Aonuma intended to design hardware
1up's interview/profile of Eiji Aonuma, the man currently in charge of the Zelda series, describes a person who came into Nintendo without any particular interest in video games. In fact, he was hoping to use his background in art to do some product design. In fact, as he tells the story, that's what he thought he would be doing when he joined Nintendo, until Miyamoto came along to upend his personal tea table.
Of course, he came around eventually and decided that games could also be fun:
"Yeah, I do like to create things with my hands, so I was hoping that I could create something like hardware eventually. It wasn't necessarily that I didn't want to create games -- because once I actually started working on them I really started to enjoy my job -- but I think that maybe Miyamoto didn't understand that I could take another route at the company. I am very happy where I am now, though."
We have to wonder if Miyamoto saw something in a young Aonuma, or if he just grabbed someone out of a hallway?
