Games

he is also responsible for several of Nintendo’s other hit games – among them The Legend of Zelda, whose latest instalment just topped many of 2023’s game of the year lists.

Did the author not actually check any GotY lists, or do they only look at GotY lists by hard-core Nintendo fans? Because none of the big industry lists had TotK at the top.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

When you look into the company’s department store outlets in Japan, a dozen colourful characters stare back at you from reams of merch: Animal Crossing cookware, Super Mario gloves, Zelda wallets and ties, Pikmin vases.

Like most Nintendo fans, I tend to imagine him wearing the broad, irresistible grin that he’s worn on the stages of countless gaming conventions and in promotional videos.

Donkey Kong was an enormous global arcade hit, introducing two characters that are still instantly recognisable today: the titular gorilla, and his nemesis Jumpman – now known as Mario.

When the Famicom came out in the US in 1985, it debuted alongside the first Super Mario Bros game, which Miyamoto designed on graph paper with co-designer Takashi Tezuka.

He is certainly a big-ideas person, but he also gets a lot of joy out of finessing the fun: “In the beginning, I like to focus on the bigger picture, make sure the idea is novel, and from there until the end – even sometimes after we’ve sent things to the factory – I like to brush up on the details.

And as Miyamoto points out, you can sell an excellent thing forever: 1985’s original Super Mario Bros has been re-released several times and has sold more than 60m copies.

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