Shigeru Miyamoto has developed some of the most popular games of all time including Mario which is the most successful game franchise ever. Mario has actually been in 250 videogames and The Super Mario Brothers movie was the first major motion picture ever made based on a videogame. Well maybe that one was a little regrettable, but I’m sure the next Mario movie will be great. 

Interestingly though, Miyamoto’s big break came largely by accident. When he was first hired by Nintendo, he was making designs for their game cabinets. Nintendo had grossly overestimated the popularity of a game called Radar Scope and found themselves with 2,000 cabinets in need of a new game. They wanted to make a Popeye game, but couldn’t get the rights so Miyamoto came up with a new concept and Donkey Kong was born. When his game was released in 1981, it pulled in $200million and Miyamoto was quickly put in charge of game development.

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