at work. On 4 October 1997, Yokoi was riding in a car driven by his associate Etsuo Kiso on the Hokuriku Expressway , when the vehicle rear-ended a truck. After the two men had left the car to inspect the damage, Yokoi was hit and injured by a passing car. The driver of the car that hit Yokoi in the second accident
Yokoi - Misplaced Pages Continue
3612-538: The Year. In his next game, he gave Mario a brother: Luigi . He named the new game Mario Bros. Yokoi convinced Miyamoto to give Mario some superhuman abilities, namely the ability to fall from any height unharmed. Mario's appearance in Donkey Kong —overalls, a hat, and a thick mustache—led Miyamoto to change aspects of the game to make Mario look like a plumber rather than a carpenter. Miyamoto felt that New York City provided
3698-421: The area where the majority of the action occurs in other The Legend of Zelda games, is still from a top-down perspective , but it now serves as a hub to the other areas. Whenever Link enters a new area such as a town, the game switches to a side-scrolling view. These separate methods of traveling and entering combat are one of many aspects adapted from the role-playing genre. The game was highly successful at
3784-702: The best setting for the game, with its "labyrinthine subterranean network of sewage pipes". To date, games in the Mario Bros. franchise have been released for more than a dozen platforms. Shortly after, Miyamoto also worked the character sprites and game design for the Baseball , Tennis , and Golf games on the NES. As Nintendo released its first home video game console, the Family Computer (rereleased in North America as
3870-430: The book Yokoi Gunpei Game House . "Withered technology" in this context refers to a mature technology which is cheap and well understood. " Lateral thinking " refers to finding radical new ways of using such technology. Yokoi held that toys and games do not necessarily require cutting-edge technology; novel and fun gameplay are more important. In the interview, he suggested that expensive cutting-edge technology can get in
3956-485: The characters on seven of his programmers as a tribute to their work on the game. The Koopalings' names were later altered to mimic names of well-known, Western musicians in the English localization . In a first for the Mario series, the player navigates via two game screens: an overworld map and a level playfield. The overworld map displays an overhead representation of the current world and has several paths leading from
4042-595: The conception of the Pokémon series as an example, "And that's the point – Not to make something sell, something very popular, but to love something, and make something that we creators can love. It's the very core feeling we should have in making games." Miyamoto wants players to experience kyokan ; he wants "the players to feel about the game what the developers felt themselves." He then tests it with friends and family. He encourages younger developers to consider people who are new to gaming, for example by having them switch their dominant hand with their other hand to feel
4128-424: The console market in an attempt to change the ways video games are played, and consequently, to widen the audience for video games in general. This strategy demonstrated Nintendo's belief that graphical advancement isn't the only way to make progress in gaming technology; indeed, after the Wii's overwhelming success, Sony and Microsoft released their own motion control peripherals. Nintendo's emphasis on peripherals for
4214-475: The console to be released in its present form. However, Nintendo pushed the Virtual Boy to market so that it could focus development resources on the Nintendo 64 . Amid the failure of the Virtual Boy and the launch of the more successful Game Boy Pocket , Yokoi left Nintendo on 15 August 1996, after thirty-one years at the company. Leaving with several of his subordinates to form a new company called Koto, Yokoi led
4300-459: The consoles themselves. They described Miyamoto as Nintendo's "guiding spirit, its meal ticket, and its playful public face," noting that Nintendo might not exist without him. The Daily Telegraph similarly attributed Nintendo's success to Miyamoto more than any other person. Next Generation listed him in their "75 Most Important People in the Games Industry of 1995", elaborating that, "He's
4386-542: The death of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in July 2015, Miyamoto became acting president alongside Genyo Takeda until he was formally appointed "Creative Fellow" a few months later. Miyamoto was born on November 16, 1952, in the Japanese town of Sonobe , Kyoto Prefecture . His parents were of "modest means", and his father taught English . From an early age, Miyamoto explored the natural areas around his home. He discovered
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#17328528236514472-598: The design of the Nintendo 64 controller in tandem with that of Super Mario 64 . Using what he had learned about the Nintendo 64 from developing Super Mario 64 and Star Fox 64 , Miyamoto produced his next game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , leading a team of several directors. Its engine was based on that of Super Mario 64 but was so heavily modified as to be a somewhat different engine. Individual parts of Ocarina of Time were handled by multiple directors—a new strategy for Nintendo EAD. However, when things progressed slower than expected, Miyamoto returned to
