Eiji Aonuma

Eiji Aonuma is one of the Nintendo employees most closely involved with The Legend of Zelda games. He was born in 1963. His journey began while attending the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music where he studied design. He graduated in 1988. He worked on mechanical figures that moved, which are essentially marionettes. Aonuma believes the name "Mario" originates from the word marionette. Aonuma acquired his job at Nintendo when he was just 25 years old and has been with the company since.

Aonuma admits he's never really cared for Mario games. "To be honest with you, I just don't like action games that require you to jump," he says. "They're scary. The jumping factor kind of freaks me out."

Eiji Aonuma's first major game creation came with his director role in the 1996 Japan-only Super Famicom adventure title Marvelous, under Nintendo developer Research & Development 2. Marvelous was heavily influenced by A Link to the Past. Shigeru Miyamoto saw the game and asked Aonuma to join him as assistant director on Nintendo 64 development with Ocarina of Time. Aonuma got to incorporate the same assets to that game -- dungeon layouts, enemy placement, and more. Miyamoto was very pleased and permitted Aonuma to be the main director of Majora's Mask. Aonuma's ingenuity and hard work showed in his game, garnishing high praise and acceptance from all Zelda fans. Aonuma resumed his duty as Chief Director with The Wind Waker. Eiji Aonuma is now working as a producer overseeing a variety of Zelda titles in development.

Contribution to the timeline
Aonuma has on several occasions displayed an apparent interest in the Zelda chronology. In an interview on Wind Waker, when asked about its place in the timeline he described the two endings of Ocarina of Time. Something fans and early theorist would conceptualize as the so called split timeline. On another occasion he reasserted it, while explaining it to a confused Miyamoto, despite the fact that Aonuma had not been on board for a good portion of the series. In later years, Aonuma took a more active role in the story of the series, even at times correcting things for Miyamoto, though their accounts have conflicted.

With the release of the Four Sword Adventures, Aonuma stated his intent of trying to bring the stories of the Zelda games together. He went on to state that the Four Swords, and its sequel the Four Sword Adventures was the oldest tale in the timeline. This lead to some dispute among fans, who question Aonuma's statement as he was not involved in making the stories of those games and with no backup confirmation from Shigeru Miyamoto, the series creator who has previously stated clearly that Ocarina of Time is the origin story of the series. Though Miyamoto has given more of a free hand to Aonuma in more recent years, he still retains ultimate authority over both Aonuma and the series.

Some time after the release of the Twilight Princess, Aonuma would once again bring up the two endings of Ocarina of Time,explaining that Twilight Princess follows the child ending and with Wind Waker being a parallel on the adult ending.