Miyamoto "like a slightly more friendly Steve Jobs"

One of the most experienced games designers to have worked with Nintendo’s legendary Shigeru Miyamoto has compared him to the late Apple boss Steve Jobs.

Most definitely Miyamoto,” Q Games’ Dylan Cuthbert answered when asked from whom he took most inspiration from in a GAME-organised Q&A on Facebook.

His private face is different to his public face, and his style of chasing ideas and cutting through bull**** is brilliant – internally he’s kind of like a slightly more friendly Steve Jobs but just as cutting.”

Cuthbert also offered an insight into how Miyamoto works, recalling the days when he worked on SNES title Starfox as part of Argonaut Software.

I remember many years ago when I presented an idea for a game with elaborate concept art and a strong storyline to Miyamoto-san at Nintendo and he quickly rushed through the document and then said ‘ok, and where’s the game?’.

He then went onto a bit of a rant about how games should be made from a core concept and only vaguest of story concepts, and then once you find the core of the game you start layering on the story and the world, and he used Zelda as an example of this.

Thinking back toStarFoxtoo and it was similar; we developed the game without any sign of intrepid furry space explorers for the first 70 per cent or so, and then suddenly POW!, ‘let’s put a fox in the concept and make it a saga about his missing dad and the fight against Andross’ and it sewed the game up nicely.”