Born July 23, 1959, Yoshio Sakamoto (坂本 賀勇) is a video game designer, director, and producer who has worked for Nintendo since 1982. Initially contributing art, graphics, and gameplay design for their early arcade, Game & Watch, and Nintendo Entertainment System games such as Donkey Kong, Metroid, and Kid Icarus (1986), he would also write the story for the Famicom Detective Club games; many of these games were produced by Gunpei Yokoi.
One of his most prominent early director roles would be Super Metroid; following the departure and death of series co-creator Gunpei Yokoi, Sakamoto would direct and/or produce future Metroid games, focusing most of his attention on the Side View Metroidvania games while having a much less direct supervisory role for the Metroid Prime Trilogy made by Retro Studios (usually just to make sure the latter keep things consistent with the overarching lore of the series).
Aside from the Metroid series, he has also produced much quirkier games such as the WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven games. He has described one of his personal goals as a game maker as to put out products that are distinct from those made by Shigeru Miyamoto.
