Daiki Iwamoto

Daiki Iwamoto is a game director and game supervisor at Nintendo, and a company director at Monolith Soft.

Biography
After joining Nintendo, Iwamoto's first job involved programming 3D tools for Star Fox 2 on the Super Famicom. Following this, he served as a programmer on Super Mario 64, and would then be placed in charge of cinematic sequences for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Iwamoto would then go on to be one of many programmers on Luigi's Mansion, the Game Boy Advance port of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Pokémon Box for the Gamecube, and then serve as boss battle director on The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures.

Around May 2004, after development of had concluded, the game's developers began experimenting with the Nintendo DS, Iwamoto among them. Iwamoto began to prototype a multiplayer Zelda along the same lines as for the Nintendo DS, when Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma stepped in and advised that the team devise a new style of Zelda gameplay using the Nintendo DS's touch controls instead. At the time, Aonuma was dividing his time between and, and left the five-man Nintendo DS team to continue with its experiments. When he returned from E3 the following month, the team informed him that the Nintendo DS hardware was capable of supporting cel-shaded graphics like the ones used in.

Aonuma had been disappointed by 's poor sales and asked the team to implement cel-shading in their prototype, hoping to give the style a second chance at success. Soon afterwards, the team presented Aonuma with a tech demo of Toon Link moving around in a 3D environment on the Nintendo DS's top screen. On the bottom screen was a map with an icon that the player would drag to move Link around. Feeling that these controls weren't intuitive, Aonuma asked the team to flip the two screens, moving the game world to the bottom screen instead, which would allow the player to control Link by touching him directly.

This prototype would go on to become The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourlgass, a sequel to, on which Iwamoto would serve as director. According to Aonuma, Iwamoto put considerable effort into improving upon the gameplay from, and was especially particular about the characterization of the Linebeck character, working with sub-director Hidemaro Fujibayashi to finalize his dialogue.

Iwamoto would return as the director of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, a game with which he desired to create something more original than, which was largely a straightforward sequel to. As part of this pursuit, he elected to have Link's partner be Princess Zelda herself, rather than Tetra, who had served as his partner in and, citing that he "didn't like Tetra all that much." Iwamoto's reasoning was that Tetra had already played as significant role in two games, and that since the series was named "The Legend of Zelda," it would make sense to have Zelda herself play a more prominent role. Iwamoto also stated that he didn't wish to get too caught up in what counted as "Zelda-like" during the development of, which contributed to the game's more original feel.

In the years following 's release, Iwamoto has taken on a number of responsibilities at Nintendo. He served as a planner on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, where he was placed in charge of the game's sky section and played a major role in the game's introductory sequence, events involving the people of Skyloft, and the Loftwing flight mechanics.

In addition, he has served as a game designer on New Super Mario Bros. U and New Super Luigi U. He also supervised the development of both The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and, alongside serving as the assistant director of. In 2023, he was added to the list of company directors at Monolith Software, Inc., developer of the Xenoblade series and co-developer of.

Notable Achievements
Iwamoto has been employed by Nintendo since the early 1990s, and has worked on a number of critically-acclaimed projects released by the company, encompassing both the Mario and Zelda franchises.

With The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Iwamoto and Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma successfully introduced the series to a wider audience through its more accessible control scheme and mechanics. Iwamoto also served as the assistant director of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game that has gone on to sell over 25 million units worldwide, making it the highest-selling Zelda game to date.

Games

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