Hiroji Kiyotake
Hiroji Kiyotake (清武 博二 Kiyotake Hiroji, born December 21, 1960 in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan) is a game designer for Nintendo and has been a part of the History of Nintendo since 1983. Education. Kiyotake graduated from, Kyoto Seika University with a BA of Visual Design and was part of the rugby club. Career. Starting his employment at Nintendo in 1983, working in Nintendo Research & Development 1 and Product Engineering Department and is currently a member of the Planning and Development Department. Game Design. Metroid. Hiroji was a designer for "Metroid" that was originally designed for the Famicom Disk  System. Hiroji is the character designer of Samus Aran and named the "Metroid" character after Pelé but later found out that Pelé's full name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento not Samus Arantes. Hiroji and Yoshio Sakamoto and the rest of the team decided that at the end of "Metroid" to reveal that Samus was a female character, making Samus Aran one of the first female protagonists in a video game. Wario Series. Kiyotake is the original designer of Mario's rival Wario and one of the key people in the Wario series. Kiyotake and Takehiko Hosokawa were the directors  and graphic designers of "" and "". For "Virtual Boy Wario Land" he acted as a director and for Wario games released after Wario Land 4, his role is mostly limited to the Wario design and advising, according to the staff credits of the respective games. During the development of "", Kiyotake supervised the numerous forms of disguised Wario designed by SUZAK.