Even before Minecraft became a big hit that brought millions of revenues to its sole creator, Nintendo also had an almost exact same game design and concept but did not seem to materialize.

Coming from Nintendo ‘s Shigeru Miyamoto Himself

The revelation is more than just hearsay. The statement came directly from Shigeru Miyamoto himself during an interview with Glixel, as per IGN.

As the creative mind behind some of gaming’s most successful franchises such as Donkey Kong, Mario, and Pikmin, Miyamoto admitted to liking the Swedish-developed game.

But unlike initial perception about the statement when cut halfway, his liking of the game is leaned more towards the idea that the game itself is something they “should have made.”

Elaborating on the idea, Miyamoto revealed that back in the N64 era, they had been doing some experimental designs when developing some games for the console. Some of these designs closely resemble the Mojang-developed title.

The notion, however, does not surmise that there is an infringement in one of game developing company’s intellectual properties. The project which Shigeru Miyamoto was referring to did not actually pass the planning stages because they find one critical element to the game missing: a compelling gameplay, as per VG247.

Miyamoto later admitted he surprised on how the sandboxed game title turned out to be a success in the West given that it did not fare as well in Japan, in terms of gameplay.

The Growing Success of Minecraft

Since entering beta testing in 2011, the originally one-man project has sold over 100 million copies throughout the years. Apart from the original PC title, the game has also spawned a number of iterations across different platforms which further add success to the franchise.

Although there is no telling of how a game similar to Minecraft would fare in the N64 back in the day, Nintendo has nonetheless given their own twist to the existing Wii U title of the same game called the Super Mario mash-up pack.

Nintendo Had Their Own Unfinished Version of ‘Minecraft’ Back in N64, Says Miyamoto