SEARCH
FOR THE WORDS "Mario" and "Nintendo" on Yahoo! and you'll come up with
over 6,000 hits, with addresses from across the globe: Australia, Britain,
Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden to name a few. By several accounts,
Mario, Nintendo's pint-sized videogame hero, is the most lucrative fictional
character ever. Whether he's edged out Mickey Mouse isn't really the point,
of course. He's easily the most recognizable gaming character, and probably
the one that's left the most lasting impression on two decades of game players.
The 
man
behind Mario, and much of Nintendo's success, is game designer Shigeru Miyamoto.
In 1977, the young Miyamoto -- then a scruffy haired, guitar-playing art
school grad -- approached Nintendo looking for a creative position. The
company was searching desperately for engineers, not for artists. But after
looking at his sketches and cartoons, Nintendo offered him a job as their
first staff designer. Three years later Miyamoto's first major title, Donkey
Kong, made a splash at arcades all over the U.S. and Japan. Its quirky storyline
and plumber antihero gave Donkey Kong a distinct flavor and made it the
hottest coin-operated game of the year. Miyamoto's success with this and
other early projects helped to push the creative side of game development,
previously in the hands of engineers and programmers, into the hands of
designers. Enthusiasts began to see that game design could be a genuine
art form.
Miyamoto's efforts have been more than simply aesthetic ones, though.
His conceptual advances were giant leaps for game theory. Early innovations
like the scrolling screen helped Nintendo to break from the rigid single-screen
arcade mode and introduced new ideas of space. Building on that foundation,
Super Mario Brothers was one of the first games that gave players a world
to experience. 
It's
hidden secrets made it a place you wanted to explore rather than just
race through. More recent games like Zelda 64 have worked in stunningly
cinematic camera angles. In a recent speech at the 1999 Game Developer's
Conference Miyamoto sounded more like a veteran film director than a gamemaker:
"Through our experience of making this interactive media called videogames,
we have uncovered a number of methods to stimulate a player's emotion."
So, in a sense, the Legend of Miyamoto has been to consider the questions
that his predecessors weren't thinking about. While most other designers
were updating Asteroids, Miyamoto was approaching design with a cinematographer's
eye for pacing and tempo. In the following interview, Miyamoto tells FEED
about the possibilities offered by new technologies and gaming's newest
challenges.
--William O'Shea
FEED: One of the amazing virtues of videogames
-- particularly games like Mario or Zelda -- is that they are enjoyed
by 8-year-old kids and their 40-year-old parents. How is it that you accommodate
both audiences?
Miyamoto: Basically, we are making games
that we ourselves want to play, and when we are making games, we do not
have any specific age groups in mind. When I create games, my priority
is on the emotional feeling I can get through the controller while playing.
So, by focusing on a human's emotion, which has nothing to do with age, I
hope to appeal to a wide range of people.
FEED: In your recent speech at the 
game
designer's conference you mentioned something interesting, that Zelda
64's innovations (with camera angles, etc.) give it a more emotive quality.
The Playstation people have been talking about their own "emotion engine."
Is this the next step for video games? Do you see videogames competing
with or even surpassing movies?
Miyamoto: Novels, movies, and games for
primitive game machines can't completely express the creators'
ideas (including the NES), but nonetheless make use of peoples'
imaginations in order to successfully stimulate their minds. Thanks to
the recent technological evolution, games' visuals now come closer to
that of movies. In response to that, we have been trying to learn a lot
of modes of expression from movies. The camera system adopted in Legend
of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is something new. It combines movie methods
and techniques we created in making interactive videogames. Will videogames
surpass movies? Videogames and movies each belong to a completely different
genre, so they cannot be compared. It's like asking, have movies surpassed
novels?
FEED: It seems like the accomplishment
of games like Zelda are largely environmental -- the game world has become
increasingly more fluid and convincing. The narrative of these types of
games have been relatively static and linear, however (finish the level,
save the princess, etc.). Do you think that new technologies can enable
the narrative goals of these games to grow?
Miyamoto: It is a good question and a hard
one to answer. I think that this is the subject we have to tackle next.
