| Yoshio Sakamoto | |
|---|---|
Yoshio Sakamoto at the Game Developers Conference 2010 |
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| Born | July 23, 1959 |
| Occupation | Video game designer |
Yoshio Sakamoto (坂本 賀勇 Sakamoto Yoshio, born July 23, 1959) is a Japanese video game designer working for Nintendo. He is a key member in the development of the Metroid series, having worked as director, scenario designer, and script writer for many of the games. Sakamoto grew up with Nintendo toys, which he noted to be inventive and occasionally "strange".[1] The company hired him in 1982, when he came out of art college. His first projects at Nintendo were the design of pixel art for the Game & Watch handheld Donkey Kong, and the arcade game Donkey Kong Jr.[2] He turned to the Nintendo Entertainment System afterward, for which he designed the games Wrecking Crew, Balloon Fight and Gumshoe.[2] Sakamoto co-directed and created characters for Metroid (under the aliases 'Yamamoto' and 'Shikamoto'), and was a game designer on Kid Icarus.[3][4][5] With the exception of Metroid II: Return of Samus, he has directed all Metroid games produced internally by Nintendo, namely Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid: Other M (where he also wrote the game's original story). He also supervised the production of Retro Studios's Metroid Prime series.
Sakamoto's design work is found in various other Nintendo games, including Balloon Kid (1990), Kaeru No Tame Ni Kane Wa Naru (1992, Japan only), Teleroboxer (1995), Galactic Pinball (1995), Game & Watch Gallery (1997), Wario Land 4 (2001), Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001), Wario World (2003), WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! (2003), WarioWare: Smooth Moves (2006) and Card Hero DS (2008). He is one of the most prominent members of Nintendo's former Research and Development 1 division. Sakamoto has stated that he wants to live up to public expectations of Nintendo to deliver products similarly unique to those of his youth, describing WarioWare, Inc. as a prime example of this effort. Regarding his professional relationship with Shigeru Miyamoto, he believes his own mission is not to compete with but to "always come up with something very different from what Mr. Miyamoto is likely to do".[1]
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