4558-490: The development of the Bandai WonderSwan handheld game console. Yokoi said "The Nintendo way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply." He articulated his philosophy of "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology" ( 枯れた技術の水平思考 , Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō ) (also translated as "Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology"), in
4644-414: The development team with a more central role assisted in public by interpreter Bill Trinen . The team was new to 3D games, but assistant director Makoto Miyanaga recalls a sense of "passion for creating something new and unprecedented". Miyamoto went on to produce a sequel to Ocarina of Time , known as The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask . By reusing the game engine and graphics from Ocarina of Time ,
4730-518: The experience of an unfamiliar game. Miyamoto's philosophy does not focus on hyper-realistic graphics, although he realizes they have their place. He is more focused on the game mechanics, such as the choices and challenges in the game. Similar to how manga artists subverted their genre, Miyamoto hopes to subvert some of the basic principles he had popularized in his early games, retaining some elements but eliminating others. His game design philosophy typically prioritizes gameplay over storytelling. In
4816-483: The first titles in the series to implement touch screen controls. Miyamoto produced three major Mario titles for Wii from 2007 to 2010: Super Mario Galaxy , New Super Mario Bros. Wii , and Super Mario Galaxy 2 . Unlike in the 2000s in which he was involved on many projects as producer, Miyamoto's activities in development were less pronounced in that decade with Miyamoto only producing Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon and Star Fox Zero . Otherwise, Miyamoto
4902-553: The game is much more difficult than its predecessor. Nintendo of America disliked Super Mario Bros. 2 , which they found to be frustratingly difficult and otherwise little more than a modification of Super Mario Bros. Rather than risk the franchise's popularity, they canceled its stateside release and looked for an alternative. They realized they already had one option in Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic (Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic), also designed by Miyamoto. This game
4988-566: The graphical capabilities of the GameCube. Miyamoto made an original short demo of the game concepts, and Nintendo decided to turn it into a full game. Luigi's Mansion was later shown at E3 2001 with the GameCube console. Miyamoto continued to make additional Mario spinoffs in these years. He also produced the 3D game series Metroid Prime , after the original designer Yokoi, a friend and mentor of Miyamoto's, died. In this time he developed Pikmin and its sequel Pikmin 2 , based on his experiences gardening. He also worked on new games for
5074-478: The greatest game of all time" on their list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time", saying that it was "ahead of its time by years if not decades". At the time of the release of Star Fox , the use of filled, three-dimensional polygons in a console game was very unusual, apart from a handful of earlier titles. Due to its success, Star Fox has become a Nintendo franchise, with five more games and numerous appearances by its characters in other Nintendo games such as
5160-410: The greatest games of all time. Miyamoto's games have also sold very well, becoming some of the bestselling games on Nintendo consoles and of all time. As of 1999, his games had sold 250 million units and grossed billions of dollars. Calling him one of the few "video-game auteurs ," The New Yorker credited Miyamoto's role in creating the franchises that drove console sales, as well as designing
5246-443: The hero across the screen but this proved too difficult to program. Miyamoto next thought of using sloped platforms and ladders for travel, with barrels for obstacles. When he asked that the game have multiple stages, the four-man programming team complained that he was essentially asking them to make the game repeat, but the team eventually successfully programmed the game. When the game was sent to Nintendo of America for testing,
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#17328528236515332-450: The highly successful Nintendo DS and Wii . The Wii's internal technology was similar to that of Nintendo's previous home console, the GameCube , and was not as advanced in terms of computational capability and multimedia versatility compared to its competitors: the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 . Instead, the system offered something completely different by introducing motion-based controls to
5418-405: The idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature video gaming pastime. In 1981, Yamauchi appointed Yokoi to supervise Donkey Kong , an arcade game created by Shigeru Miyamoto . Yokoi explained many of the intricacies of game design to Miyamoto at the beginning of his career, and the project only came to be approved after Yokoi brought Miyamoto's game ideas to the president's attention. After
