Today is the 59th birthday of Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of some of the most successful video game franchises of all time, including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero, and Pikmin.

Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru, who began his career with Nintendo in 1979, helped design the company’s first original coin-operated arcade game, Sheriff. It was one of the earliest Western-style video games developed and was about a county sheriff who must defend the town from bandits. Later, he also did development work for Radar Scope, a shooter that can best be described as what would happen if Taito’s Space Invaders and Namco’s Galaxian had a baby together.

His big success didn’t come until a little later, when he began working on a couple of characters and plot concepts for a new game unit. In the end, the game that he decided on was based on a love triangle between a gorilla, a carpenter and a girl. The inspiration came from Popeye, with the characters of Bluto, Popeye and Olive being the inspirations for the three characters. The game was Donkey Kong, the first game in which a game’s story was thought up before programming began, rather than being added on in post-production.

One of his hallmarks, which we could see throughout The Legend of Zelda and the various Mario games, is a focus on story, characters and progression rather than simple high scores and points. Although his long career as a game designer, Miyamoto himself spends little time playing video games. Instead, he prefers to play the guitar, mandolin and banjo. He also has a Shetland Sheepdog named “Pikku”; a dog that he claims provided the inspiration for Nintendogs.