Shigeru Miyamoto
A would-be comic artist who was handed a pile of failed arcade cabinets and turned them into Donkey Kong
Shigeru Miyamoto was born in 1952 in Sonobe, a small town outside Kyoto. His family had little money and no television for years, and he spent his childhood exploring the hills, woods and caves around the town. He drew constantly and wanted to be a manga artist. He took five years to get through an industrial design course at Kanazawa, and in 1977, with the help of his father, got an interview with Nintendo\'s president, who hired him as the company\'s first staff artist.
In 1981 Nintendo\'s American arm was stuck with thousands of unsold cabinets of an arcade game called Radar Scope. Miyamoto, who had never designed a game, was asked to make something that could be put in the same cabinets. He wrote a story about a carpenter, a gorilla and a kidnapped woman, and drew a small man with a moustache and a cap because those were easier to draw in a few pixels than a face and hair. Donkey Kong saved the American business and the small man became Mario.
Super Mario Bros in 1985 and The Legend of Zelda in 1986 followed, the second built directly from his memories of getting lost in the countryside as a boy. He has said the point is always the feeling of discovery.
He has spent his life at the same company, refusing to move to America, and is known for playing games as a beginner would.