Shigeru Miyamoto is probably gaming’s biggest icon of all time.
The creator of Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong and Starfox is an absolute, wonderful genius who has given us so many magical moments in his 30+ years at Nintendo. And he seems like a pretty great guy as well. Here is playing the theme from Super Mario with The Roots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V17tXBePgfo
He is responsible for nearly every great Nintendo game you think of. But one of the greatest games to ever appear on a Nintendo system that Miyamoto had no part in was GoldenEye 007, which was developed by British company Rare, but published by Nintendo. Originally released in 1997 for the N64, the adaptation of Pierce Brosnan’s first Bond movie revolutionised first person shooters on consoles, and there’s a good chance you spent a large part of your youth playing the four-player deathmatch mode.
A strange nugget about its development has come to light, in a New Yorker article of all places, about Donald Trump’s latest dunderheaded campaign against videogame violence. And it is nuts.
The article states that GoldenEye lead developer Martin Hollis once received a fax from Shigeru Miyamoto saying he thought the game was “tragic” and “horrible”.
He then made the incredible suggestion for the game, that:
Players should be forced to shake hands with their victims as they lay recovering in hospital beds.
Wow. Just wow.
Obviously, they did not take his advice.
