Shigeru Miyamoto

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Shigeru Miyamoto : biography

11-16-1952 –

Miyamoto worked on many Mario series spin-offs like Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party. He also made another Zelda game called The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, which he also produced. By re-using the game engine and graphics from Ocarina of Time, a smaller team required only 18 months to finish Majora’s Mask. According to director Eiji Aonuma, they were "faced with the very difficult question of just what kind of game could follow Ocarina of Time and its worldwide sales of seven million units", and as a solution, came up with the three-day system to "make the game data more compact while still providing deep gameplay". He also produced Star Fox 64.

2000–2006

When the Nintendo GameCube was released Miyamoto made various games, including the launch title Luigi’s Mansion. The game was first revealed at Nintendo Space World 2000 as a technical demo designed to show off 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 the E3 in 2001 with the Nintendo 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. He also worked on new games for the Star Fox, Donkey Kong, F-Zero and Legend of Zelda series on both the GameCube, the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS systems. He helped in many games on the DS, including the remake of Super Mario 64, Super Mario 64 DS, and the new game Nintendogs.

2006–present

At E3 2005, Nintendo released a small number of Nintendo DS game cards containing a preview trailer for Twilight Princess. They also announced that Zelda would appear on the Wii, then codenamed the "Revolution", and was later revealed to be The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The team, including Miyamoto, worked on a Wii control scheme, adapting camera control and the fighting mechanics to the new interface. A prototype was created that used a swinging gesture to control the sword from a first-person viewpoint, but was unable to show the variety of Link’s movements. When the third-person view was restored, Aonuma thought it felt strange to swing the Wii Remote with the right hand to control the sword in Link’s left hand, so the sword control was transferred to a button. Miyamoto confirmed the Revolution controller-functionality in an interview with Nintendo of Europe and Time reported the same soon after. At E3 2006, Nintendo announced that both versions would be available at the Wii launch, and had a playable version of Twilight Princess for the Wii. Later, the GameCube release was pushed back to a month after the launch of the Wii. Miyamoto produced the Wii series, including Wii Sports and Wii Fit, and two Zelda titles for the Nintendo DS, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

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. New Super Mario Bros. Wii introduced simultaneous multiplayer and sold 21.28 million copies worldwide, while the Super Mario Galaxy titles were hailed as two of the best video games of all-time, collectively selling 15 million copies.

In November 2011, two games with his contribution were released: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, the newest game in the Zelda series for Wii, was announced at E3 2010 and Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS, which was announced at the Game Developers Conference in 2011.

Current projects

Miyamoto is currently working on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS titles. At E3 2008, Pikmin 3 was announced to be in development for Wii, but now it is slated to release for the Wii U. Furthermore, he worked on the 3DS game Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, and is working on a completely new title. No information is given on the new project.