Shigeru Miyamoto, the Nintendo legend who created Mario and produced The Legend of Zelda, recently spoke to The Guardian about his future with the company.
“[These days] I don’t think of myself as a game designer,” Miyamoto said about his recent movement towards working on projects like the Super Nintendo World theme park and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. “I’m about finding unique opportunities for Nintendo. The way things work here is that, more so than having a plan and following it, we come across certain things and from there, we try to find our own new path.”
“The movies, the amusement parks, I’m excited to see what kind of organic things result from those,” he continued. “I’m still very new to [the movie] industry and I’m still learning, but I’m trying to read a lot of scripts these days and learn about how they are developed, to see how we can create uniquely Nintendo films.”
Though he has largely moved away from game development, he still oversees projects at Nintendo, largely identifying issues with in-progress projects, according to a previous Guardian interview with Nintendo creative Shinya Takahashi. “I don’t praise people a lot. I realised that when I read that interview,” Miyamoto said. “But that said, I think working together on the next project is the biggest praise I can give.”
When asked what types of ideas he does praise, he replied with “things that are not even being thought of by other people, that nobody else is pursuing. Novel ideas. Those kinds of ideas are worth brushing up to see if it’ll work out or not.” It’s a sentiment that he has held for some time, as he recalls first getting into game design to make “something weird, something interesting.”
As of now, he has no retirement plans. “More so than retiring, I’m thinking about the day I fall over,” he said. “In this day and age you have to think about things in a five-year timespan, so I do think about who I can pass things on to, in case something does happen.”
With the high box office performance of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and an upcoming expansion to Super Nintendo World, it’s likely that Miyamoto will be kept busy until then.