– Reggie Fils-Aime, boss of Nintendo of America, speaking to Time about longtime Nintendo exec Shinya Takahashi.
A number of Nintendo staffers have been taking part in direct communication (via Nintendo Directs and other broadcasts) with Nintendo fans for some time now, and that number has been increasing in recent months as the company prepares to release its upcoming Switch console.
One of those staffers is longtime Nintendo employee Shinya Takahashi, a company director and general manager of Nintendo’s Entertainment Planning & Development Division, who recently sat down for an interview to Time that’s well worth reading if you’re at all interested in the history of Nintendo’s game development efforts.
Most notably, Takahashi tells Time he joined Nintendo in 1989 as an art school graduate interested in 3D graphics, but was told by Miyamoto in an early interview that “we’re not doing that.” Nevertheless, he chose to sign on.
“When you’ve gone to art school, you really have just two choices. You either become an artist, or you try to find a job,” Takahashi told Time. “Of course, I was born in Kyoto and raised in Kyoto and went to a university in Kyoto, so the naturally closest place for me to go was Nintendo.”
After he joined, Takahashi says he worked on all sorts of games — everything from Wave Race 64 to Ocarina of Time to Pokemon Stadium. But as he spent time inside Nintendo he found he enjoyed production and management roles more than hands-on game dev work, and wound up rising to become GM of the devs making games in Nintendo’s EP&D division.
“I view my role as being more someone who’s overseeing our producers. I really look at them more as my stable of talent, and I’m their manager.” Takahashi told Time. “That includes Mr. Miyamoto. Lately I’ve enjoyed saying, ‘I’m Mr. Miyamoto’s manager.'”
You can find the rest of Takahashi’s comments in the full interview on Time’s website. It’s well worth a read.