That was as close as we ever got to Miyamoto at the Nintendo World event today. With my silver Wavebird for him to sign, we got there about 90 minutes before the event was supposed to start. We found a line of hundreds, maybe a thousand, some who had obviously stayed overnight. We took our place at the end of the line and waited.

I missed out on probably the biggest Nintendo DS wireless gaming session EVER, because I don’t have a DS. But I was eavesdropping on several people who were participating in insane PictoChat sessions, and got some information on progress at the front of the line that way. Nintendo gave out free water and pizza to everybody waiting, which was really nice.

Eventually people starting coming out who had seen him! Several had him sign Nintendo T-Shits, controllers, games, and instruction manuals. “He’s so nice!” “Good luck you guys!” “He’s still signing, you have a chance!” The line moved forward at a near glacial pace. I went to check out the head of the line, it snaked into the store and then up some stairs and disappeared into the second floor. Can’t even see him!

Around 1:30, people coming out were saying “It’s all over, he’s left already.” NOOOO!!!! I went up to the front of the line again to see what was going on. Somehow, just at that moment, MIYAMOTO CAME TO THE WINDOW! I was among the first to notice him there, waved, and he waved back! I tried to quickly get a cameraphone picture, but it didn’t really come out! The rest of the crowd realized he was there, and surged forward. He kept waving, and eventually apologetically moved away from the window.

At this point the crowd was completely out of control, blocking the street, just trying to get a glimpse. Jenny joined me, and when he came back to the window again for an encore, she got a few pretty good pictures and even a movie of him waving. He’s just as cute and goofy in real life as he looks in pictures, and seemed to really be enjoying the crowd. He waved, gave several multi-thumbs up, and pumped his fists to get the crowd going. “NIN-TEN-DO! NIN-TEN-DO!” and “REV-O-LU-TION! REV-O-LU-TION!” chants started, but eventually he did move away from the window again, and didn’t come back. I assume he left through some sort of mushroom-powered airship or possibly a green underground pipe, because we never saw him come out.

So, final tally: Almost four hours waiting. One grainy picture…. of Shigeru Miyamoto! MISSION: SUCCESS! Also, we got to try this dumpling place Jenny wanted to go to:

By the way, Joystiq has a pretty nice post covering the whole event, including a much better picture of the guy who got his Power Glove signed, which I think is pretty much the coolest thing to have him sign ever.