5504-411: The land, hosting several promotional materials including a December 2020 Nintendo Direct in which he gave a tour of parts of the land. People have paid me a lot of lip service, calling me a genius story teller or a talented animator, and have gone so far as to suggest that I try my hand at movies, since my style of game design is, in their words, quite similar to making movies. But I feel that I am not
5590-495: The launch game for the Nintendo Entertainment System 's new Disk System peripheral. Miyamoto worked on various other different games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, including Ice Climber and Kid Icarus . He also worked on sequels to both Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda . Super Mario Bros. 2 , released only in Japan at the time, reuses gameplay elements from Super Mario Bros. , though
5676-515: The most accomplished and influential designers in video games, he is the creator of some of the most acclaimed and best-selling game franchises of all time, including Mario , The Legend of Zelda , Donkey Kong , Star Fox and Pikmin . More than 1 billion copies of games featuring franchises created by Miyamoto have been sold. Born in Sonobe, Kyoto , Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts . He originally sought
5762-554: The most successful game developer in history. He has a unique and brilliant mind as well as an unparalleled grasp of what gamers want to play." Miyamoto's first major arcade hit Donkey Kong was highly influential. It spawned a number of other games with a mix of running, jumping, and vertical traversal. Particularly novel, the vertical genre was initially referred to as " Donkey Kong -type" or " Kong -style", before finalizing as "platform". Earlier games either use storytelling or cutscenes , but Donkey Kong combines both to introduce
5848-422: The original designer of the Game Boy , and producer of a few long-running and critically acclaimed video game franchises such as Metroid and Kid Icarus . Yokoi graduated from Doshisha University with a degree in electronics. He was first hired by Nintendo in 1965 to maintain the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its hanafuda cards. In 1966, Hiroshi Yamauchi , president of Nintendo, came to
5934-624: The pet of the main character, "a funny, hang-loose kind of guy". Miyamoto also named " Beauty and the Beast " and the 1933 film King Kong as influences. Miyamoto had high hopes for his new project, but lacked the technical skills to program it himself; instead, he conceived the game's concepts, then consulted technicians on whether they were possible. He wanted to make the characters different sizes, move in different manners, and react in various ways. However, Yokoi viewed Miyamoto's original design as too complex. Yokoi suggested using see-saws to catapult
6020-480: The player's interaction with the game's continuity. He prefers to change his games right until they are finalized, and to make "something unique and unprecedented". He prefers the game to be interactively fun rather than have elaborate film sequences, stating in 1999, "I will never make movie-like games"; therefore, the more than 90 total minutes of short cutscenes interspersed throughout Ocarina of Time deliver more interactive cinematic qualities. His vision mandates
6106-399: The principles of game [design] from scratch, over a long period of time. And because I am so pioneering and trying to keep at the forefront, I have grown accustomed to first creating the very tools necessary for game creation. In the 1970s, Nintendo was a relatively small Japanese company that sold playing cards and other novelties, although it had started to branch out into toys and games in
6192-422: The producer for these games and worked on social gameplay concepts such as trading. Pokémon would go on to be one of the most popular entertainment franchises in the world, spanning video games, anime, and various other merchandise. Miyamoto made several games for the Nintendo 64, mostly from his previous franchises. His first game on the new system, and one of its launch games, is Super Mario 64 , for which he
6278-446: The project. Miyamoto imagined many characters and plot concepts, but eventually settled on a love triangle between a gorilla, a carpenter, and a woman. He meant to mirror the rivalry between comic characters Bluto and Popeye for the woman Olive Oyl , although Nintendo's original intentions to gain rights to Popeye failed. Bluto evolved into an ape, a form Miyamoto claimed was "nothing too evil or repulsive". This ape would be
6364-501: The protagonist Link with a sword and shield. Also released for the GameCube, the game was among the Wii's launch games and the first in the Zelda series to implement motion controls. He also helped with The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword , which featured more accurate motion controls. He also produced two Zelda titles for the Nintendo DS , The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks . These were
