Pushing Buttons: Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto – what we owe the most influential game designer

Nintendo's designer Shigeru Miyamoto – one of gaming's earliest superstar creatives, and the mind behind Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda F-Zero and many, many other wonderfully inventive games – has turned 70. Miyamoto, who has had a hand in the development of most Nintendo games and consoles, is the most influential game designer alive. Nintendo is part of the creative marrow of the games industry: there is barely a game developer today who has not played, and been influenced by, Miyamoto. He has worked at Nintendo for 45 years and, since the 1990s, he has been the face of the company. Alongside the late, great former president Satoru Iwata, and the genius hardware designer and Game Boy architect Gunpei Yokoi, he laid the foundations for the company's enduring success, and helped established its fun-first approach to video games.