Like most Nintendo fans, I tend to imagine him wearing the broad, irresistible grin that he’s worn on the stages of countless gaming conventions and in promotional videos.

Donkey Kong was an enormous global arcade hit, introducing two characters that are still instantly recognisable today: the titular gorilla, and his nemesis Jumpman – now known as Mario.

When the Famicom came out in the US in 1985, it debuted alongside the first Super Mario Bros game, which Miyamoto designed on graph paper with co-designer Takashi Tezuka.

He is certainly a big-ideas person, but he also gets a lot of joy out of finessing the fun: “In the beginning, I like to focus on the bigger picture, make sure the idea is novel, and from there until the end – even sometimes after we’ve sent things to the factory – I like to brush up on the details.

When I spoke to fellow long-time Nintendo creative Shinya Takahashi in 2019, he gave the impression that, at that time, Miyamoto’s role largely involved passing judgment on new prototypes.

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