My Creative Hero 

by: Zeth Vejar

Shigeru Miyamoto 

“More than retiring, I think about the day I fall over.” -Shigeru Miyamoto. 

Shigeru Miyamoto is my personal Creative Hero specifically in character and game design. He created one of my favorite games of all time. The Legend of Zelda. Which also have multiple sequels to the game, with many characters of different designs and different stories of lore in each game that tie all together when you investigate and put time into the games in chronological order. 

Miyamoto studied industrial design in school, he wanted to be a comic & manga artist but he didn’t believe that he could compete with the other artists that were already at such “high quality” compared to himself. He also felt that way going into industrial design. As a video game designer, he found out that it was very similar to industrial design and it made him very nostalgic. Or in his words, “kept coming across all the things that I had loved when I was younger.” When he applied to Nintendo to become a designer they weren’t hiring for designers at the time instead, he was hired on as staff artist with help from his father.  

Not only did Miyamoto create games and character designs he also created some music for some games as well. He had his own image of how he wanted the Arcade version of Donkey Kong to sound so he decided to record it himself. He even used his experience in Industrial Design to create camera angles in his 2D and 3D games in order to create perspective that didn’t look too odd for the players.  

Turning Realty into Fiction 

“—we were trying to create worlds that people would want to immerse themselves in, the way you immerse yourself in a book or in a movie.” –Shigeru Miyamoto 

Game design at the time had turned from arcade games into world building and games where people could control their own character and create their own worlds. As he got older, he realized that he could take his own mundane experiences and implement them into the video games he created. He wanted to “turn those experiences into something that others could enjoy and experience. When he was younger, he got into hiking, as he was hiking, he stumbled upon a lake on top of a mountain, and it inspired him while working on the Legend of Zelda. He began taking experiences like that from childhood and started drawing them out for his games.  

“It’s a Trend and I try to avoid all trends.” Shigeru Miyamoto 

Once Miyamoto has an idea in mind, he isn’t faltered by criticism or feeling pressured to follow any popular gaming trends. When people had thought Donkey Kong would fail because of the “odd naming.” He thought of it as a good thing that it was unique. Miyamoto was asked about adding micro transactions into his mobile games and he declined saying “Everyone was saying I had to do it, but I’m the kind of person who doesn’t want to be told to do something because “that’s the way you do it.’ “ 

Hyrule Fantasy was going to be the name for the Zelda series, but it was scrapped due to Final Fantasy coming out around the same time, he didn’t want Zelda to look like a copycat.  

Inspiration from other media 

When creating the Mario and Donkey Kong game, he was inspired by the love triangle from Popeye, but without the rights to the characters, he decided to design his own.  

He took inspiration from fairy tales and the story of Alice in Wonderland when he created the idea of mushrooms creating a bigger Mario. He felt like it would make some sense that a mushroom would create that sort of power. When he made the first Zelda game for the Famicom console. Indiana Jones was popular at the time; he took inspiration from the movie and wanted to create a game that had both adventure and treasure hunting aspects to it.  

He is Player Focused  

Miyamoto creates games that people can immerse themselves in, he builds situations that they can respond to. “If I do this, what’ll happen.” When he created Mario he was made as a character for people to resonate with. “My vision of Mario has always been that he’s sort of representative of everyone.” –Miyamoto.  Which is why he was given jobs such as a carpenter and a plumber.  

It’s no wonder that many people see him as the “Walt Disney of Nintendo,” But as he says “I’m Miyamoto, Miyamoto is Miyamoto and Nintendo is Nintendo” He is his own person but to be he’s also a pretty cool dude who created a lot of my childhood. Which is why he’s my own personal inspiration when it comes to character design video games.