The Master’s Apprentice
A profile of Nintendo’s other Miyamoto, Yoshiaki Koizumi
Published in
Apr 3, 2016
Way back in 2007, I wrote a profile of Yoshiaki Koizumi for N-Sider. At that time, Super Mario Galaxy was just about to launch all over the world. The game was a very powerful statement from Nintendo; here they were, taking perhaps their single biggest franchise character, and throwing him into a radically different context. This game looked like no other Mario game before it, with its unique spherical worlds and gravity physics.
In several respects, Super Mario Galaxy was the biggest leap forward for the loveable plumber since the revolutionary Super Mario 64. Even more remarkable was that Nintendo’s famed game designer Shigeru Miyamoto was not the director; instead, the job had gone to a younger and lesser-known figure, Yoshiaki Koizumi.
