Top 70 Shigeru Miyamoto Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

2. “A good idea is something that does not solve just one single problem, but rather can solve multiple problems at once.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

3. “I think that inside every adult is the heart of a child. We just gradually convince ourselves that we have to act more like adults.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

4. “Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock-n-roll.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

5. “Nintendo’s philosophy is never to go the easy path; it’s always to challenge ourselves and try to do something new.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

6. “A late game is only late until it ships. A bad game is bad until the end of time.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

7. “The obvious objective of video games is to entertain people by surprising them with new experiences.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

8. “Players are artists who create their own reality within the game.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

9. “A great idea solves multiple problems at the same time.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

10. “Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

11. “So you know cats are interesting. They are kind of like girls. If they come and talk to you it’s great. But if you try to talk to them it doesn’t always go so well.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

12. “Throughout the Zelda series I’ve always tried to make players feel like they are in a kind of miniature garden. So, this time also, my challenge was how to make people feel comfortable and sometimes very scared at the same time. That is the big challenge.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

13. “I don’t like all the attention. I think it’s better to let my work do the talking.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

14. “Our job as the game creators or developers – the programmers, artists, and whatnot – is that we have to kind of put ourselves in the user’s shoes. We try to see what they’re seeing, and then make it, and support what we think they might think.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

Featured in: Programming Quotes

15. “An adult is a child who has more ethics and morals.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

16. “I always try and come up with a clear theme when I’m making a videogame.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

17. “Fortunately, because of the spread of smart devices, people take games for granted now. It’s a good thing for us, because we do not have to worry about making games something that are relevant to general people’s daily lives.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

18. “There are some ghost stories in Japan where – when you are sitting in the bathroom in the traditional style of the Japanese toilet – a hand is actually starting to grab you from beneath. It’s a very scary story.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

19. “To create a new standard, you have to be up for that challenge and really enjoy it.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

20. “This is the entertainment industry, so game designers have to have a creative mind and also have to be able to stand up against the marketing people at their company – otherwise they cannot be creative. There are not that many people who fit that description.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

21. “I always try to create a new experiences that are fun to play.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

22. “I know as a child, I was really interested in becoming a manga artist, to create my own stories and illustrate them and present something that people would be interested in reading and looking at as well.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

23. “The PSP will not be able to display anything that you cannot do on a current system.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

24. “Who knows how Mario will look in the future. Maybe he’ll wear metallic clothes!”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

25. “Necessity is the mother of invention. I love solving things like that. Because there wasn’t enough memory, thinking of an economical way to make the movements look right was like solving a puzzle, and I had a lot of fun.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

26. “Game music has a purpose and it does incorporate sound effects.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

27. “Anything that is impractical can be play. It’s doing something other than what is necessary to continue living as an animal.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

28. “Japan actually is an aging population, and so as the population has aged, they have had a lot more problems with health.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

29. “It isn’t about games, for me, personally, and it never really was. It was about creating something- anything- far bigger than yourself.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

30. “What comes next? Super Mario 128? Actually, that’s what I want to do.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

31. “What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

32. “When I’m making video games today, I want people to be entertained. I am always thinking, How are people going to enjoy playing the games we are making today? And as long as I can enjoy something other people can enjoy it, too.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

33. “I try not so much to create new characters and worlds but to create new game-play experiences.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

34. “I could make Halo. It’s not that I couldn’t design that game. It’s just that I choose not to. One thing about my game design is that I never try to look for what people want and then try to make that game design. I always try to create new experiences that are fun to play.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

35. “I feel more reassured with physical media. Entertainment is something that will not just become digital.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

36. “Of course, when it comes to Japanese role-playing games, in any role-playing game in Japan you’re supposed to collect a huge number of items, and magic, and you’ve got to actually combine different items together to make something really different.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

37. “Providing new means of entertainment is the important thing.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

38. “When I create a game, I try to focus more on the emotions that the player experiences during the game play.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

39. “I made some games, but I’m pretending like I didn’t because they all turned out weird.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

40. “Controller is so intuitive, even your mum can play.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

41. “I don’t want to criticize any other designers, but I have to say that many of the people involved in this industry – directors and producers – are trying to make their games more like movies. They are longing to make movies rather than making videogames.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

42. “I think that the entertainment industry itself has a history of chasing success. Any time a hit product comes out, all the other companies start chasing after that success and trying to recreate it by putting out similar products.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

43. “I’d like to be known as the person who saw things from a different point of view to others.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

44. “I don’t really think of things in terms of legacy or where I stand in the history of Nintendo or anything like that.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

45. “Actually, 3D is really the most normal thing because it’s how those of us with two eyes usually see the world. TVs are the unusual things in 2D!”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

46. “I don’t think as a creator that I could create an experience that truly feels interactive if you don’t have something to hold in your hand, if you don’t have something like force feedback that you can feel from the controller.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

47. “Most people think video games are all about a child staring at a TV with a joystick in his hands. I don’t. They should belong to the entire family. I want families to play video games together.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

48. “I think what’s really the most ideal thing is for the player themselves, within their own imagination, to carve out what they view as being the essence of the character.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

49. “Japanese people have a funny habit of abbreviating names.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto

50. “I think everyone can enjoy games.”

— Shigeru Miyamoto