Eiji Aonuma

Eiji Aonuma

Date of Birth: 1963

Home Town:

Occupation: Director

Bestselling Game:

Development Teams

Nintendo EAD - R&D 2

Biography

Eiji Aonuma attended the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he majored in design. He spent a lot of time working on marionettes. He graduated in 1988 and was hired by Nintendo.

He began in R&D 2 where he worked on Marvelous: Another Treasure Island, a game heavily influenced by The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Shigeru Miyamoto saw his work and asked him to be assistant director for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Upon the success of Ocarina of Time, Aonuma has been appointed as director for the Zelda series.

Trivia

• Aonuma believes that Mario's name originates from the word Marionette.
• Aonuma is a percussionist for "The Wind Wakers", a group of Nintendo employees that plays concerts for other employees four times a year.
• Aonuma enjoys cooking and would like to incorporate that into a game somehow.
• Aonuma doesn't like platformers. "To be honest with you, I just don't like action games that require you to jump," he says. "They're scary. The jumping factor kind of freaks me out."