Sitting Down with Shigeru Miyamoto
By Carl Johnson

In May of 2000, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, I had the distinct honor of interviewing the creative mastermind I idolize. This is my story.

Fate Steps In

The Daily Radar/ Show Daily production room was harder to find than one might think. First of all, I took the longest route possible, going back to the West Lobby and then up the escalators and around the corner, and above the main passageway back in the direction I first came from. “There has to be a shorter route than this.” So I finally made it to proper exit, and got off the hallway and went toward the room number I had been given. I entered the room. People were busy at their computers, talking, playing with digital equipment. I looked for Michael Wolf, and there he was at the end of the room.

I made my way through the war room with no questions asked. I was expecting one of the more cocky editors to jump out at me and say “Hey! You can’t be here! Who the hell are you anyway?” But thankfully these guys were laid back, and apparently used to freelancers coming and going as they pleased, as opposed to being kept on a chain and collar while in the presence of the powers that be. The Show Daily people were surprisingly nice as well.

“Michael. How are you?”

“Carl. I’m good, just getting ready to go [do something important]”

“Oh okay. Well, I came up here because I had a question.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Well that Miyamoto interview with Nintendorks fell through, apparently his schedule is completely booked.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Michael showed genuine concern, not the cold sarcastic type that’s so popular these days.

“And the thing is, I have these questions I prepared for the interview, and I know you said you had one scheduled for today. I was thinking you could go over them and maybe put some to good use.”

“So you came up here to ask if you could come.”

“Ahaha, no actually…”

“Well my appointment is at 3:30. I’ll tell you what, if you wanted to come along, you could take a camera and snap off some shots for us during the interview. That would be extremely helpful.”

[Face lights up like a Christmas tree]

“Yeah. I’d actually really, really like that. Do you wanna go over these questions?”

[looks at watch, thinks]

“My appointment with Nintendo is at 3:30, if you wanted to show up at, say, 4:00 and ask for me, we could meet up there, and you could just bring the interview questions.”

“Great! Oh, and do you have a folder or something for these. I don’t think it’s entirely respectful to take a Sega catalogue into Nintendo.”

“Let me see here.” [Finds an Activision folder, empties it.]

“Perfect. So I’ll see you at 4:00 then…”

“See you at 4:00.”

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