Shigeru Miyamoto’s Lessons For Budding Video Game Designers

Before he became the director of Super Mario 3D Land, Koichi Hayashida was one of Shigeru Miyamoto’s students. Hayashida participated in the Nintendo Dentsu Game Seminar and Miyamoto was one of his teachers.

During his presentation at Game Developer’s Conference, Hayashida reminisced about the wisdom or "Miyamoto-isms" the luminary video game designer passed on to him.

"Remind yourself everyday of what you are trying to make."

"Analyze new information and build your own perspective."

"Even simple things anyone can do can become difficult when you do two of them at the same time." To illustrate this Hayashida asked the audience to make their right hand alternate between rock-paper-scissors gestures while the left hand only did rock and paper. (Try it, it’s really tough!)

"We need to remember to let people play the way they want to."

Hayashida took the last line of advice to heart when he showed his six year old son Super Mario 3D Land. Despite being a game developer, this was his son’s first time playing a video game. Hayashida showed photos of his son trying to figure out how to use the circle pad. At one point he had both hands on it and it took him an hour to clear the first level. "Collecting coins is fun, Dad," his son said after playing Mario for the first time.