Kinoko Nasu
Kinoko Nasu first began writing "Fate/stay night" in college and had not intended it to be a game. Initially, Nasu only wrote what would become the game's "Fate" storyline, but the game went on to have three storylines, the "Fate" storyline being one of them. In his early drafts, "Fate"s heroine Saber was a man, and the protagonist was a girl with glasses. This early draft was embodied in the short original video animation (OVA) "Fate/Prototype", which was released with the final volume of the "Carnival Phantasm" OVA series. Nasu set aside the project and went on to found Type-Moon with artist Takashi Takeuchi. After the success of their first visual novel "Tsukihime" in 2000, Type-Moon transitioned from a dōjin soft organization to a commercial organization. Nasu and Takeuchi decided to turn the old Fate story into a visual novel as Type-Moon's first commercial product. In the beginning, Nasu was worried that because the main character was a girl, the story might not work as a bishōjo game. It was artist Takeuchi who suggested switching the genders of the protagonist and Saber to fit the game market.