The minds behind Wario

Glowsquid

Mental midget
Diamond City Leader
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Hiroji Kiyotake

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What's his deal?

An employee of Nintendo R&D 1 hired around 1984, Hiroji Kiyotake directed Wario's debut game, Super Mario Land 2 and created everyone's favourite garlic-eating farmer. He also directed Wario Land and Virtual Boy Wario Land, and has had graphic design credits on Wario Land, III and 4.

What else did he do?

Kiyotake was heavily involved in the development of Metroid and its Famicon disk system port, and he also created Samus. He directed Metroid II.

Where is he now?

The Kyoto Report and Wikipedia credited Hiroji Kiyotake as the head of a group within SPD responsible for charater design, although I find that dubious as he's not been credited in a game since Wario Land 4 beside "Wario's creator" mentions in Mario sports games and concept art for Metroid Other M. He presumably still works at the company as he showed in recent-ish interviews like the Metroid one for the NES classic

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Goro Abe

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What's his deal?

Employed by Nintendo at the turn of the millenium, Goro Abe worked as a programmer for Wario Land 4 and a ridiculous number of roles on the first WarioWare. Since Mega Party Games, Abe has had director credit on every WarioWare with the exception of Snapped! and Touched, where he was one of the director but the main one (that being Ryuichi Nakada).

What else did he do?:

Abe was also the director of the DSi Metronome app and the Play-Yan's built-in games. Patents credit him as one of the inventor of the aborted Wii Vitality Sensor and its unannounced showcase title, Wii Relax. During the gap between Game & Wario and WW Gold, his name showed up in a lot of patents relating to amiibo implementation in games, including one that foreshadowed the amiibo use in WW Gold.

Where is he now?

He directed WW Gold so likely still works at Nintendo.
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Ko Takeuchi
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What's his deal?

Ko Takeuchi drew background titles for Wario Land 4 before becoming the character designer for the WarioWare series. He also has game design credits on the game from WarioWare Inc. up to Smooth Moves.

What else did he do?

He is also the character designer and a game designer on the Rhythm Heaven series. He was Art Director on its latest installment, The Best+, and also drew gag comics on the game's official promotional page. He also directed an ultra-obscure Hamtaro game for the GameBoy color

He has his own his artist box (formely?) named Kokosac, which had some success drawing promotional stuff for Japanese music group and TV series. He also really likes drawing dank memes
Where is he now?

Ko was particuly busy on WW Gold, doing all the character art, the storyboarding for the cutscenes, animating said custscenes, voicing Joe in the Japanese dub and doing the animated character trailers following the game's launch. In a deleted tweet on April 10, he mentioned how he couldn't work too much on his web animated series because he had an important meeting at "the company" (read: nintendo) so he's working on a as-of-yet unannounced game.

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Yoshio Sakamoto:
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What's his deal?


A key figure of Nintendo R&D 1, Sakamoto supervised Wario Land 4 and Wario World before becoming a producer on the WarioWare series, starting with Twisted!. He also has game design credits on Smooth Moves and Game & Wario

What else did he do?

He has a long and illustrious career, his design credits include every 2D Metroid escept Metroid 2 Kid Icarus, Teleroboxer, Balloon Fight, Super Metroid, the Famicom Detective Club series, For the Frog The Bell Tolls and... Metroid Other M.

Where is he now?

Sakamoto apaprently works as a producer in Nintend EPD and produced Metroid Samus Returns.

In a 2015 interview, Sakakmoto indicated that following that year's development restructure, he was no longer supervising the "funny games" team and has no idea what they're doing now; indeed his name is not in WarioWare Gold's credit so this may be the end of his involvement in WarioWare for the time being.

Hirofumi Matsuoka
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What's his deal?: He co-directed Virtual Boy Wario Land, and directed Wario Land 4 and the original WarioWare, and also notably Mario Artist Polygon Studio, whose "Sound Bomber" mode would be the basis for the WW series.

What else did he do?: A senior employee of R&D1, he was one of the original two people assigned to work on Metroid, designer on Super Mario Land, and director of Mario Paint. Which explains a lot of things.

Where is he now?: Following the completion of WarioWare, Matsuoka departed Nintendo R&D1 to join Creatures. He worked as a designer on the Mystery Dungeon series, the Poképark series and Detective Pikachu.

Takehiko Hosokawa

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What's his deal?


A largely mysterious veteran employee of Nintendo, Hosokawa's gameography is largely made up of Wario games: co-directed Wario's debut game Super Mario Land II, co-directed the first Wario Land, did graphic design on Virtual Boy: Wario Land, directed Wario Land II and III, was a designer on Wario Land 4 and WarioWare Touched, and assistant director on Game & Wario.

What else did he do?

