Rockstar San Diego Founder Diego Angel has a long history in game development. His studio, simply called Angel Studios before being purchased by Take-Two in 2002, has hands in numerous games, including projects with Nintendo. Angel became part of Nintendo’s Dream Team of developers in 1995, working on N64 games at that time. That opened quite a few doors, and during a recent interview with Polygon, Angel spoke about meetingNintendo’s Shigeru Miyamotofor the first time.
According to Angel, he spent 45 days preparing for the meeting with Miyamoto, using the time to create a design bible to present to the legendary developer. However, the meeting seemingly didn’t go quite how Angel had imagined, as Miyamoto simply “spent 10, 15 minutes look[ing] at it,” Diego explained, before pushing it away and stating that he “didn’t want [it].”
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Instead, Miyamoto tasked Angel with “working on the technology and making sure it feels good” for the studio’s project, a racing game calledBuggy Boogie.Less than a year later, Nintendo canceled the project, though the studio went on to finish three other games for the Nintendo 64, most notably the port ofResident Evil 2,which managed to impress the game’s publisher, Capcom, enough that it approached Angel Studios to create what would becomeRed Dead Revolver,the first, though often forgotten entry in theRed Dead Redemptionseries, which Take-two acquired along with Angel Studios.
Miyamoto is arguably the most famous game developer of all time, having created gaming’s poster child, Mario. A meeting between him and Angel, whose studio has helped createGTAandRed Dead,two of gaming’s most M-rated series, is rather interesting in itself. Angel’s account of the event isn’t necessarily groundbreaking revelatory, but it is interesting to consider how much studios collaborate.
Regardless, Angel’s contribution to video games has been valuable. Angel has since gone back to Colombia, his home, and owns multiple restaurants. The meeting withMiyamotoseems to be a small part of a very interesting story, and it will be interesting to see what the future holds for both Miyamoto and Angel, in game development or any other potential field.
