Nintendo


Yoichi Yamada (born April 21, 1964) is a veteran video game planner at Nintendo and a prominent member of The Legend of Zelda team, having worked on numerous Zelda game released since the A Link to the Past as a planner or supervisor.

History[]

Initially, Yamada worked on early sound and polygon research on the SNES, with his first known game development work being planning the overworld and four of the dungeons of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Afterwards, he worked as assistant director on the SNES Star Fox titles, being in charge of organizing enemies and obstacles on the courses.

On the Nintendo 64, Yamada became course director on Super Mario 64, and later game system director on Ocarina of Time; for this title, Yamada was mostly in charge of establishing the game systems for the Zelda series' transition into 3D graphics.[1] This was followed by Majora's Mask, where he handled memory management, programming and coding system design.[2]

His work on the Zelda series led him to become one of the main planners and supervisors of most of the titles of the franchise, including the titles developed by Capcom, where he has been in charge of ensuring the "Zelda-ness" of the game design by the development teams.

Games[]

Interviews[]

Trivia[]

  • The character Slippy Toad in Star Fox was based around Yamada.

References[]