Any fan of Nintendo games will tell you that there is no bigger name in the history of the video game company than Shigeru Miyamoto. He’s widely known as “the father of Mario”, and creator of many iconic video game franchises for multiple Nintendo consoles. But the beginning of Shigeru Miyamoto’s career at Nintendo was a lot quieter compared to what it would eventually become.
In the 1970s, Shigeru Miyamoto was hired at Nintendo as an apprentice in the planning department. He originally got an interview with then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi through a mutual friend of his father. At that time, Miyamoto created the artwork for the coin-operated arcade game Sheriff.
A few years later, he would eventually begin work on a game under the supervision of Gunpei Yokoi. This followed the release of Nintendo’s Radar Scope for arcades, which failed to make an impact in the North American game market, after moderate success in Japan. Shigeru Miyamoto was then tasked to make a new game to help convert unsold units of Radar Scope into something different.
The Birth of Donkey Kong and Mario
This was the beginning of the development for the original Donkey Kong, which would go on to become a massive hit for Nintendo. At the start of development, the game was at one point going to be a Popeye arcade game. However, this had to be changed after Nintendo wasn’t able to get the rights to use Popeye characters.
Nintendo
Miyamoto came up with new concepts for the characters, as well as the interactions between them. The same dynamic for the Popeye characters would translate into what would eventually become Mario, Pauline, and a giant ape. The name Donkey Kong would be chosen by Shigeru Miyamoto for the giant ape, which was a play on Japanese words for silly and foolish.
Over the years, Shigeru Miyamoto has said that his inspirations for Donkey Kong were movies like the 1933 King Kong, as well the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. The character Mario was originally called Jump Man early in production. This was changed when Nintendo named him after the warehouse landlord, Mario Segale, who leased a building to Nintendo at the time.
A Legacy That Continues
The release of Donkey Kong in 1981 for arcades was a big success for Nintendo, and would eventually have two sequels. Shigeru Miyamoto would be involved with both games, but would go on to make a new arcade title that reused Mario in a different way.
That game was Mario Bros. for arcades in 1983, and would be the next step to the eventual creation of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It would become one of the biggest games that Shigeru Miyamoto would create in his career, and build a long-lasting legacy for Nintendo in the decades that followed.
