CV

Masahiro Sakurai was in his teens when he joined HAL Laboratory, where he almost immediately created one of Japan’s bestloved characters. Kirby was a happy accident, a simple test character that became the star of his own game. By 1992, Kirby’s Dream Land was released, and Sakurai, still just 21, had his first hit. He directed two more Kirby games (1993’s Adventure and 1996’s Super Star) before working on a prototype for a fourplayer fighting game that would go on to define his career. Sakurai left HAL in 2003 to establish his own company, Sora Ltd, in theory so he could become a freelance developer. Still, every game he’s released since – including 2005 puzzle game Meteos and 2012’s Kid Icarus: Uprising – has been published by Nintendo.