Shigeru Miyamoto Was HIRED to Make Toys, Then Saved Gaming

NARRATION: He had never designed a video game. Hired to make toys, he would save an industry.

Shigeru Miyamoto grew up outside Kyoto, a daydreamer who loved drawing more than school.

As a boy, he crawled into a dark cave with a lantern, into chambers that haunted him.

He studied industrial design at Kanazawa, unsure what a boy who sketched monsters would become.

In 1977, he joined Nintendo as an artist, not an engineer.

Then they handed the artist a failing arcade project to fix.

He invented a carpenter, an ape, a captured girl: the 1981 hit Donkey Kong birthed Mario.

Games had crashed in 1983, called a dead fad. Super Mario Bros revived them in 1985.

A year later came The Legend of Zelda, that childhood cave reborn as a world.

The boy who wandered the hills turned wonder into worlds millions call home.

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