Yoshio Sakamoto facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Yoshio Sakamoto
坂本 賀勇
Sakamoto at the 2010 Game Developers Conference
Born	(1959-07-23) July 23, 1959 (age 66) Nara Prefecture, Japan
Alma mater	Osaka University of Arts
Occupation	Video game designer, director, producer
Employer	Nintendo (1982–present)
Notable work	Metroid Famicom Detective Club WarioWare Rhythm Heaven
Title	Manager at Nintendo SPD Production Group No. 1 (2004-2012) Deputy Manager at Nintendo SPD (2012-2015) Senior Officer at Nintendo EPD (2015-present)

Yoshio Sakamoto (Japanese: 坂本 賀勇, Hepburn: Sakamoto Yoshio) (born July 23, 1959) is a Japanese video game designer. He is also a director and producer. He has worked at Nintendo since 1982. He has directed many games in the popular Metroid series. He is one of the most important people from Nintendo's old Research and Development 1 team. Other key members included Gunpei Yokoi and Toru Osawa.

Yoshio Sakamoto's Career at Nintendo

Sakamoto is a very important person in making the Metroid game series. He grew up playing with Nintendo toys. He thought these toys were very creative and fun. Nintendo hired him in 1982 after he finished art college.

Early Projects and Game Design

His first jobs at Nintendo were designing pixel art. Pixel art is like drawing with tiny squares of color. He worked on the Game & Watch handheld game Donkey Kong. He also worked on the arcade game Donkey Kong Jr.. After that, he started working on games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. For this system, he designed games like Wrecking Crew, Balloon Fight, and Gumshoe.

Sakamoto was also the main writer and creator for Famicom Detective Club. The first two games in this series were very important visual novels in Japan during the 1980s. Visual novels are games where you read a story and make choices.

Working on the Metroid Series

Sakamoto helped create characters for the first Metroid game. He was also a game designer for Kid Icarus. He later directed many Metroid games. These include Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid: Zero Mission, and Metroid: Other M. He was also a producer for Metroid: Samus Returns and Metroid Dread. A producer helps manage the whole game development process.

Sakamoto's design work can also be seen in other Nintendo games. These include Balloon Kid (from 1990), Game & Watch Gallery (from 1997), Wario Land 4 (from 2001), and the fun WarioWare series.

Sakamoto's Game Design Ideas

Sakamoto has talked about his ideas for making games. He wants to make unique games, just like the Nintendo toys he played with as a kid. He sees WarioWare, Inc. as a good example of this idea.

He also works with another famous Nintendo producer, Shigeru Miyamoto. Sakamoto believes his job is not to compete with Miyamoto. Instead, he tries to "always come up with something very different from what Mr. Miyamoto is likely to do." This means he tries to create new and surprising game ideas.

Games Yoshio Sakamoto Has Worked On

See also

In Spanish: Yoshio Sakamoto para niños