These days, Shigeru Miyamoto's creations are synonymous with Nintendo itself, but there was once a time when even Miyamoto was just a college kid interviewing for a job just like anybody else. He brought a portfolio of his work to Nintendo for that interview - and it seems the company tried to patent one of the items he showed off well before it had officially hired him.
Miyamoto graduated from industrial design university with thoughts of designing home appliances, or toys and playground equipment for kindergarteners. This was in the '70s, when Nintendo was still primarily known as a toy and traditional game company - well before it had gone all-in on video games.
"Nintendo was not looking for designers at that time," Miyamoto explained in a 2000 interview for Japanese book Game Maestro, recently translated by Shmuplations. "An acquaintance of my father talked to President Hiroshi Yamauchi, and I was invited for an interview. At that time, Nintendo was making not only amusement machines, but also baby strollers and batting machines, and I thought it was an interesting company. I was under the impression that they were making a lot of money from playing cards and hanafuda, so it seemed like they would be open to letting me do what I wanted to do."
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Miyamoto said he brought his "student works" as a sort of portfolio for the interview. "One was a hanger for kindergarten children. It was a hanger with animal faces on it and a handle, so that even short children could use it easily. There was also a see-saw with a swing attached."
When Miyamoto met Yamauchi, "he was very considerate and said, 'I want you to know that we are not hiring you because of the reference, but because we want you to work for us.' But get this - after I joined, I found out that they'd applied for a design patent for the hanger I'd designed. (laughs) I mean, I was able to get the patent rights without filing the fee myself, so it was all good. (laughs) I remember thinking, 'this is a shrewd company!' But for me, they let me do what I wanted, and I saw them as a generous benefactor or sponsor."
It's tough to imagine somebody taking such a pleasant outlook on a potential employer trying to patent their invention out from under them these days, but I guess '70s Japan was truly a different place and time. Yamauchi was legendarily ruthless - Tetris Company co-founder Henk Rogers once said Nintendo's employees "were terrified of him. If you ever worked with him and you disagreed with him in a meeting, you were fired. Period. He fricking fired the President of Nintendo Europe, like bang!" If Miyamoto had kicked up a fuss about the patent issue, I suspect we might be living in a world without Mario and Donkey Kong today.
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