Miyamoto Was Interested in Subverting His Own Designs

Shigeru Miyamoto, the most important video game developer working for hardware developer and video game publisher Nintendo, has said that one of his aims as a creator was at one point to create new and exciting new approaches to gaming only to them move on and subvert them.

Speaking with The New Yorker magazine Miyamoto has stated, “I wanted to destroy the styles that we ourselves created. I don't think we can do so completely, but I think that in the way that we are making video games today we might be getting closer to my idea of destroying the original style.”

It seems that this concept of creating something new in a genre only to move past its boundaries and turn it into something else was inspired by how the developer's favorite manga creators worked when he was young.

Since creating hits like The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Donkey Kong, Pikmin or Star Fox, the game developer has somewhat changed his view.

He says, “Because we ourselves have created the original format or style of video games we understand why we had to do it at the time. Because we understand that, we can also understand why some of them must be kept intact and why some of them we can destroy.”

Of course, part of the mind change could be linked to the needs of Nintendo as a company.

Miyamoto's video games have been so successful that the publisher is not prepared to risk changing them up too much just to see players abandon them and move to competitors who have kept their innovation to a minimum.

Miyamoto has had flops like Wii Music, but games like New Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Wii, while lacking any sweeping changes to the established formula, have been very successful both critically and commercially.