In a bit of exciting news to brighten your day, legendary creator Shigeru Miyamoto has turned 72 years old today. While it technically hasn’t happened in the US just yet as his birthday is November 16th, 2024, it is the 16th over in Japan. For nearly 50 years now, Miyamoto has worked at Nintendo and is the father to some of the most recognizable gaming franchises in the world, including Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Pikmin. His impact is immeasurable and his influence will be felt for generations to come.
Not many people realize it, but Miyamoto hasn’t expressly worked on a game for a number of years now. His last credit as director was for 2016’s Super Mario Run and while he has contributed concepts, levels, and even some programming work on titles over the years, he has mostly been a supervisor since the late ’90s. One of the best aspects of Nintendo’s work culture is that it allows younger talent to step into the director’s chair pretty regularly and Miyamoto has been instrumental in guiding younger talent. There is a famous story of Miyamoto performing a metaphorical table flip during the development of Luigi’s Mansion 2 that led to Next Level Games redesigning the boss fights.
What’s Shigeru Miyamoto working on now?
As for what the future holds, Miyamoto is currently working as a producer on the upcoming Legend of Zelda movie. He also played an instrumental role in Super Nintendo World, the theme park that opened at Universal Studios Japan in 2021. It seems unlikely that he will retire from Nintendo until after the Switch 2 launches, though he might wait until his 50th anniversary at the company before finally stepping back completely.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
