Shigeru Miyamoto, the main reason for Nintendo’s success: “Video games should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their age or ability”

In the world of video games, there are a handful of names with great weight. None carries as much as Shigeru Miyamoto. His importance is paramount, and the video game as it is today is unthinkable without him. And although sometimes he is credited with more than he has actually done, it is undeniable that his work is essential to understanding the evolution of the medium and what Nintendo is today. 

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That is why it seems interesting to talk about exactly that: who he is, what he has done, and why he is considered a legend within the video game industry. And, above all, what lies behind the Nintendo philosophy that he summed up very well in his phrase “Video games should be accessible to everyone, regardless of age or ability.”

Shigeru Miyamoto was born on November 16, 1952, in Sonobe, a small town in Kyoto Prefecture. That childhood surrounded by nature would deeply mark many of his creative concerns. As a child, he used to explore the forests, mountains, and surroundings, an experience that years later he would transfer to some of his video games and, especially evident, to one of his best-known works: The Legend of Zelda.

Miyamoto himself explained how those excursions influenced the conception of the game. In an interview with NPR, he recalled one of those experiences: “There is a place near Kobe where there is a mountain; you climb the mountain and, near the top, there is a large lake. We had gone hiking and climbed the mountain, and I was amazed: it was the first time I experienced what it was like to climb that mountain and see that large lake at the top. I was inspired by that when we were working on The Legend of Zelda and were creating this great outdoor adventure where you go through narrow and confined spaces to then find this large lake.”

Although Miyamoto’s artistic concerns were present from very early on, the possibility of dedicating himself to creating video games took quite a while to appear. From a young age, he was passionate about manga and even considered becoming a professional illustrator. And in reality, he could hardly imagine a career in video games then: when he was a child, the medium had barely begun to exist.

In the early 1970s, he followed that creative impulse and studied at the Kanazawa College of Industrial Arts, where he graduated in industrial design. That choice already hinted at another facet that would end up defining his career: the interest in combining creativity and technology. However, several years would still have to pass before he found the place where he would make history: the world of video games.

We know very little about what Miyamoto did during the early years of the 1970s. Whether he worked in another field, chained minor jobs, or simply sought an opportunity without much success is something he himself has barely talked about. What we do know is that, towards the end of the decade, his father got him a job interview thanks to the friendship he had with Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of a Japanese company mainly dedicated to toys and entertainment. The name of that company? Nintendo.

Miyamoto was hired in 1977, but to understand the importance of that moment, it is worth remembering that that Nintendo had little to do with the company we know today. The company was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi as a manufacturer of traditional Japanese playing cards, especially hanafuda cards. The business prospered for decades, and in 1959, Nintendo even reached an agreement with Disney to market cards decorated with their characters.

However, during the 1960s, it became increasingly clear that cards alone could not sustain the company’s future. Nintendo then began a long search for new businesses and products, experimenting with different sectors before finding a particularly promising field: electronic toys and, shortly after, video games. It was amid that transformation that Miyamoto first crossed its doors.

In 1965, Nintendo had hired another man who would become fundamental to its history: Gunpei Yokoi. He had studied electronic engineering and joined the company to take care of the maintenance of the machines used to manufacture their cards. However, his talent soon took him much further. 

In his free time, he had built a kind of extendable arm that caught Hiroshi Yamauchi’s attention. Nintendo turned it into the Ultra Hand, one of its first big successes as a toy manufacturer, and Yokoi moved from maintenance to developing new products.

From this moment on, Nintendo’s transformation was gradual. In 1969, it strengthened its division dedicated to games and, over the following years, began experimenting more and more with electronics. First came toys like the Beam Gun series; then, in 1973, the ambitious Laser Clay Shooting System; and, in the mid-decade, its first steps into the world of video games. Nintendo was definitively leaving behind its past as a simple card manufacturer to try to become a technological entertainment company.

