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Shigsy article in today's indo

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  • 20-03-2010 12:56am
    #1
    spider guardian
    Closed Accounts Posts: 884 ✭✭✭


    This article was on the editorial page of the Irish Independent today, Nintendo have truly gone mainstream!

    Don't ask about the private life of man behind Mario

    There is a story about Shigeru Miyamoto, the head of design and development with Nintendo. When you meet him, it is said, you are free to discuss all the characters and games he has created, from Mario in the late 1970s to the Wii Fit of today. His private life however, is completely off limits.

    Not that the 57-year-old has anything to hide. He lives with his wife and two children in Kyoto, near the Nintendo HQ. He breeds dogs. There are no skeletons rattling in his closet.

    The reason for the secrecy is that Miyamoto's private life has a way of emerging in his work. When he bought a puppy he was so intrigued by the interaction between his kids and the animal that he created Nintendogs, a dog-rearing game. It has sold about 25 million copies worldwide.

    "Yes," he admits, "my hobbies have a habit of surfacing in the work i produce.

    "Most recently, as I got older, I started worrying about my weight, weighing myself everyday and talking about it with my family. It made me think that perhaps health could be a subject for a game."

    The result was Wii Fit, a balancing board game for the Nintendo Wii console that monitors your weight and centre of balance and suggests a tailored excercise program. It, too, has sold more than 25 million copies.

    Clearly the details of Miyamoto's life are big business. But it's not all about sales. He is in London to accept a Bafta fellowship at tonight's Bafta awards for video games.

    The award is a belated recognition of the influence of a man whose Super Mario games for Nintendo have created a gallery of characters as familiar to today's youngsters as Mickey and Minnie Mouse were to their parents.

    "I'm always a bit uneasy about accepting awards like this," Miyamoto says. "I'm not a novelist. Video games are not created by one person alone.

    "Also, when I look at the past recipients of this award, such as Alfred Hitchcock, I doubt wheter I deserve to be in that sort of company."

    Such humility is characteristic of the annoyingly youthful-looking Miyamoto, dressed for our meeting in jeans, T-shirt and blue velvet jacket. Though on one level he is the personification of the Japanese corporate ethos, on another he's still the scruffy 25-year old who fluked his way into Nintendo in 1977
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