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.

Plans on continuing to work in the series
In a 2008 interview with Nintendo Power, Aonuma commented that he will keep working on the Zelda series until creating a title that surpasses the impact caused by Ocarina of Time ; in a 2009 conference in Spain, he said that Ocarina of Time itself hasn't aged very well, but agrees that a major overhaul in the upcoming games' gameplay is necessary to render the "surpassing" objective succesful.

Contribution to the timeline
Aonuma has on several occasions displayed an apparent interest in the Zelda chronology. During the development of Ocarina of Time, he inserted references to The Adventure of Link, naming important characters after towns in The Adventure of Link so that it would appear that the towns were named after the characters. In an interview on The Wind Waker, when asked about its place in the timeline he described the two endings of Ocarina of Time. On another occasion he reasserted it, while explaining it to Miyamoto himself in the years following Ocarina of Time.

With the release of 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. Aonuma also stated after the release of The Minish Cap that it was a prequel to Four Sword Adventures.

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 The Wind Waker being a parallel on the adult ending.

During the development of Skyward Sword, Aonuma confirmed that a master timeline document did exist, and that only he, Miyamoto, and the director of a particular Zelda game have access to it. He stated that Skyward Sword took place before Ocarina of Time, but stopped short of calling it the first game in the series. A statement like that would limit the timeline placement of future games, he stated.