Shigeru Miyamoto honoured with Japan culture award

Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto has been recognised as a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government.

The official honour is awarded annually to select people deemed to have made an outstanding cultural contribution. To date, around 600 people have been selected as Persons of Cultural Merit.

Candidates are selected by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, who then recommends the candidates to the Prime Minister. The final decisions are made by the Cabinet.

The award ceremony will take place at the Imperial Palace on the Day of Culture, November 3.

“I am grateful for the light shined on the genre of video games,” Miyamoto told Sankei News, adding that he can’t forget to thank his colleagues. “I can’t do anything alone,” he said.

Miyamoto is best known as the creator of some of Nintendo’s best-selling game franchises, including Super Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, F-Zero, Pikmin and Star Fox.

In 2015 the designer was appointed Creative Fellow at Nintendo after almost 40 years at the company.

Miyamoto recently said he intends to build on Nintendo’s history of user interface innovations by creating a next-gen controller that becomes the industry standard.

“We are proud to have created a variety of user interfaces that have now become industry standards. And, as of now, in terms of accuracy and reliability, I believe this style is the clear winner,” he said.

“At the same time, I also believe that we should quickly graduate from the current controller, and we are attempting all kinds of things. Our objective is to achieve an interface that surpasses the current controller, where what the player does is directly reflected on the screen, and the user can clearly feel the result. This has not been achieved yet.

“We have tried all kinds of motion controllers,” Miyamoto continued, “but none seem to work for all people. As the company that knows the most about controllers, we have been striving to create a controller that can be used with ease, and that will become the standard for the next generation.”

During the same Q&A session, Miyamoto dismissed suggestions Nintendo isn’t keeping up with advancements in the online space, while Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa revealed the company is still developing “quality of life” products, five years after late president Satoru Iwata announced his intention to take the firm into the health improvement business.