Hosokawa is a regular on the 2D Metroids, being a designer on Metroid II, "system director"(?) on Metroid Fusion, level designer on Zero Mission and one of the directors of Metroid Other M.

Where is he now?

Did the map for Samus Returns.

Taku Sugioka

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What's his deal?:

An Intelligent Systems employee, Taku Sugioka was specifically requested to be brought on Mega Party Games$! development by Goro Abe due to his elite programming skills. Since then, he has been involved as a programmer and/or designer on every WarioWare game until Gold, and directed Snapped!
What else did he do?

Minor programming work on Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon and directed all installements of the Pushmo series.

Where is he now?

His last game credit is director on Stretchmo. He is credited for "Special Thanks" on WarioWare Gold but it is unknown if he had any involvement in the game or if it just an acknowledgement of his important role in the series.

Naoko Mori

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What’s her deal?
: Mori was a game and graphic designer on the Warioware series, starting with Twisted! For Smooth Moves, she assumed the role of art director.


For Game & Wario, Naoko Mori assumed the role of co-director. Her task was to take Goro Abe’s idea and work to implement them into the game.


What else did she do?: Mori is credited in the Special Thanks of Paper Mario Sticker Star and Planet Puzzle League, and was a graphic designer on Mario Kart Super Circuit and Pokemon Puzzle League, and assistant director on Paper Mario Color plash.

Where she is now?:

Is credited as a supervisor on WW Gold.

Katsuya Yamano

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(if anyone has a photo of this guy that doesn't look like the internet equivalent of a cryptid sighting, I'd appreciate it)
What’s his deal: Sakamoto’s right-hand at SPD1, Katsuya Yamano was the main programmer of Wario Land II to 4, and the supervisor of all the Warioware games starting with Twisted!. He is also credited as a gamer designer on Touched!


What else did he do: Yamano followed a similar career path for the 2D Metroids. He was the assistant director of Game Boy Wars, and did the music and sound effects for Teleroboxer.


Where is he now? He was reportedly promoted to manager of Nintendo SPD1 after Sakamoto’s promotion to Deputy Manager of SPD. Following the EPD restructure, Yamano’s current role at Nintendo is unknown. Last credit is project manager on Samus Returns.
 
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Shigeru Miyamoto
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What's his deal?

Nobody knows! He is the creator of the Mario Series. In an interview it was asked why Daisy and Wario didnt appear in the New Super Mario Bros. series and his answer for Wario was:
Both Daisy and Wario were originally drawn as part of the “Mario Land” games and had the same illustrator. The art style of those games was different from the “Mario World” series with Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach, and for a long time that was the reason that we didn’t have those characters enter into each other’s stories.
and also this
Shigeru Miyamoto has explained why Wario isn't a playable character in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Apparently it's because he'd have to have a fart attack.
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Taku Sugioka

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What's his deal?:

An Intelligent Systems employee, Taku Sugioka was specifically requested to be brought on Mega Party Games$! development due to his teh l33t hax0r programming skills. Since then, he has been involved as a programmer and/or designer on every WarioWare game, and directed Snapped! (lol)

What else did he do?

Mr. Sugioka did minor programming work on Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon and directed all installements of the Pushmo series.

Where is he now?

Sugioka and his team recently shipped Pushmo World for the WiiU. Woo-hoo!

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Also, I have to issue an errata and point out Hiroji Kiyotake is *not* infact credited on any home release of Dr. Mario, unlike what The Kyoto Reports claim (which kinda puts a damper on my enthusiasm for what I thought was an eminently reliable source for Nintendo development info, ermph). I did, however, find out he has an incredibly prestigious "Technical Support" mention on everyone's favourite Satellaview game, Excitebike: Bun Bun Mario Battle Stadium!!
 
Too bad Nintendo doesn't want us to know about all this. At least not publicly anyway.

I'm not the only one getting sick of hearing about EAD all the time, right? Right?
 
I'm not the only one getting sick of hearing about EAD all the time, right? Right?

You kinda aren't! And now I'm mightily tempted to start a thread on the history of Nintendo R&D1...

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Hirofumi Matsuoka
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What's his deal?: Though his tenure on the series is not as long-lived as the others listed here, Matsuoka certainly left his mark. He co-directed Virtual Boy Wario Land, and directed Wario Land 4 and the original WarioWare. Quite the resume, eh?

What else did he do?: A senior employee of R&D1, he was a designer on Super Mario Land and the original Metroid, and did background graphics on Super Metroid and Game Boy Wars.

Where is he now?: Following the completion of WarioWare, Matsuoka departed Nintendo R&D1 to join Creatures. Well damn.
 
