The Man Behind Mario

When Shigeru Miyamoto was a child, he didn’t really have any toys, so he made his own, out of wood and string.
...

One day, when he was seven or eight, he came across a hole in the ground. He peered inside and saw nothing but darkness. He came back the next day with a lantern and shimmied through the hole and found himself in a small cavern. He could see that passageways led to other chambers. Over the summer, he kept returning to the cave to marvel at the dance of the shadows on the walls.
...

The cave has become a misty but indispensable part of his legend, to Miyamoto what the cherry tree was to George Washington, or what LSD is to Steve Jobs.

A fantastic and fantastical profile of Shigeru Miyamoto, the mind behind some of Nintendo's best creations.

[The New Yorker]