Masahiro Sakurai
, b. 1970
Masahiro Sakurai, born on August 3, 1970 in Tokyo, Japan, was the director and creator of Kid Icarus: Uprising. He began his career in his late teens working for HAL Laboratory, where he created and directed the highly popular Kirby’s Dream Land (1992) for the Nintendo Game Boy. Also, whilst at HAL Laboratory, he also directed Kirby’s Adventure (1993) for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Kirby Super Star (1996) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Whilst still working for HAL Laboratory, Masahiro noted a gap in the market for fighting games on home consoles and began working, unofficially at first, on what later became Super Smash Bros. (1999) for the Nintendo 64, one of Nintendo’s biggest series of games (see here, accessed: June 25, 2018). On August 5, 2003, Masahiro left HAL Laboratory, later joining Q Entertainment, where he created the puzzle game Meteos (2005) for the Nintendo DS. In 2005, he created his own company named Sora Ltd, based in Tokyo, where he has since developed all of the Super Smash Bros. games. In 2008, he was approached by Satoru Iwata (1959 – 2015), president of Nintendo at the time, who wanted to create a game for Nintendo’s new handheld console (see here, accessed: June 25, 2018). Masahiro wanted to incorporate flying mechanics and both agreed that Pit and Kid Icarus would be a perfect match (see here, accessed: June 25, 2018). He is still working on various other games for Nintendo, however, at a much slower pace after being diagnosed with calcific tendinitis.
Bio prepared by Nanci Santos, University of Roehampton, nancisantos@hotmail.co.uk
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