Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto

A hero in my mind is someone who makes a difference, while enjoying what they do in life. A hero is someone that I can look up to. Everyone needs a hero, it is just like having goals. And that is why one of my hero's is Shigeru Miyamoto.

Miyamoto was born on November 16, 1952, in Kyoto, Japan. Miyamoto is a Japanese video game designer and producer. He has been called "the father of modern video games" and "the Walt Disney of electronic gaming", for helping create the Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and other very successful video game franchises. He was first employed by Nintendo as an artist in 1977. He designed one of their first coin-operated arcade games, Radar Scope, which was less successful in the United States than Nintendo hoped.

After he helped design Radar Scope, which was not as successful as Nintendo had hoped in the US. Miyamoto then reused that game's hardware and modified it into Donkey Kong, which was a huge success. Many people may not know this but the game called Donkey Kong was actually the 1st Mario game ever made. The character that you control in the game, Donkey Kong, is Mario. After creating Donkey Kong, Miyamoto developed his first Super Mario Brothers game. In 1985 the first Super Mario Brothers game was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, NES for short.

Super Mario 64 (Wikipedia)

With his success on the NES console, and the new Super Nintendo just coming Miyamoto was working hard on new games for the new console. Some games the he designed for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) included The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario Kart. The biggest games that I remember on the SNES were Donkey Kong Country games. These games, all three, really got me into video games. With Miyamoto continuing to bring out great games for every new system on the market, including the following console the Nintendo 64. Which was the 1st time Miyamoto was designing games for a 3d console. And with his game Super Mario 64, it showed everyone that he could bring Mario into the 3d realm.

Miyamoto has created so many popular games it is very impressive that he is still hard at work. With recent titles like; The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess(2006), Super Mario Galaxy (2007), and New Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009). And those are the reasons I find Shigeru Miyamoto to be one of heros. Miyamoto will continue to surprise us in the future with great games.