Gunpei Yokoi was crucial in that transformation and participated in some of its first electronic successes, but the arrival of Shigeru Miyamoto in 1977 added a new artistic sensibility to the team. 

At first, Miyamoto did practically everything: he designed posters, arcade machine elements, characters, and graphics for games created by other departments. One of his first important works was Sheriff, a 1979 arcade directed by Genyo Takeda for which Miyamoto drew some of the pixelated graphics and participated in the design of the machine itself. The title would eventually be distributed internationally under the name Bandido.

He later collaborated on other projects, such as Space Firebird, still mainly as an artist and graphic designer. But that learning phase was about to end. Very soon, Nintendo would give him the opportunity to take charge of a complete video game. And from that assignment would emerge a giant ape and a man with overalls and a mustache who, over time, would become the most famous plumber in history.

In 1980, Nintendo faced a serious problem in its attempt to conquer the United States. Its newly created American subsidiary, led by Minoru Arakawa, had strongly bet on Radar Scope, a spaceship arcade that had worked reasonably well in Japan. Nintendo sent thousands of machines to the United States hoping to repeat the success, but the response there was very different. Sales were far below expectations, and Nintendo of America ended up with a warehouse full of units it could not sell. For a subsidiary that had just started its activity, that was a huge problem.

Arakawa then asked for help from the Japanese headquarters. The solution was as pragmatic as it was common in the arcade business: take advantage of those Radar Scope machines and transform them into a completely different video game that could work better in the U.S. market. Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to assign the project to Miyamoto, who until then had never directed the complete development of a video game.

The choice was practically accidental. In an interview with Salon, Miyamoto explained that he was put in charge of that first game simply “because there was no one else available.” He was neither a programmer nor an engineer and, precisely because of that, he approached the assignment differently: he first imagined the rules, characters, and experience he wanted to create, and then worked with the programmers to turn those ideas into a video game. From that business problem, Donkey Kong was born.

Initially, the game was going to be starring Popeye, the sailor. The idea was very simple: Bluto had kidnapped Olive, and Popeye had to rescue her while dodging the barrels his rival threw at him. A direct premise, perfect for an arcade. However, Nintendo ended up discarding the use of the license, and Miyamoto decided to keep the structure by replacing the characters with his own creations.

Miyamoto kept the idea of a triangle among three characters: a gorilla, a carpenter armed with a huge hammer, and a woman to be rescued. Also, he wanted the antagonist not to be “too evil or repulsive.” From that reinterpretation of Popeye, Donkey Kong, Pauline, and the character later known as Mario were born.

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Although the idea of a man dressed as a gorilla was discarded in favor of a real gorilla, with King Kong as one of the obvious references, the game took shape. The carpenter — who over time would become an Italian plumber — had to dodge barrels, climb ladders, and reach the top of the screen to rescue his girlfriend.

Only a name was missing. Nintendo wanted it to be in English, and Miyamoto was looking for something that conveyed the idea of a “dumb gorilla.” The chosen name would go down in history: Donkey Kong. 

It goes without saying that Donkey Kong was an absolute success. The arcade became one of the great phenomena of the early eighties, and some estimates have placed the revenue generated by the game and its various versions above 4 billion dollars.

Later came conversions for many consoles, two direct sequels in arcades, and a whole franchise that continued to grow for decades until reaching, in 2025, the celebrated Donkey Kong Bananza. Donkey Kong thus became one of Nintendo’s great emblems, and Miyamoto, the company’s star designer.

Although the following Donkey Kong games and his work on titles like Baseball, Tennis, and Golf were highly appreciated, both for their graphics and design, Miyamoto would end up standing out above all for another reason: he led some of the great games in the catalog of Nintendo’s first major console, the NES. Which is the same as saying he was behind some of the most important video games in history.

The NES, or Nintendo Entertainment System, was first released in Japan on July 15, 1983, under the name Famicom, and later arrived in North America in 1985 and Europe from 1986. Its goal was to bring some of the excitement of arcades to the living room, although its technical limitations were evident. The console could hardly reproduce everything arcades offered, but it could do something different: offer much longer and more complex experiences.

