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 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as a 3D background designer. 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 , and then as a map designer on Pikmin and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, 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 The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

After the development of concluded in 2009, the majority of its development staff moved on to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. 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 Link merging into walls, and a prototype was created around this idea, which led to The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 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 A Link Between Worlds being a non-linear game that would allow players to complete its dungeons in any order they desired.

Following the completion of, Shikata would serve as director on The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, 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.

Notable Achievements
Shikata has been involved with since 1997. His most notable contribution to the series was as the director of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, pitching the idea for the game's wall-merging mechanic, and for the game to be less linear and more open-ended. would go on to sell over 4.16 million units on the Nintendo 3DS and helped demonstrate to the public that Nintendo was capable of breaking the conventions of the Zelda series, which in turn helped build faith in the brand prior to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Games

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