Ever since the DS and Wii, Nintendo's built its brand on staying out of the AAA graphics race that its competitors have usually pursued. But the seeds of that corporate philosophy were around at least a decade earlier, when games like Super Mario 64 were at the cutting edge of 3D graphics, and RPGs were exploding across new cinematic frontiers. For Shigeru Miyamoto, though? Even in the '90s, he'd rather have just kept launching cannonballs on his OG Macintosh.
In July 1996, Miyamoto was interviewed by Kenji Eno, the developer best known for the cult horror game D. Eno, known for experimental game design, had just played the newly released Super Mario 64, and wasn't nearly as impressed as the rest of the gaming world. He dreamed of something more interactive from the 3D world, where snow would realistically react to Mario's footsteps, kicking up into snowballs as you ran around.
