Shigeru Miyamoto is without a doubt one of the biggest reasons why Nintendo is the way it is today. It was him who made Donkey Kong, Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pikmin, and so many more. Over the years, his legendary status has grown because of how he handles himself with fans and beyond. But other stories of him INSIDE the office of Nintendo is a bit of a different story, including how he handled himself in the Star Fox area of the building.
While speaking with Netflix for a new video game documentary called High Score, Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard of Argonaut entertainment discussed their process of making Star Fox on SNES for Nintendo.
According to Goddard, the Big N “never had anybody outside Nintendo working in the building. They actually made a separate office for us in one room on our own, basically segregated out.”
And that’s where Shigeru Miyamoto came in, because apparently…that was the only place on site he was allowed to smoke in:
“The only place in the office where they allowed Miyamoto to smoke was in the place, the area where we were. He’d light up behind us and he’s, like, smoking away. And we’re, like, programming away and we’re like, ‘Oh, is he back again?’ So we’d be trying to implement something quite interesting, and then he just starts talking about trees or something, or, you know, just something completely out there. But we realized after a while that that’s actually the reason why he’s so much a creative genius. It’s because his brain is kind of thinking about all these different things at the same time.” – Cuthbert
I guess we can call this an “eccentric” aspect of Miyamoto’s personality, which has shown in many ways over the years…whether fans wanted it to show up or not.