6450-416: The role of the company's president. He was also appointed the position of "Creative Fellow" at the same time, providing expert advice to Kimishima as a "support network" alongside Takeda. In his capacity as Creative Fellow, he provides feedback and guidance to game directors during development. In 2018, it was announced that Miyamoto would be working as a producer on The Super Mario Bros. Movie based on
6536-453: The sales manager disapproved of its vast differentiation from the maze and shooter games common at the time. When American staffers began naming the characters, they settled on "Pauline" for the woman, after Polly James, wife of Nintendo's Redmond, Washington , warehouse manager, Don James . The playable character, initially "Jumpman", was eventually named for Mario Segale , the warehouse landlord. These character names were printed on
6622-499: The standard for all future videogames". G4 noted its revolutionary gameplay and its role in "almost single-handedly" rescuing the video game industry after the North American video game crash of 1983 . The game also popularized the side-scrolling video game genre. The New Yorker described Mario as the first folk hero of video games, with as much influence as Mickey Mouse . GameSpot featured The Legend of Zelda as one of
6708-465: The time, and introduced elements such as Link's "magic meter" and the Dark Link character that would become commonplace in future Zelda games, although the role-playing elements such as experience points and the platform-style side-scrolling and multiple lives were never used again in the official series. The game is also looked upon as one of the most difficult games in the Zelda series and 8-bit gaming as
6794-411: The use of cutscenes to visually advance a complete story. It has multiple, distinct levels that progress the storyline. Computer and Video Games called Donkey Kong "the most momentous" release of 1981 . Miyamoto's best known and most influential game, Super Mario Bros. , "depending on your point of view, created an industry or resuscitated a comatose one". The Daily Telegraph said it "set
6880-435: The way of developing a new product. Game & Watch was developed based on this philosophy. At the time of its development, Sharp and Casio were fiercely competing in the digital calculator market. For this reason, there was a glut of liquid crystal displays and semiconductors . The "lateral thinking" was to find an original and fun use for this cheap and abundant technology. The NES and Game Boy were developed under
6966-508: The world's entrance to a castle. Moving the on-screen character to a certain tile will allow access to that level's playfield, a linear stage populated with obstacles and enemies. The majority of the game takes place in these levels. A merger between Nintendo's various internal research and development teams led to the creation of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development (Nintendo EAD), which Miyamoto eventually headed. Nintendo EAD had approximately fifteen months to develop F-Zero ,
7052-416: The worldwide success of Donkey Kong , Yokoi continued to work with Miyamoto on the next Mario game, Mario Bros. He proposed the multiplayer concept and convinced his co-worker to give Mario some superhuman abilities, such as the ability to jump unharmed from great heights. After Mario Bros. , Yokoi produced several R&D1 games, such as Kid Icarus and Metroid . He designed R.O.B. and
7138-494: Was Gen Tsushima, a member of the tourism industry. Yokoi's death was confirmed two hours later. Kiso suffered only a fractured rib . The title of his main biography from 2010 translates from Japanese as Father of Games – Gunpei Yokoi, the Man Who Created Nintendo's DNA . A 1997 book's title translates to Yokoi's House of Gaming , which was explored in English in 2010 by Tokyo Scum Brigade. A 2014 book about him
7224-459: Was credited as General Producer, Executive Producer and Supervisor for most projects, which are positions with much less involvement in comparison to a producer. Following the death of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in July 2015, Miyamoto was appointed as an acting Representative Director, alongside Genyo Takeda . He was relieved of this position in September 2015 when Tatsumi Kimishima assumed
7310-471: Was reworked and released as Super Mario Bros. 2 (not to be confused with the Japanese game of the same name) in North America and Europe. The Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was eventually released in North America as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels . The successor to The Legend of Zelda , Zelda II: The Adventure of Link , bears little resemblance to the first game in the series. The Adventure of Link features side-scrolling areas within
7396-426: Was the principal director. In developing the game, he began with character design and the camera system . Miyamoto and the other designers were initially unsure of which direction the game should take, and spent months to select an appropriate camera view and layout. The original concept involved a fixed path much like an isometric-type game , before the choice was made to settle on a free-roaming 3D design. He guided
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