Nintendo’s secret to becoming a design powerhouse? Developers who have stayed at the company for decades

Nintendo is home to some of the most beloved characters in the video game industry—Mario, Pikachu, Kirby, and many others. But inside the company itself is another cast of beloved characters—the army of developers that has stuck with Nintendo for most of their careers.

“It’s almost impossible for any developer who is now of working age to have grown up without at least some influence from Nintendo,” says Keza MacDonald, author of the forthcoming book Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play, based off years of reporting on the company as a games journalist. “It is still, to this day, making games differently from everyone else.”

Indeed Nintendo has largely sidestepped the graphics arms race that has bedeviled both its hardware and software competitors, in