Satoru Takizawa

Satoru Takizawa is a graphic designer at Nintendo. He started working at the company during the days of the Nintendo 64, and is known for his work on the enemies of video games such as in Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. His first project was designing the logo for the SNES video game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.

Biography
As a kid, Satoru was interested in drawings comics rather than playing the Famicom (NES). In fact, the only times he'd ever play video games was at his friends' house, as he himself didn't own one. After constructing a comic, he'd pass it around his class at school for the others to read.

In college, Satoru would develop CG effects for his friends' projects, but still wasn't interested in video games. After being introduced to the Super Famicom and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, he apparently knew that he had to work at Nintendo after seeing the possibilities video games had.

When he finally got a job, his first project was a minor task - to create the logo for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island for the SNES. When the Nintendo 64 was released, the company needed a lot of people for 3D design, and they turned to none other than Satoru Takizawa, whom had worked on 3D designs prior to coming to Nintendo. His first works on 3D design were enemies in Super Mario 64, including Klepto the Condor, Unagi the eel, and the Manta Ray.

Come Star Fox 64, he was already working not only on bosses but landscapes as well. The bosses he designed include Goras in Titania, Bacoon in Aquas, Sarumarine in Zoness and Mechbeth in Macbeth. According to him, the technology that he used during Star Fox 64 was unheard of while he was attending university.

One of his most important tasks during the Nintendo 64 era was creating Ganondorf and other enemies in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, notably Twinrova. Designing Twinrova was apparently a challenge for him, as the scenario writer made the scenes with the characters funny, and he was afraid that he couldn't live up to that standard, though Shigeru Miyamoto liked it and ultimately put it in the game. While he claims that that was one of the more challenging moments, he also says that designing a cel-shaded Moblin was also hard work.

For The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii and GameCube, Satoru was the art director for the game.

Games

 * Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - Logo designer, uncredited
 * Super Mario 64 - Enemy designer
 * Star Fox 64 - Enemy designer, landscape
 * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Character designer
 * 1080° Snowboarding
 * The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Enemy designer
 * The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Design manager, enemy designer
 * Pokémon Box - Designer
 * The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Art director
 * Super Smash Bros. Brawl