Few names in the games industry hold as much weight and exert as much influence on the medium as a whole as Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, and aged 71, the legendary developer is still going strong. Having created franchises like The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Donkey Kong, and Pikmin (among others) decades ago, though Miyamoto is not as involved in actual game development as he once was, he continues to play an active role as a key figure within Nintendo’s leadership, and he has no plans to step back anytime soon.
Speaking in a recent interview with The Guardian, when asked about the prospect of retiring, Miyamoto said he has no such plans just yet, and is instead thinking more about “the day I fall over”- even if, as you would expect, he does think about who he could “pass things on to” in the future.
“More so than retiring, I’m thinking about the day I fall over,” Miyamoto said. “In this day and age you have to think about things in a five-year timespan, so I do think about who I can pass things on to, in case something does happen.”
He added: “I’m really thankful that there is so much energy around things that I have worked on. These are things that have already gone out into the world … they’ve been cultivated by others, other people have been raising them, helping them grow, so in that sense I don’t feel too much ownership over them anymore.”
Though Miyamoto’s game development roles have grown increasingly rare in recent years, he has nonetheless been a key part of several of Nintendo’s key ventures. In addition to having been heavily involved in the design and construction of Super Nintendo World, Miyamoto was a producer on The Super Mario Bros. Movie, while he will also be similarly involved in the production of the recently-announced live-action The Legend of Zelda film.