Super Mario maker Miyamoto has no plans to retire from Nintendo: "I’m thinking about the day I fall over"
Dec. 30, 2023The creator behind Mario and Zelda reveals his next steps
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Shigeru Miyamoto supposedly has no plans to retire from Nintendo, though his role at the company has shifted dramatically.
Miyamoto has worked at the company for over 45 years, creating several of the industry’s most prominent mascots such as Zelda and Mario, influencing every piece of Nintendo hardware from the NES to the Switch, and shaping video games as we know them today. But the world’s most important game designer plans to stop working when he physically can’t anymore.
When asked about retirement plans, in an insightful interview withThe Guardian, Miyamoto says: “More so than retiring, I’m thinking about the day I fall over.” With his age in mind, Miyamoto says he plans his future in five-year increments and thinks a lot about “who I can pass things on to, in case something does happen.”
Miyamoto’s work has impacted generations of gamers and, probably, the entire globe based on the gamification of practically every single app, but he’s not especially worried about his legacy. “I’m really thankful that there is so much energy around things that I have worked on,” he says, before mentioning that the newest Super Mario and Zelda games have been largely built by newer, younger teams: “Other people have been raising them, helping them grow, so in that sense I don’t feel too much ownership over them anymore.”
Miyamoto is seemingly only concerned about his legacy enduring within his teams, curiously pointing to a scene from Iron Man where the president is no longer allowed inside the company that he built, despite his portrait still hanging from the wall. “I really hope that the teams I work with, at least, remember me as the creator of these things!”
Check out theupcoming Nintendo Switch gamesto see what’s next for the Big N.
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Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that’s vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he’ll soon forget.
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