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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[]
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991) - Assistant Director
- Star Fox (1993) - Assistant Director
- Star Fox 2 (1995) - Assistant Director
- Super Mario 64 (1996) - Course Director
- Wave Race 64 (1996) - Demo Sequence Director
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) - Game System Director
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000) - Memory Management Director
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (2001) - Supervisor
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (2001) - Supervisor
- Luigi's Mansion (2001) - Assistant Director
- Pikmin (2001) - Debug Support
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords (2002) - Director (A Link to the Past), Supervisor (Four Swords)
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2002) - Assistant Director
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (2004) - Supervisor
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006) - Sub-Director
- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (2007) - Supervisor
- Link's Crossbow Training (2007) - Sub-Director
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (2009) - Supervisor
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011) - Planning
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (2013) - Field Planning
- The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes (2015) - Game Planning Lead
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) - Game Design
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch) (2019) - Original Supervisor
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (2024) - Planning Supervisor
Interviews[]
- Star Fox Development Interview (translated by Glitterberri)
- N.O.M.: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages (translation via Zelda Dungeon)
Trivia[]
- The character Slippy Toad in Star Fox was based around Yamada.