Another cool post. I did a bunch of research for the Credits section of my book where I profiled all the developers who worked on Wario Land 4. It's about 9 pages, so I can't really paste everything in. It casts a wider net, but the profiles are quite short. If you haven't been there already, you may find Kyoto Report, N-sider, and Moby Games quite helpful.
 
I have been unable to determine [Ko Takeuchi's] current status at Nintendo.

translating one of his latest tweet with google translates *seems* to say he's unemployed, but um, google translate.

If anybody reading this has working basis in Japanese...

こっちのアカウントは、イラストはないですが、うだうだと呟いています。→@KosanFree (*^_^*)
 
Miyamoto doesn't try to understand things that aren't his own. He probably looked very little into who Wario is or anything about him. "I wasn't involved in making him. Why should I care?"
 
Another problem is that Nintendo doesn't even want anyone to know who all the other people mentioned here are and what they made so far. It's part of why they don't want Wario to be a successful franchise. That, and their very rare interview opportunities.

Hell, they still don't want Yoshiaki Koizumi and Takashi Tezuka (both of EAD) to be recognizable names either.
 
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And I love those guys.

Just like Miyamoto all these developers are great and also flawed (like any other human). The problem is when we start viewing these guys as more than human and bigger than life. We need to acknowledge when they make mistakes and when they need the support of other developers. No great game is made by just one person.

So yes, it would be unwise to attribute Wario's greatness to one man. I'm glad you managed to mention all sorts of people.
 
No great game is made by just one person.

I'm glad someone else is saying this. I thought the cautionary tale of George Lucas would make people more careful about crediting Teh Greatness of something to just one person. Apparently not!

I'm as bitter about the state of the franchise as anybody else here, but that being said, I don't want threads to devolve in EAD/Miyamoto-bashing. People propping him up as some magical pixie thing is annoying, but the opposite is no better, and I really I don't want this place to end like buyout-era DKVine, where people made shops of Leonidas decapitating Miyamoto and made conspiracy theories blaming him for things he couldn't reasonably have been involved in.

Beside, we may fixate on the "we'd have to give Wario a farting move" interview, but Miyamoto can't *hate* the series that much. The Smooth Moves Iwata Asks shows he was very impressed by the original WarioWare and spent a lot of time and energy into thinking of how to market it.

And now I'm mightily tempted to start a thread on the history of Nintendo R&D1...

... Is anyone interested in this, btw? ^^
 
Yeah Koopaul, you gotta quit blaming Miyamoto for everything. He's had a lot of good points that you seem to be ignoring. That, and he doesn't actually "do anything" with Mario and Zelda anymore. At least not as much as he used to.

And then there's Sakurai. If there's one thing he and Miyamoto share in common, it's that people still think they have this magical ability to make games appear out of thin air. Sakurai's even made it clear a lot that some things in Smash aren't even his doing (like trophy and music choices), and that he himself can hardly keep track of what Nintendo's had to offer all this time. Especially when he goes out of his way to say, "Oh, and by the way, the trophies are written by this other guy, not me."

And he didn't even write the SSE story on his own. He tried, but couldn't. And that's why he got Kazushige Nojima on board for it. And no, he didn't "tell him to write it a certain way" either. I can't believe people still don't know this.
 
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Also, [Goro Abe's] Kyoto Report page has been updated to say he's been promoted to producer. Anyone here would happen to have a Linkedin account to see what his profile states? Place seems to have blocked bugmenot since I wrote the OP...

I registered a LinkedIn account since then and his profile page still says "Designer at Nintendo". Huh.

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An update on the Smash Bros miiverse mention the alternate poses for the Wario and Rhythm Heaven trophy in Smash were drawn by "the original designers". I asked Ko Takeuchi if he was the one who drew them, and here's what he responded:

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Cool!
 
He speaks perfect English? Interesting.

You should also ask him if a Rhythm Heaven stage or character were planned for Smash at some point. (How the hell did Smash Run get that enemy?)
 
He speaks perfect English?

Not quite : p., though since he studied at an U.S university, I pressume he has enough mastery to hold a conversation He also seems to understand French (Incidentally, I sent him a "thank you" message in French once and he responded! It made my day!).

If you want to ask him questions, he's very approachable on twitter. He'll respond if you mention WarioWare/Rhythm Heaven (though for whatever reason he'll delete his answers after a few hours - the above screencap is the only proof of the exchange actually).
 
I don't use Twitter myself. But still, you should try asking him what I mentioned.

Or maybe also if he's annoyed at how Nintendo never gives SPD and their projects the respect and recognition that they deserve.
 
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Yeah Koopaul, you gotta quit blaming Miyamoto for everything. He's had a lot of good points that you seem to be ignoring. That, and he doesn't actually "do anything" with Mario and Zelda anymore. At least not as much as he used to.

What? I wasn't blaming Miyamoto for "everything". Where in my post did I do that?
 
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