(born July 23, 1959) is a
Japanese video game designer
Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...
,
director, and
producer
Producer or producers may refer to:
Occupations
*Producer (agriculture), a farm operator
*A stakeholder of economic production
*Film producer, supervises the making of films
**Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...
. He has worked at Nintendo since 1982. He has directed several games in the ''
Metroid'' series. He is one of the most prominent members of Nintendo's former
Research and Development 1 division, along with
Gunpei Yokoi and Toru Osawa.
Career
Sakamoto is a key member in the development of the
''Metroid'' series. Sakamoto grew up with Nintendo toys, which he felt were inventive.
The company hired him in 1982, when he graduated from art college. His first projects at Nintendo were the design of pixel art for the
Game & Watch handheld ''
Donkey Kong
is a video game franchise created by Shigeru Miyamoto and owned by Nintendo. It follows the adventures of a gorilla named Donkey Kong and his clan of other apes and monkeys. The franchise primarily consists of platform games—originally s ...
'', and the
arcade game ''
Donkey Kong Jr.''
He turned to the
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...
afterward, for which he designed the games ''
Wrecking Crew'', ''
Balloon Fight
is an action video game developed by Nintendo and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The original arcade version was released for the Nintendo VS. System internationally as ''Vs. Balloon Fight'', while its Nintendo Entertainment Sys ...
'' and ''
Gumshoe''. Sakamoto also was the lead scenario writer and creator of
Famicom Detective Club
is an adventure game duology developed and published by Nintendo for the Family Computer Disk System. The first entry, was released in 1988, followed by a prequel released the next year titled In both games, the player takes on the role of a ...
with its two entries, one of the most influential
visual novel
A , often abbreviated as VN, is a form of digital semi-interactive fiction. Visual novels are often associated with and used in the medium of video games, but are not always labeled as such themselves. They combine a textual narrative with sta ...
in
Japan in the 80s.
Sakamoto created characters for ''
Metroid'' (under the alias 'Shikamoto'), and was a game designer on ''
Kid Icarus''. He also directed ''
Super Metroid'', ''
Metroid Fusion'', ''
Metroid: Zero Mission'', ''
Metroid: Other M'', and was the producer for ''
Metroid: Samus Returns'' and ''
Metroid Dread''.
Sakamoto's design work is also found in Nintendo games including ''
Balloon Kid'' (1990), ''
Game & Watch Gallery'' (1997), ''
Wario Land 4'' (2001), and ''
WarioWare''.
Philosophy
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 an example. Regarding his professional relationship with Nintendo producer
Shigeru Miyamoto
is a Japanese video game designer, producer and game director at Nintendo, where he serves as one of its representative directors. Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential designers in the history of video games, he i ...
, he believes his mission is not to compete with but to "always come up with something very different from what Mr. Miyamoto is likely to do".
Works
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sakamoto, Yosio
1959 births
Japanese video game designers
Japanese video game directors
Living people
Metroid
Nintendo people
Video game writers