The popular mobile game Pokémon GO has a special trainer amongst the millions worldwide: Shigeru Miyamoto, the one and only creator of the Super Mario game franchise, is a fan as well.
Nintendo recently finished its 81st Annual General Meeting of Shareholders with its usual Q&A segment. The session is intended to provide some levity after hours of intense discussion; this year the directors of the company were each asked about their most recent favorite video game. Current company president Shuntaro Furukawa responded with "Super Mario Bros" but Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of said franchise, provided a more surprising answer: Pokémon GO.
"I basically tend to play the games I created myself, so I haven’t been influenced much by the games of other companies," Miyamoto explained. "That said, the first game that influenced me when I started the job of game development was Pac-Man, and from a design perspective, I think Tetris is wonderful. I’m currently hooked on Pokémon GO. This game, which I’m playing with my wife, is a dream come true of playing a game with my whole family. I’ve been enjoying Pokémon GO with my wife and neighborhood friends for some two years now. The average person playing Pokémon GO in Japan is probably around 60 years old."
Other executives harkened back to the Famicom years, while Ko Shiota, the senior executive officer, has been playing a lot of Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit with his kids.
Niantic, developer of Pokémon GO, navigated the ongoing global pandemic by introducing a variety of significant updates to its AR mobile game. While many of those changes were intended to exist purely during the lockdown period, some of the alterations will be implemented into the game on a more permanent basis.
Despite the global pandemic, Pokémon GO has proven extremely successful. The game recently celebrated its fifth anniversary, with the developers revealing that the game has made an impressive $5 billion since its initial release in 2016.
Pokémon GO is available for free on Android and iOS.
Source: Nintendo Wire