Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto receives lifetime achievement award 

Influential game developer and creator of the Mario franchise Shigeru Miyamoto received a lifetime achievement award at Japan’s 29^th AMD awards ceremony held on March 5, 2024. The award ceremony, which focuses on Japan’s digital media content, also recognized the 2023 successes of games such as Street Fighter 6, the Pokémon Sleep app, the anime Oshi no Ko, and the new Super Mario Bros. Movie. 

The annual Japanese Association of Media in Digital Awards are held to recognize individuals and groups of digital-based content creators for their outstanding works or services that have been released in the past year. This Japan-only awards ceremony began in 1995, and over years awards have been given to successful video games, animes, music groups, and streaming services, as well as the people behind them. The AMD aim to promote and encourage the development of Japan’s digital content industry. According to their website, digital content is “the area the Japanese government is now focusing on the most (…) for strengthening Japan’s international competitiveness.” 

According to Game*Spark’s report on the ceremony, Shigeru Miyamoto gave an acceptance speech for the lifetime achievement award, in which he looked back on over 40 years of working at Nintendo. Miyamoto commented that he was accepting the award “On the behalf of all the people I have worked together with to create things.” He mentioned having met people from various fields throughout his career, from the arcade machine engineers when he was starting out, all the way through to communications engineers in the internet era.  

Rather than merely learning from these specialists, Miyamoto challenged them with his ideas based on his own knowledge and experience. This approach has enabled him to work with experts in different fields to create innovation. Regarding his unconventional approach, Miyamoto added that “If I repeat the process of making proposals after carefully considering what I can do, it will lead to something original.” He added that he would like to continue working with people in different fields. 

Excellence Awards were also given out at the ceremony. Miyamoto also took to the stage for the awarding of an Excellence Award to 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Miyamoto revealed that he started working on the movie with the CEO of Illumination Chris Meledandri under the premise that “If one of us said stop, we would stop.” 

Other notable winners of Excellence Awards this year included Capcom’s Street Fighter 6, the sleep tracking app Pokémon Sleep, the anime movie THE FIRST SLAM DUNK, and anime series Oshi no Ko. All were recognized for their impact not only in Japan but internationally.  

For more on these topics, read Shigeru Miyamoto’s sage advice for the initial stage of game development, or find out how Japanese anime’s overseas success and profits are increasing year on year.