Curated category
Japanese video game designers
- Hideo KojimaHideo Kojima was born on the 24th of August 1963 in the Setagaya ward of Tokyo, and his father named him Hideo because it was the most common name among the…
- Junko KawanoJunko Kawano walked into Konami in 1993 as a newly hired artist, and was almost immediately handed a project that would shape Japanese role-playing games for…
- Masahiro ItoMasahiro Ito is the Japanese artist responsible for some of the most unsettling creature designs in video game history. His monsters do not simply look…
- Akira NishitaniAkira Nishitani goes by two nicknames: "Nin-Nin" and "Pom G". Behind those playful monikers is a Japanese game director, designer, and character designer…
- Yoshinori KitaseYoshinori Kitase was eleven years old in July 1978 when he saw Star Wars for the first time. The film left such an impression on him that he tracked down the…
- Hiroyuki ItoHiroyuki Ito joined Square in 1987 as a debugger, tasked with finding bugs in the original Final Fantasy. Few entry-level jobs in gaming feel more invisible…
- Daisuke WatanabeDaisuke Watanabe wrote the dialog for the Zanarkand Ruins in Final Fantasy X almost entirely in a single night. That moment of compressed creativity stands…
- Takashi NishiyamaTakashi Nishiyama built one of the fighting genre's signature moves, the Hadouken, out of an idea borrowed from outer space.
- Keiichiro ToyamaKeiichiro Toyama is the creator of three distinct video game franchises: Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush. Each one occupies its own corner of gaming…
- Shigeru MiyamotoShigeru Miyamoto was born on the 16th of November, 1952, in the small Japanese town of Sonobe, in Kyoto Prefecture. His parents were of modest means, and his…
- Hironobu SakaguchiHironobu Sakaguchi named the lead character of his debut film after his dead mother. Aki Ross, the protagonist of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, carried…
- Yoshitaka MurayamaYoshitaka Murayama died on the 6th of February 2024, just weeks before the game he had spent years building finally reached players. He was 55 years old.
- Naoki YoshidaNaoki Yoshida, known to millions of players as Yoshi-P, inherited one of the most troubled games in the history of Japanese role-playing: a massively…
- Ryukishi07Ryukishi07 dreamed of becoming a video game developer but could not get hired at any game manufacturer. His pen name encodes two Final Fantasy references…
- Tetsuya NomuraTetsuya Nomura was born in 1970 and applied to Square after seeing a job advertisement featuring artwork by Yoshitaka Amano.