Katsuya Eguchi

Katsuya Eguchi (江口 勝也, Eguchi Katsuya) is a video game designer, producer and deputy general manager at Nintendo EAD. He was born in 1965, in Tokyo, Japan and grew up in the Chiba Prefecture. He lived there til adulthood, when he decided to move to Kyoto in 1986, to work at Nintendo. His first position in the company was working on promotional artwork, until he was assigned as a designer for Super Mario Bros. 3. In 1993, he served as a game director for Star Fox for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Other works he has directed include, Super Mario World, Star Fox 2, Wave Race 64, Yoshi's Story, Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Star Fox Command. Eguchi is most well known for the creation of the Animal Crossing series. Eguchi realized that the games he was working on were hard to play, and finish. He wanted to make something that everyone would be able to play. He also noticed that when he got home from work, his family would be playing games, he wanted to be able to play with his family even though he did not have a lot of time to do so. This inspired him to make a game where he, and his family would be able to share things, and though they weren't playing at the same time, his family would be able to see what he's done, and he could see what his family had done. Additionally he wanted to recreate the feeling of being alone in a new town away from friends and family. All of these factors inspired him to create. Since then, he has served as producer on all Animal Crossing titles. Currently he serves as the Deputy General Manager at Nintendo EAD.