"It started when the game told me it hadn't seen my wife and kids for a few days," world-famous inventor of the Super Mario Bros., Shigeru Miyamoto, told Kyoto police Monday. "Then days became weeks, and I noticed dust on the Wii Balance Board. If you don't use Wii Fit every day, you don't get the intended effect, do you? First I had no choice but to leave notes on the refrigerator. Then I tried to suggest that Wii Fit is easier and more convenient than biking. But after that their bike keys had to be hidden. Last week I put the non-Wii Fit games in the closet, and sometimes lately I don't flush the toilet. What I have done can not be looked on with regret."
Though this incident will be the first citation for Mr. Miyamoto, who brought us such characters as Donkey Kong and Princess Zelda, it is not the first time investigators in the Kyoto area have noticed something amiss at the Miyamoto household. Most recently, police responded to various reports last August, and found Miyamoto's wife standing outside their house.
"He had asked me to go take a look at the Pikmin in his garden, which is kind of a little game we play, and I'm supposed to say I see them running around and he is supposed to giggle and all that, and then he locked me out," Mrs. Miyamoto told The Press reporters. "He said the door was stuck but I knew what was going on. He later told me it was a karmic imbalance because I was neglecting Pikku, and that Pikku has poor mental health, and all this. I've been feeding the dog since 2004! Between you and I, Shigeru has some trouble letting go."
She had forgotten to feed their virtual dog, Pikku, in the family copy of Nintendogs, a dog-simulation game released for the Nintendo DS. Their real dog, also named Pikku, a Shetland Sheepdog that Miyamoto has claimed provided the inspiration for the Nintendogs video game, was accidentally destroyed in 2002 after choking on a number of prototype video game linking cables, used in the development of a version of Pac-Man for the Game Boy Advance system.
"I got so obsessed with Pac-Man that everything else was ignored," Mr. Miyamoto said. "I am only one man and three other players were needed to test the software. I got my wife and kids to do it, but they couldn't handle the inhuman thirty-hour test sessions, and I had to leave the dog's mess in their shoes. That was a difficult time for them. After the cables became lodged inside our dog, they were left to mourn his passing, which was primarily their fault. Fortunately, this whole incident led to the development of wireless technologies in our portable hardware."
Investigators examined a spare room in the Miyamoto house, finding it packed full of televisions and gaming systems, with which his children are tasked to maintain his four Animal Crossing towns and practice for "Family Wii Music Nights," which occur on the first and third Tuesdays of every month.
"Lazy little children are not often seen to be worthy of medical benefits," Miyamoto told investigators, in a sing-songy fashion, hitting a tremendous falsetto note during the word "benefits."
Mrs. Miyamoto told investigators about a variety of instances in which Mr. Miyamoto has refused to squeegee the sides of the bath when he is finished, swept only a small portion of the floor and left the rest dirty, and flipped their tea table into the air with a deafening, "wolf-like" shriek.
Despite these incidents, Mr. Miyamoto insists their relationship is as strong as ever.
"Because we love each other dearly, soon my wife will have the opportunity to earn coins on her Nintendo 3DS system by walking with it to work every day, and taking it with her on strolls to places such as the beach or grocery store on weekends," Miyamoto said. "If she were to cease this activity, her phone's battery may run out during the day, or her train pass might disappear, for instance. Such occurrences would be a shame, wouldn't they?"
Though this incident will be the first citation for Mr. Miyamoto, who brought us such characters as Donkey Kong and Princess Zelda, it is not the first time investigators in the Kyoto area have noticed something amiss at the Miyamoto household. Most recently, police responded to various reports last August, and found Miyamoto's wife standing outside their house.
"He had asked me to go take a look at the Pikmin in his garden, which is kind of a little game we play, and I'm supposed to say I see them running around and he is supposed to giggle and all that, and then he locked me out," Mrs. Miyamoto told The Press reporters. "He said the door was stuck but I knew what was going on. He later told me it was a karmic imbalance because I was neglecting Pikku, and that Pikku has poor mental health, and all this. I've been feeding the dog since 2004! Between you and I, Shigeru has some trouble letting go."
She had forgotten to feed their virtual dog, Pikku, in the family copy of Nintendogs, a dog-simulation game released for the Nintendo DS. Their real dog, also named Pikku, a Shetland Sheepdog that Miyamoto has claimed provided the inspiration for the Nintendogs video game, was accidentally destroyed in 2002 after choking on a number of prototype video game linking cables, used in the development of a version of Pac-Man for the Game Boy Advance system.
"I got so obsessed with Pac-Man that everything else was ignored," Mr. Miyamoto said. "I am only one man and three other players were needed to test the software. I got my wife and kids to do it, but they couldn't handle the inhuman thirty-hour test sessions, and I had to leave the dog's mess in their shoes. That was a difficult time for them. After the cables became lodged inside our dog, they were left to mourn his passing, which was primarily their fault. Fortunately, this whole incident led to the development of wireless technologies in our portable hardware."
Investigators examined a spare room in the Miyamoto house, finding it packed full of televisions and gaming systems, with which his children are tasked to maintain his four Animal Crossing towns and practice for "Family Wii Music Nights," which occur on the first and third Tuesdays of every month.
"Lazy little children are not often seen to be worthy of medical benefits," Miyamoto told investigators, in a sing-songy fashion, hitting a tremendous falsetto note during the word "benefits."
Mrs. Miyamoto told investigators about a variety of instances in which Mr. Miyamoto has refused to squeegee the sides of the bath when he is finished, swept only a small portion of the floor and left the rest dirty, and flipped their tea table into the air with a deafening, "wolf-like" shriek.
Despite these incidents, Mr. Miyamoto insists their relationship is as strong as ever.
"Because we love each other dearly, soon my wife will have the opportunity to earn coins on her Nintendo 3DS system by walking with it to work every day, and taking it with her on strolls to places such as the beach or grocery store on weekends," Miyamoto said. "If she were to cease this activity, her phone's battery may run out during the day, or her train pass might disappear, for instance. Such occurrences would be a shame, wouldn't they?"