What influential game developer do you admire most?

[TimTendo]

As far as designers/directors/producers/programmers/etc. go, that's an easy choice for me: Gunpei Yokoi. He was effectively Miyamoto's mentor, invented the Game & Watch, D-pad, Game Boy, Virtual Boy, WonderSwan, and produced classic franchises like Metroid, Kid Icarus, Fire Emblem, Dr. Mario, Wario Land, etc. And his reward for all his accomplishments was being driven out of Nintendo, blamed for the Virtual Boy's failure, and then he tragically died in a traffic accident only about a year later. He was a creative genius as far as I'm concerned, and I can only imagine what else he could've created had he not be robbed from this world in only his mid 50s. Whenever I beat a game with his involvement and see his name scroll by in the credits, I always feel a bit melancholy.

Couldn't agree more. Yokoi-san was the unsung hero of Nintendo from the inception of the Game & Watch all the way up to his untimely death. His achievements and creations stretch far beyond merely "innovative" and go straight into "revolutionary". The work of his R&D1 team (game-wise) largely seem to make up the underdogs of the Nintendo canon; titles such as Kid Icarus or Wario Land seldom see an avalanche of entries every decade like other franchises, but maybe that's a good thing.

[Aussie2B]

I getting the feeling that maybe Nintendo hasn't touched many of Yokoi's franchises much out of respect after his death or maybe because there's just nobody at Nintendo with the same level of passion for those IPs as Yokoi had.

[kupomogli]

Anyways, I'll add to the thread. During my rant about it's one person making a name off the back of others, I mentioned Hironobu Sakaguchi. Now, while outside of video games Dungeons and Dragon's is the first RPG and Ultima is the first recognizable series(I don't know if it's the first game though,) it wasn't until Dragon Quest by Yuji Horii that video game RPGs became more enjoyable. Now, Dragon Warrior imo isn't a good game, because the game focused way too much on grinding with literally little to no content in between, but it was more appealing than Ultima which I played much later and just couldn't get into.

However, it was because he was influenced by the Dragon Warrior series that Hironobu Sakaguchi made the Final Fantasy series, using many ideas from other RPGs out there at the time. The larger and customizable character roster and the more streamlined gameplay made Final Fantasy a more enjoyable RPG compared to the very limited Dragon Warrior or the unstructured western titles at the time. Despite a world not nearly as simplistic and obvious on where to go next as Dragon Warrior, it was simple where to go and what to do as long as you paid attention to the towns people you came across. The classes were well designed where you had melee fighters who were constant damage dealers and the charged spells from mages made the characters themselves weaker, but devastating compared to your main fighters when you decided to go all out. The original Final Fantasy despite being the first one in the series is also difficult, but even then one of the most balanced JRPGs requiring very little grinding and almost none at all depending on how well you know the game.

It was games that were developed by Sakaguchi that continued to innovate the JRPG. Despite not liking Final Fantasy 3, the actual Final Fantasy 3, because this game is a ridiculous grind ontop of the requirement of very specific classes for each dungeon. All classes gained a unique aspect to them in how they functioned. Final Fantasy 5 took this further and allowed a lot of cross classing for a very large number of classes. All of the earlier games had a sort of class system as per character based, but it was Final Fantasy 3 and 5 that allowed more experimentation. Who knows who came up with the ATB system on Final Fantasy 4, but the reason why it hasn't been used anywhere else outside of Final Fantasy is because it was copyrighted by Square Enix, and Sakaguchi was director there too. There are versions of the ATB in Grandia and White Knight Chronicles, but there are major differences in how they function.

If not for how good the Final Fantasy games are, and how big of a following the series has gained in both west and east, the RPG genre may not have been as big is it was in the golden era of JRPGs back in SNES and PS1. As Dragon Warrior and other RPGs inspired Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger(which was actually a Squaresoft and Enix co developed title with Yuji Horii and Sakaguchi both part of the games development,) inspired many other RPGs and JRPGs. Breath of Fire 1 and 2 were developed but published by Squaresoft on the SNES, meaning it's quite obvious where they got their inspiration.

That being said, everyone knows Sakaguchi.