What I can say is what I find most attractive about creating videogames
is the potential of unique interactive media. I believe in the importance
of creators' messages being contained and asserted in videogames. I know
that we need to have good scenarios.
However, will those games in which creators put the higher priority
on making better story lines be suited for interactive media? I have not
seen the answer yet. If I can find the answer, I may start making games
by finding the best scenario. There are many entertainment commodities
around us. It may be okay that videogames happen to put more priority on
interactivity than story line. By the same token, I do not think that
the stories in the video games made so far are all simple.
FEED: You have mentioned that the early
arcade culture was designed to eat your quarters, and that carried over
to early video game design. When did games begin to move beyond the constraints
of the arcade? Do you think that contemporary games are still dealing
with this legacy?
Miyamoto: When Nintendo launched Famicom
(Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1983, the game creators were able to
shift the designing policy from "making games which can let consumers
use as many coins as possible" to "the games players want to play as long
as possible." However, I am not denying the arcade game designing concept.
I just wanted to say that our creative minds were given more chances.
FEED: What do you mean when you say that
creating a game is like composing music?
Miyamoto: For me, game creation is like
expression through music. While I always try to hit upon new plots as
a director of a game, I place great importance on the tempo of the game
and the sound effects. I feel that those directors who have been able
to incorporate rhythm and emotional stimuli in their games have been successful.
When I am holding the controller and setting the tempo, I feel that my
own, personal game is in the midst of creation. This is because I have
been putting so much emphasis on the kinds of emotions players can get
when they are actually playing our games.
FEED: You make the point that new technologies
have been plentiful in game design, and that new ideas have been far less
common. Can you give a few concrete examples here?
Miyamoto: I believe that a lot of games
made advances, but allow me to refrain from identifying any one of them.
Throughout the history of video games, a number of "similar games" have
been created from time to time, following the trend in each occasion.
On the other hand, a handful of very unique and different software has
also been created, which has created a new area of gaming experiences
and attracted new users. Now that we are able to make games for state-of-the-art
game machines, we would like to be more engaged in heated discussions
on the creative freedom and inventions of the new form of the entertainment.
But, on the contrary, everybody seems to be obsessed with the specifications
and abilities of new hardware, and I am very concerned about that.
FEED: What was the original inspiration
for Mario or Zelda? Did it come out of a conversation or something you
saw or read?
Miyamoto: When I began creating Super Mario
Brothers for the NES, I wanted to make a game in which a large character
moved around all the parts of a TV screen that scrolls. These ideas were
unprecedented at that time. The theme of NES Legend of Zelda was a "miniature
garden that you can put inside your drawer." The original concept was
for the players to travel many different places and encounter a variety
of events in a world players would see from the above with an oblique
angle. Some of those original concepts have constantly been found in each
game in each series.
FEED: How would you describe the Miyamoto
style? How is it distinctive from the styles and aspirations of other
game designers?
Miyamoto: Every creator in this industry keeps on working simply because they love
to surprise or to entertain others. My style may be, as I mentioned above,
to focus on tempo and pursue unprecedented interactivity. Also I was fortunate
to have been able to work in the video game industry from its dawn, and
I have been able to design games with the understanding of why certain
technologies exist in their current form. Most of the parts of our games
have been created by staff members. So, do you believe that the "Miyamoto
way" can still be found in that context? Or, maybe making games with the
support of other creators is my style.
FEED: Why do you think that so many distinctive
and important games have come out of Japan? Are there any historical factors
that you think have contributed to Japan's focus on gaming and technology?
Miyamoto: What I can tell you about the
Japanese way of making games, through my own experiences of working with
Japanese creators, is that they always make games with the potential players
in mind and they never compromise. The developers always work hard
until the very end so that what they want to really convey to a game player
actually appears in the game, even at the sacrifice of their private lives.
Also, game making requires a lot more team members than before, so that
the Japanese tendency to create "harmony" among friends may have contributed
to the number of games we've created. On the other hand, it seems to me
that very unique and different game ideas are more often found in games
made outside Japan.
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