Every industry has its icons that not only played a hand in defining a medium but are held in reverence, and for the video game world, that is Shigeru Miyamoto. The tales of Miyamoto spread far and wide with the founder of Rockstar San Diego explaining his meeting with Miyamoto just last month. Yet, for another western developer, he was "that" guy in the office.
The upcoming Netflix documentary series High Score is set to launch next week as an exploration of the "golden era" of video games in both the arcades to the home consoles. With reviews starting to spread across the internet, one little detail has come out about the father of Mario.
In the final episode of the series, Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard of Argonaut Software shared their experiences working at Nintendo. Argonaut Software is a developer best known for working on Star Fox. After securing the deal for the game, the U.K. based developer was sent over to Nintendo's offices in Japan to work on the then cutting edge on-rails shooter. The duo explained that Nintendo only allowed development of their projects within their headquarters, thus placing the team in a segregated spot within the building.
That location just so happened to be the one spot where Miyamoto, last years Japanese "Person of Cultural Merit," was able to light one up. Since the Argonaut portion of the office was the only smoker's corner sanctioned within the building, the team had a frequent visitor getting in cigarette breaks. Before Miyamoto ultimately gave up smoking, Cuthbert explains how the man's mystique quickly dissipated as he smoked behind them as they worked, with the developer recalling the team would often realize, "Oh, is he back again?"
Cuthbert explains that second-hand smoke was not the only thing the most influential man in video games brought to the developer. As the team continued to tinker with the Super FX chip that was able to process the 3D graphics of Star Fox , Miyamoto would go on about foliage.
"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."
Cuthbert concludes his odd tale of Miyamoto with praise acknowledging that his strange smoke breaks displayed genius. Cuthbert said that, "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."
While there is no denying the talent within Miyamoto, some critics believe his recent views on the modern gaming landscape are outdated. Last year, Miyomoto defended Nintendo's online system believing that he company was not behind the times. Regardless of the criticism and the odd tales that come by the month, nothing can distract from his legend.
High Score debuts on Netflix on August 19.
Source: Nintendo Enthusiast (via Nintendo Life)