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Shigeru Miyamoto: From Donkey Kong to Wii Fit

Blog written by Sunsu on April 22, 2008 at 09:40 AM

We all know video gaming has come a long way since Donkey Kong. In a recent interview with MTV, Shigeru Miyamoto gave all of us his thoughts on how his perceptions of gaming has changed over the years, as well as a few details on the Wii Fit.

"When I was making "Donkey Kong," I was just thinking about making fun and unique experiences. I wasn't really thinking about what else I would be making next or further down the road. But I guess it would be safe to say that early on when I was making video games, I probably wasn't thinking of what a broader meaning would come to be applied to video games and certainly didn't think I'd be making something like [the Wii Fit]," says Shigeru Miyamoto.

He goes on to say:
"When I'm working on any game, I'm never thinking about, say, an American audience or a Japanese audience. In fact, usually when I'm developing a game, I'm focused primarily on myself. [Laughs.] But as you say of where you're from, I think a lot of people do indeed have a hard time continuing with exercise regiments. And so that was an area of focus and development for "Wii Fit" in trying to develop an interface and a system that would make it easy for people to continue to use it on a regular basis.

I think what's more important, though, is that rather than trying to have people try to exercise on "Wii Fit" every day, is the role that "Wii Fit" plays in trying to make people simply more aware of their own weight, their own health and their overall wellness. In that sense, I think "Wii Fit" does play a very important role and that even just by simply checking your body-mass index or your weight, even if you're not checking on a daily basis, it really does help improve that awareness. I think there are two things that "Wii Fit" offers. One is if you're living with your family, "Wii Fit" really starts to get very interesting when you're tracking your own data and compiling your graphs and saving your data as you play and other people in your house are as well. It becomes a common theme for discussion. In all honesty, it's actually quite fun and some interesting discussions come out of that.

I think the other thing that "Wii Fit" offers is that you can also enjoy it as sort of a party game. Take the ski jumping or some of the other balance activities where you can take turns and have multiple people there competing to see who can get the best score.

What I find out about that that's really interesting - of course it's fun to play games like that anyway - is the fact that you're using your body is an experience that I think not many people have had up until now."

From: MTV News