The genius behind Mario

He is known as the father of the modern video game, the Japanese Disney or simply the creator of Mario. The figure of Shigeru Miyamoto has been linked, for more than 40 years to the takeoff and consolidation of Nintendo, with video games that have transformed the lives of millions of people around the world based on what he calls “playability”: that experience every time immersive experience of contemporary men and women in front of an interactive screen.

He was a young 24-year-old industrial designer when he showed up, back in 1977, at the Nintendo offices in Kyoto. The old company, which once made Japanese playing cards and toys, was then in the process of reinventing itself and looking to make the leap into the nascent video game business. It is said that the creativity of Miyamoto, who came to the job interview with some clothes hangers for children invented by him, caught the attention of Hiroshi Yamauchi, the owner of the company.

Four years later, in 1981, the young inventor, with the help of a team of programmers, gave birth to his first great creation: donkey kong. A Arcadian which featured a rebellious gorilla, a imprisoned lady and a little jumping woodpecker named Jumpman, who went to his rescue. The success was such that Miyamoto began to lead new projects.

Thus, by July 1983, he decided to transform Jumpman into Mario. He turned him into a plumber, created him a brother named Luigi, and sent him running through various levels of pipes. with the video game mario bros the boom was beginning to take shape. And in 1985, it went global with the appearance of Super Mario Bros, and the NES platform, as well as characters like Bowser and Princess Peach. Once, the journalist Almudena Ávalos, from “El País”, from Spain, asked Shigeru to what she attributed Mario’s success. With great Japanese modesty, he replied: “Well, it’s embarrassing for me to say so, but at the end of the day, games that Mario appears in are first and foremost fun.”.

A boy in the enchanted forest

Most specialists who have explained the success of the games created by Miyamoto refer to his childhood spent in the 1950s in a rural area of ​​Kyoto. A world without television or cinema, but with unique diversions such as drawing and painting, and taking long excursions in the countryside, through forests and mountains.

These scenarios would be recreated decades later in Legend of Zelda, the other great creation by Miyamoto that appeared in 1986, in which a boy goes into fantastical territories to rescue a princess who had been kidnapped by a dangerous sorcerer. As Sergio Valdivia Velázquez points out in a thesis at the Autonomous University of Mexico, dedicated to the Japanese creator, in five years, between 1981 and 1986, Miyamoto transformed the video game industry. He shook her out of mechanical, repetitive routines and led her into new interactive experiences.

a new awakening

“By 1983, many titles from different companies had already been released, a video game market had been created, but the quality had begun to decline. Everyone was betting on the same thing and people were beginning to mistrust the industry. That year, Miyamoto released the first Mario Bros in Japan and began to bring people’s enthusiasm back to play. That is to say, without it we would not know video games as they are now.”, says Nilton Mercado Chávez, coordinator of the Design and Development of Simulators and Videogames career at Tecsup.

In his opinion, everything that Miyamoto develops is a commercial success because he follows a different methodology: “he believes that all games that are late eventually become good; but a game that rushes to the market is always going to be bad. In other words, many companies generally care more about sales and end up launching products that are not finished and the user realizes that. Miyamoto and Nintendo do not follow that logic, but rather take the time necessary to create quality products.”, says Mercado. “He works —adds— under the role of designer and producer. It is not the person who draws or programs, but the person who defines how the video game will behave, what mechanics it will have, how the characters will interact; that is, everything that makes the game fun”.

Present and future

Although Miyamoto was already known in the industry, in 2012 his name achieved worldwide fame when he won the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. At that time, he vowed to create continued new forms of entertainment. In this, the development of hardware and new consoles has been crucial, in which the Japanese creator was also involved.

In this regard, Mercado recalls the case of Super Mario Worldwith the inclusion of a character like Yoshi, in 1990.”When Miyamoto released the first Super Mario Bros. he had a lot of ideas that he wanted to implement, unfortunately due to hardware limitations he couldn’t do them. Yoshi’s creation was planned from the first game, but at that time the NES was not capable of rendering and processing all the mechanics that this character was going to have. That was only achieved two generations of consoles later”.

At 70 years old, Miyamoto’s talent is still intact. The best example has been super mario bros the movie, premiered with great success this 2023. What will come next? “If used properly, artificial intelligence will allow the creation of characters with much more complex behavior.”, advances Niltón Mercado. “Imagine a Mario game in virtual reality. That doesn’t exist right now. But if one could put on a case and get into Mario’s shoes that would be a pretty immersive experience for any gamer.”.