Takashi Tezuka

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Takashi Tezuka (born November 17, 1960) is a video game designer for Nintendo. His work extends far back to the original Super Mario Bros. of which he took on the role of Assistant Director to Shigeru Miyamoto. He later then worked on Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (Assistant Director), Legend of Zelda (Graphic Designer) and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (Supervisor/Advisor).

Tezuka's first directorial debut was with Super Mario Bros. 3, of which was supervised by Shigeru Miyamoto (Producer). He later went on to direct Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, and again was Assistant Director to Shigeru Miyamoto for Super Mario 64. He was also Advisor/Supervisor to Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Nowadays, he is responsible for running the Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development department that is responsible for major Mario titles. In 2005, he was promoted to General Producer of the department (as part of the internal restructuring of Nintendo, headed by Satoru Iwata) and thus supervised all major Mario titles within Nintendo, including outsourced projects such as Yoshi's Island DS (which is under development by Artoon). He is still busy with design work despite his promotion, as he was one of the designers for New Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo DS.