So how about Takashi Tokita, I only remember his name as a director on many Squaresoft JRPGs including Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve because I make a joke about the name and spelling of it all the time(add the last name's letter to the end of the first name. *mind blow.* You can't unsee it.)

[Aussie2B]

There are probably millions of Japanese people who have a "shi" in their name followed by a character that starts with a "t" sound. It's hardly anything unusual. Technically, Takashi Tokita wouldn't even be an example because Japanese people write their names with the surname first, so it'd be Tokita Takashi to them. It'd make more sense to snicker at, say, Yoshitaka Amano's name, which one couldn't even write on GameFAQs back in the day because it was automatically flagged as cursing. But even then, in Japanese, there's no such thing as a "t" that exists by itself. The characters in Amano's given name are Yo-shi-ta-ka. But none of this really matters because making fun of anybody's name is immature to begin with, and making fun of a foreigner's name is ignorant on top of that.

[Tron 2.0]

Id say george kamitani of vanillaware with his company it shows there's a market for 2d still.The other being,tetsuya takahashi of monolith soft.Yeah the xeno series has it's flaws but they got it right with xenoblade chronicles.Also i'm am looking forward towards the remaster as well with xenoblade chronicles the definite edition.

[kupomogli]

But even then, in Japanese, there's no such thing as a "t" that exists by itself. The characters in Amano's given name are Yo-shi-ta-ka. But none of this really matters because making fun of anybody's name is immature to begin with, and making fun of a foreigner's name is ignorant on top of that.

All you need is a silver suit of armor to go with this comment. Who says word play or jokes in general says you're making fun of someone? Sure, I remember the persons name because I think Takashi T is funny. Joking is not the same as actually hating on someone, if it was then Dave Chappelle must be the biggest racist to walk the Earth. If he was, I wouldn't give a crap, he's funny as hell.

I remember the name because it's actually pretty common for guys to talk about taking a sh** jokingly(and not jokingly.) It's probably on the top 10 most common thing guys talk about when they don't have anything to talk about. Taking a sh**. So yeah, I find the name and remember the name because it's amusing.

Pro tip: Try being less uptight. I'm pretty comfortable saying what I'm thinking, I'm not hating on someones name, I'm not a racist. Not everyone is going to conform to this worlds 2020 pussy outlook on life and stop acting like they they want to because making jokes about homosexuality and race is looked on to be horrifying. Did I offend you by saying you're uptight? Good. Because every single time I type something you respond with a comment telling me that I'm not commenting the way that you think I should comment, that my comment is somehow offending or misrepresenting something. Maybe you should worry less about me and worry more about yourself. Back in the day you called me a troll because I "force my opinions" where stating my opinion is obviously forcing my opinion on someone, to the point that I actually made the comment on my signature pointing that everything in my post is opinion. Your comments however have all been specifically directed at how I am commenting on the forum, and that right there is forcing your bullshit ideals on my responses. Do I give a shit if you ban me for this post? Fuck no. Infact maybe that was your intention, but maybe you should try taking a hard look in the mirror before you talk shit to the next person. Fucking hypocrite.

I could edit this all and guarantee that I'm not banned, but seriously, I really don't take shit from anyone, I don't give a fuck who you are. So I get banned, whooopity fucking doo.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

Will Wright, who pioneered the "Sim" game genre, also known as the "Whatever TF you want to do" genre.

[Edmond Dantes]

Honestly, I have a hard time deciding, because any developer I've ever heard of has something I find respectable. Even Shigeru Miyamoto (who I find kind of overrated) has a metric ton of wisdom and genuine smarts--the idea of bricks that only bounce when you hit them but break if your big and how it introduces players to the concept of changing circumstances is probably one of the most genius moments of gaming.

I like Hideo Kojima--going off my recent JRPGs thread, his games in general are some of the few that generally feel like they're made for me (though admittedly, unlike most people I found MGS3 Snake Eater a huge step backwards and Peace Walker was basically unplayable to me and soured me on the MGS series, but I accept this was him trying to bow to market demands. If he had been allowed to make whatever he wanted, we would've hit the singularity by now).

But yeah, how do you pick a favorite among greats?