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  • Essay / The Shigeru Miyamoto Game

    Over the past 3 decades, if you've played video games, you've probably experienced the magic it creates. Donkey Kong, Zelda, Star Fox and probably the most famous, Mario. When Miyamoto makes games, he always tries to do things differently than most designers. In a 1998 interview, when asked why he didn't design online games, he said: "It's a trend. And I try to avoid all trends. Even in 2016, when most apps had an in-game purchase feature, he refused to add one to Mario for iPhone. His reason? “Everyone told me it had to be done. But I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to be told to do something because "that's how it's done." » ? While reading about design and discovering great designers in their respective fields, I came across several visionaries who completely changed the game (pun intended) and redefined the rules. Miyamoto helped define A LOT of what makes a good video game great. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay So how does he do what he does? “The first thing a game needs is a feeling of accomplishment, and you have to have a feeling of having accomplished something.” In 1981, one of Miyamoto's first assignments at Nintendo was to redesign a game called Radar Scope; its performance was very poor in the United States, leaving the company with 2,000 unsold arcade units? This led to what we know today as Donkey Kong. He based the story on Popeye's love triangle, between a villain, a hero, and a damsel in distress. But since Nintendo couldn't get the rights to use these characters, Miyamoto replaced them with a gorilla, a carpenter and his girlfriend. In later games, this carpenter became a plumber and his name changed from Mr Video to Jump man to Mario. It was the first time that a video game's plot and characters were designed before programming. In the beginning, video game creators were technologists; they were programmers and hardware engineers, but not Miyamoto. He was a designer; he studied industrial design and was an artist who loved to draw. This change in approach comes at a key moment for video games. When Donkey Kong was first released in 1981, the North American video game market was on the verge of collapse. It was saturated with many different consoles, and the burgeoning personal computer made many people wonder why they would want a separate device just for playing games. But the storytelling of games like Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda, which could only be played on Nintendo's own hardware, helped set them apart as bestsellers. “When I approach my game design, I have to think about how I show a situation to a player, conveying to them what they are supposed to do. “In Mario, the player continues moving to the right to reach the final objective. In Donkey Kong, the player keeps climbing to save the captured princess. Much of Miyamoto's genius can be seen in the first level of Super Mario Brothers. This is probably the most iconic level in video game history. The mark of good design is that it doesn't need a user guide and that's exactly how Miyamoto works. This level is designed to naturally teach you the mechanics of the game as you play. If you look at a breakdown, there's a lot of very subtle design work going on here; although Mario is.