The number of games Miyamoto designed and directed in just two years was extraordinary and ended up defining much of the language of modern video games. In 1984, Excitebike was released, a motocross game that experimented with speed, inertia, and character control on screen. That same year came Devil World, clearly inspired by Pac-Man, which allowed him to continue exploring how to design stages, enemies, and rules around a controller with a D-pad and just two buttons. All that learning would culminate in his two great masterpieces.

Super Mario Bros. was released on September 13, 1985, in Japan and redefined what a platform game could be. Miyamoto made Mario the center of a formula that is still recognizable today: inertia, jumping, power-ups, side-scrolling, and a difficulty built to teach the player as they progressed. Everything was already there in its essential form, including Koji Kondo’s extraordinary soundtrack, which over time became one of the most recognizable melodies in video game history.

The Legend of Zelda was released on February 21, 1986, in Japan and not only introduced one of the most iconic characters in video game history, Link, but also helped define a new way of understanding adventure. Although it was not the first game to allow free exploration of a world, it refined that idea to turn it into a much more accessible, coherent, and deep experience. Its influence was enormous, and many of the foundations it established are still present in today’s adventure games.

All that made Miyamoto one of Nintendo’s great figures alongside Gunpei Yokoi and Takashi Tezuka. Precisely with the latter, he soon developed what many consider one of the great NES games: Super Mario Bros. 3. It was, in many ways, the pinnacle of Nintendo’s design during that generation.

From 1990, several internal changes at Nintendo led to the merger of different development teams and the creation of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development, better known as Nintendo EAD. Miyamoto ended up leading that division, but that also meant stepping back from his more direct functions. He no longer necessarily directed or designed every game but mainly acted as a producer, guiding teams and ensuring projects moved in the right direction.

His role thus became less visible but no less important. Miyamoto was responsible for supervising, polishing, and checking that each game maintained Nintendo’s level and design philosophy. And, from time to time, he still got directly involved in projects he considered especially important.

There was one big exception. In 1996, with the arrival of Nintendo 64 and Nintendo’s definitive leap to three dimensions, Miyamoto took the lead of a development again: Super Mario 64. It was the first fully 3D game in the series and one of the biggest challenges the company had faced. The result? A work that established, practically overnight, much of the rules we still associate with movement and camera in a three-dimensional environment. Problems that would take many other studios years to solve.

Since then, Miyamoto’s role has mainly been to contribute ideas, offer solutions, and serve as a guide for Nintendo’s various teams. Also to promote especially personal projects. From him came Pikmin, a peculiar strategy and survival franchise for which he has always shown great affection, and he was also closely linked to the development of Star Fox, a rail shooter saga to which Nintendo has returned many times.

Miyamoto was thus responsible for some elements that might seem secondary within Nintendo but were fundamental to expanding the brand beyond video games. He supervised the development of Super Nintendo World, opened in Osaka in 2021, and was directly involved in the leap of his characters to cinema.

Additionally, he also serves as a producer of the The Legend of Zelda movie, whose worldwide release is scheduled for April 30, 2027. Miyamoto thus continued expanding Nintendo’s legacy, although from a very different place than he occupied during his early years.

But perhaps his greatest legacy is not only in the characters, games, or franchises he created but in an idea that ran through his entire career: making video games that anyone could understand and enjoy. Miyamoto always sought to remove barriers, simplify controls, and make the player know what to do almost without explanations. That philosophy also ended up becoming one of Nintendo’s great hallmarks.

That is why it is hard to overstate his importance, although his figure cannot be understood without many other fundamental names of the company. Miyamoto spent much of his career working from the shadows, guiding teams and shaping others’ projects, but he helped build a Nintendo that never wanted to compete only by power, graphics, or technology. His obsession has always been another: that playing is something immediate, intuitive, and universal. 

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