Yoshiaki Koizumi: Difference between revisions

'''Yoshiaki Koizumi''' (born April 29th, 1968 in Japan) originally had no interest in video games.  He graduated in 1991 from Osaka University of Arts, where he studied film, drama, animation, and storyboarding in the hopes of becoming a film director.  His dream was to create characters and tell their stories with dramatic tension as they act toward accomplishment in their own world.  Although the Famicom came out when he was in sixth grade, his first experience with video games wasn't until he borrowed one from a friend in college to play ''Super Mario Bros.''  Being inexperienced and not good at action games, Mario was very difficult and he died frequently.  "And it was at that point that it occurred to me, what do first-time players think of games like this? You jump right in and you just die over and over again. I found it a little easier to play [[The Legend of Zelda (Game)|Zelda]], because [[Link]] has three hearts. It’s not like you touch something once and then you’re dead."<ref name="Wired">''[http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2007/12/interview-super/ Interview: ''Super Mario Galaxy'' Director On Sneaking Stories Past Miyamoto]'', Wired, 4 Dec 2007</ref>

Following with most of the early Zelda titles, which were developed gameplay first, story second, they didn't need a writer until later in development.  When the time came to work on the [[Link's Awakening Story|story]], they called Koizumi in from another division.  Like his last Zelda game, he came in to work on the manual, and again, it didn't have much of a story in place, so he had to make it up himself.  ''Link’s Awakening'' had a unique development process, which was more like an after-school club than the disciplined teams with well-defined roles that create software today.  People did whatever work needed to be done, and Koizumi ended up making the story for the entire game.  Miyamoto didn't give the team much attention as producer, so Koizumi had almost free reign as long as he didn't push the story too much and make Miyamoto angry.

The conditions were just right to allow Koizumi to use his imagination and present to us a unique and captivating story.  It was the first of its kind in Zelda, as [[Eiji Aonuma|Aonuma]] comments: "It wasn't until ''The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening'' that the series started having a proper plot."<ref name="Iwata Asks" />  Previous games had some backstory and progressive objectives, but Koizumi considers themes like "save the princess" to be ''goals'', not ''story''.  For ''Link’s Awakening'', he was able to add [[:Category:Link's Awakening Characters|characters]] to interact with and continue the story throughout the game.  Even the [[Nightmare]]s whose behaviors he designed were directly related to the story and had dialog to show it.