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.

Yoshiharu Gotanda is another important figure to me. He's the president and co-founder of tri-Ace, my favorite game development company. He's pretty brilliant in his own right, considering he was programming some great games under Wolf Team as early as his teens.

I respect Hiroshi Matsuyama, the president and founder of CyberConnect2, for not only being behind many excellent games but for also seemingly being such a personable, upbeat guy who loves what he works on and loves the fans. I mean, you can't even Google Image search him without half the photos being of him cosplaying as Naruto, haha. I smile pretty much every time I see him.

Lastly, I have a lot of admiration and respect for Dona Bailey, who not only co-created my favorite pre-crash game (Centipede) but had the courage to push herself into an industry that was not remotely welcoming to women. I can only imagine how much bullcrap she must've faced and how it must've felt as the sole woman in Atari's coin-op division. But I'm thankful she did it because she helped open the door for many others and having a woman's perspective resulted in a game that appealed to a broader audience than the average game at the time.