Hiromasa Shikata

Hiromasa Shikata is a planner and director at Nintendo.

Biography
Hiromasa Shikata studied commercial design at university, covering a range of subjects including package design, commercials, and train ads. While it wasn't part of his university course, Shikata also studied computer graphics in his own time, and did a study of CG production as part of his graduation project.

After graduating, Shikata was hired by Nintendo and assigned to work on as a 3D background designer in 1997. During this time, he also learned to create real-time 3D computer graphics, and the technical implications of high-quality 3D CG.

Following his work on, Shikata served as a field designer on , wherein he designed Series: and Series:. Following this, he worked as a map designer on Pikmin and, being in charge of the map of Windfall Island in the case of the latter game. Following this, Shikata served as an assistant producer on Geist, a first-person shooter developed in collaboration with n-Space, Inc and published by Nintendo.

On, Shikata served as one of the game's sub-directors and then went on to be a planner for.

After the development of concluded in 2009, the majority of its development staff moved on to SS undefined. Only three members of the team stayed back, Shikata among them. Shikata, along with the other two developers, began to brainstorm ideas for a new Zelda game for the Nintendo 3DS. During the course of this process, Shikata chanced upon the idea of ALBW: merging into walls, and a prototype was created around this idea. This led to being greenlit for production. Shikata would temporarily leave the project to serve as a planner on Nintendo Land for the Wii U, and following his return was made the director of. As director, Shikata would pitch the idea of being a non-linear game that would allow players to complete its NaN Dungeons in any order they desired.

Following the completion of, Shikata would serve as director on , a project for which he would focus on the idea of cooperative multiplayer, as well as the idea of players communicating with one another using icons inspired by Japan's Line messenger application.

Games

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