Nintendo game design icon Shigeru Miyamoto was honored with the “Game Developers Choice - Lifetime Achievement Award” during this years Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, CA.

Miyamoto joined Nintendo in 1977 as a staff artist and quickly built a reputation for himself. In 1981, Nintendo released Miyamoto’s creation Donkey Kong to arcades, launching what would come to be known as his first masterpiece. In 1985, Nintendo released their Nintendo Entertainment System with Miyamoto’s Super Mario Bros ; over time, more than 40 million units of the game were sold worldwide, and a series of mega-hit titles was born, including the 1996 Nintendo 64 best seller, Super Mario 64. More than 193 million video games in the Super Mario series have been sold worldwide. To date, Miyamoto has worked on more than 100 different Nintendo video game titles, supporting younger video game creators as a producer for Kirby and Pokémon games. Miyamoto’s most recent video game projects include Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Nintendogs , Super Mario Galaxy and design work on the Wii hardware. He also was responsible for The Legend of Zelda : The Wind Waker , Metroid Prime , Super Mario Sunshine , Pikmin , Luigi’s Mansion and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , which has been called the greatest video game of all time.

Recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award are selected by the Choice Awards Advisory Board, comprised of a diverse set of developers from around the globe. Past recipients of this award include Richard Garriott, Eugene Jarvis, Mark Cerny, Gunpei Yokoi (posthumously), Yuji Naka and Will Wright.

“This year’s recipients of the Game Developers Choice Award special honors reflect the dramatic impact of their visionary creations and industry work,” said Jamil Moledina, Executive Director of the Game Developers Conference. “Our four honorees are each responsible for inspiring the industry to creative heights through personal example and challenging conventional wisdom.”

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