KMC Forums - JAC's Bar [social thread]

Welcome to the ministry of culture and communication, which is that of creation, intelligence, innovation, invention, the ministry of all creators, whoever they are and wherever they are from, of all who contribute to share the fruits of their talent and their work, while contributing to shape our dreams, our imaginary, by reminding us that culture can be ludic, that it is also made of experiments, exchanges and games. Because they are cultural leisures produced by true cultural industries, because they are first and foremost creations of the spirit, it seems natural that video games should have the right of ''cit� rue de Valois'' {editors note: this whole sentence means they're proud of introducing videogames in their association/thing/whatever}.

That is the direction I wish to give to our meeting today, in the honor of three impassioned creators, three modern demiurges who gave rise to characters, in ludic worlds, oneiric universes, straight from their imagination, which captured the hearts of tens, or even hundreds of millions of players throughout the world.

"Art is a game of men of all time", wrote Marcel Duchamp. Video games, which are played in the whole world, are part of our daily newspaper (7 children and teenagers out of 10 have some in the developed countries). Though far from the first gaming rooms, known as arcades, which saw their rise in the years 1980, video games imposed themselves as a cultural industry important to our economy, which calls upon many qualified jobs, which mobilizes distributing and publishing companies, following the example of music and cinema, by irrigating many other sectors: I think of animation, with the special effects used in cinema, but also with many other innovations in the audio-visual or multimedia fields.

I am convinced that the vitality of our country in the sector of video games is testamony to its capacity of innovation, adaptation and creation.

But this is not what I want to talk about today. We are here to pay homage to the creators and the jobs of creation. The three personalities who I have the honor to distinguish invented new ways of representing our world. They are thus particularly worthy of entering the order of Arts and Letters, intended - I quote the decree founder - "to reward the people who were characterized by their creations in the artistic or literary fields, or by the contribution they made to the radiations of Arts and Letters in France and in the whole world."

This is why I am particularly proud today to welcome cult creator Shigeru Miyamoto, but also the eminent actors of French Touch, Michel Ancel and Frederick Raynal, who proved the vitality of French creation, of its inventiveness and its capacity of worldwide radiation.
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Dear Shigeru Miyamoto,
I am particularly happy and proud to accomodate you today with the ministry for the culture and the communication. You reached such a notoriety near the players, not only in France but worldwide, during your career, which makes the object of a true worship today, as well as the character who left your imagination. One described you as 'Spielberg of the video game', but also of good genius of numerical creations, yet your admirors do not miss the qualifiers to describe your talent and your creativity. Creator of the famous plumber man with a moustache, 'Mario ', who made the Japanese firm Nintendo a major actor in the world scene of videogames, you are today a general manager of the development and the research of Nintendo, recognized in the whole world.

You were born in Sonebe, a small village located close to the imperial city of Kyoto. Impassioned in your childhood by drawing, music and the art of the puppets, at 17 years of age, you start at the 'Kanazawa Municipal Arts and Crafts College'. You spend five years there before taking your diploma, in 1974, of industrial design -at the end of studies to which, you recognize it, you often preferred your 'additional' activities: to write comic strips or to play of the guitar in the caf� concerts.

In 1977, you have a meeting which will change the course of your life. Hiroshi Yamauchi is president of Nintendo and will remain for a total of fifty years. He the great grandson of the founder of this family company, created in 1889 to sell playing card and which manufactures in that year its first console. It sold some several hundreds and since then, millions and more consoles and more then two billion games. Mr. Yamauchi detects in you an extraordinary creativity and an originality and he engages you as artistic director. Then he entrusts the design of a first game to you. King Kong inspires you for this game: the tamed gorilla of a carpenter escapes and kidnaps a young woman. Donkey Kong is a completely innovative game where we see for the first time a small character, Jumpman, with nothing more then gloves, a large nose and a moustache. The game is a great success and the ancestor of Mario was born.

Its descendant appears not long after: the small character becomes plumber, he takes Italian nationality, the name of Mario, and holds the high-speed motorboat, with his Luigi brother, in Mario Bros, am arcade game which is an immediate success, which leads you to take the head of the game department, created in 1984 and universally recognizes you the title of a coveted game designer, in other words of creator of games, of genius.

Mario becomes your toy fetish and you develop richer and clever sequels of them all differn then the others: Super Mario Bros declines the search of the hero on several levels, and the formidable Super Mario Bros 3, remains still today a game of platform worship, incredibly rich and long, with the multiple routes and secrecies. With the arrival of the games in three dimensions, you make a success in how you adapt your creations to this new universe, with Mario 64 who offers gamers unsuspected possibilities of action and a freedom of exemplary movement.

You are also the father of the Legend of Zelda, another saga worshipped by many, which tells the story of the youngster Link, who is charged with the fate to protect the kingdom of Hyrule and Princess Zelda from the claws of Ganondorf. The adventures of your hero in 2D were a great success and the triumph of the adventures in 3D inspired a number of developers with the system of combat you created. Among your most recent successes, I will quote Pikmin, a very creative game, and Nintendogs.

In parallel with your multiple functions of author and originator of games, of musician, project leader, you also imply yourselves in the development of the consoles for Nintendo, and in particular of the controllers, to support a better feeling of the game by the gamers! It is with this formidable inventiveness in a confrontation between artistic creation and new technologies, it is with the ingeniousness of the artist in the design of original numerical universes, that I particularly wish to pay homage today. You are one of the best ambassadors of this planetary universe and one of its more attaching personalities. They are as the fertile bonds of friendship between our two countries as we celebrate today, of the bonds based on our capacities of creation and innovation, because you incarnate the success of certain values shared by France and Japan, and in particular the spirit of invention and the will of co-operation.

Shigeru Miyamoto, in the name of the Republic, we give you the badges of Knight in the order of Arts and the Letters.
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Cool huh? The creator of Zelda is now a knight himself.