Kazuaki Morita
Kazuaki Morita is an employee of Nintendo and its subsidiary SRD Co., Ltd.
Morita serves as a company director and Technical Fellow at SRD, and has been involved in the development of a number of Nintendo games, beginning with Ice Climber on the Super Famicom.
Biography
Morita taught himself computer programming at a young age, stating that there were no schools that he knew of that taught the subject at the time.[1]
Upon joining Nintendo, he worked as a programmer on Ice Climber and Super Mario Bros, followed by the original Legend of Zelda.[2][3] Morita also worked as programmer onYume Kōjō: Dokidoki Panic, citing the game as one that allowed him to experiment with a number of new programming techniques and further develop his skills.[4]
Following his work on Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Morita would serve as an object programmer on A Link to the Past.
After the release of the Game Boy handheld, Morita began to experiment with prototyping a Zelda-like game using a Game Boy development kit, which led to Nintendo exploring the idea of porting A Link to the Past to the Game Boy.[5][6] Once the project transitioned to being an original Zelda game for the Game Boy (Link's Awakening), Morita enjoyed a considerable amount of creative freedom while working on its mechanics, and contributed a large number of ideas to it, such as being able to tame a Chain Chomp enemy and walk it on a leash.[7] Also among these ideas was a fishing minigame that Morita developed for the title, inspired by his own love for the hobby, and this would serve as the first of several fishing games developed by him for the series.[8][9]
Morita has stated that he needed to re-learn programming to keep up when Nintendo began developing 3D games with the Nintendo 64, with Star Fox 64 being his first 3D project.[10] Following this, Morita worked on Ocarina of Time, a project for which he programmed the game's boss characters, created the fishing minigame, and also drafted the dialogue and personality for the Pond Owner character.[11][12][13] Morita was also responsible for the player's ability to cut signs at different angles using Link's sword.[14]
During the development of Twilight Princess, Morita would once again develop a fishing minigame for that title, and personally programmed its motion controls for game's Wii port.[15] More recently, Morita has served as a programming director on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a supervisor on A Link Between Worlds, and a supervisor on Breath of the Wild.
Notable Achievements
Morita is one of Nintendo's oldest employees, having worked on a large number of the company's games encompassing the Mario, Zelda, and Star Fox franchises. He has played a key role in the development of a number of Zelda games, including Link's Awakening, which went into production following his experiments with a Game Boy development kit.[16] The existence of the fishing minigames in various Zelda titles is also credited largely to Morita, who kickstarted the tradition with Link's Awakening, and would go on to program the fishing games in that title, Ocarina of Time, and Twilight Princess.[17][18][19]
The Legend of Zelda Games
| Game | Position |
|---|---|
| The Legend of Zelda | Programmer (Uncredited) |
| The Adventure of Link | Programmer |
| A Link to the Past | Object Programmer |
| Link's Awakening | Programmer |
| Link's Awakening DX | Programmer |
| Ocarina of Time | Boss Enemy Program Main Program |
| Majora's Mask | Boss Enemy Program |
| The Wind Waker | Additional Programming |
| Twilight Princess | Program Director |
| Spirit Tracks | Special Thanks |
| Skyward Sword | Program Director |
| A Link Between Worlds | Supervisor |
| Breath of the Wild | Supervisor |
| Link's Awakening for Nintendo Switch | Special Thanks |
References
- ↑ "My humble beginnings in programming go way back before Ice Climber. When I was young, there was no school—at least, that I knew of then—where I could study computer programming. So I taught myself everything. In life, you never know what things from your past will turn out to be highly influential as you mature. I was excellent at basic math, but not good at highly conceptual abstract mathematics. That aptitude for concrete math probably guided my hand toward programming, which is all about making real stuff happen. And I also liked crafting things like action figures and (here’s where a childhood fascination truly helped make history) fishing lures, since I also loved fishing. Maybe you can guess where I’m going with that, but I’ll get back to the water later." —Kazuaki Morita (Inside Zelda: Part 9.)
- ↑ "The first game that I programmed, Ice Climber, was my warm-up on the NES, then I dove into the fascinating task of working on the code for Super Mario Bros." —Kazuaki Morita (Inside Zelda: Part 9.)
- ↑ "Now here’s something from gaming history you probably don’t know. Right after I finished work on Super Mario Bros. for the NES, I dove right into development of the very first Legend of Zelda game. Some of Mr. Miyamoto’s early direction explored some features of the game using a microphone to do things like beating enemies by making sounds into the mic. Though we ultimately didn’t employ mic control in the game, working with the possibility opened my mind. The programming itself wasn’t a huge challenge, since the sound system was already in the hardware specs, but what blew my mind was how Mr. Miyamoto thought up such innovative ideas so effortlessly." —Kazuaki Morita (Inside Zelda: Part 9.)
- ↑ "Speaking of other groundbreaking projects, I still fondly recall how games like Doki Doki Panic—the foundation for Super Mario Bros. 2 in North America—really stimulated my imagination as a programmer. That game was released for the Famicon Disk System in Japan, which—back in the day—was a truly fascinating system from a programming point of view. Of course, disk systems are common now, but then we were just exploring how the disk worked as an immense memory reservoir, which let me toy with many programming methods that I couldn’t do with ROM. Working with my design partner, and getting very little guidance from others, we developed Doki Doki Panic in ways that really pushed my skills. I really matured as a programmer during that time. Very interesting work." —Kazuaki Morita (Inside Zelda: Part 9.)
- ↑ "He used the only Game Boy development kit we had at the time to recreate something like a Zelda game. We weren't particularly planning to make a Zelda game for Game Boy, but we thought we'd try it out to see how it will work. So at first there was no official project. We'd do our regular work during normal work hours, and then work on it sort of like an afterschool club activity." —Takashi Tezuka (Kirby and Chomps in Zelda.)
- ↑ "That was 1991. At that time I asked to begin official development of The Legend of Zelda game for Game Boy. That's when we were able to get one more development kit. But at the time, we still had the idea of simply transplanting The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past to Game Boy..." —Takashi Tezuka (Like an afterschool club.)
- ↑ "That's right! The SRD programmer was doing whatever he wanted and had it so you could hold onto and walk a Chomp that had previously been your enemy and have it eat flowers in front of a dungeon." —Takashi Tezuka (Kirby and Chomps in Zelda.)
- ↑ "Now I promised that I would talk about fishing. Like I said before, I loved fishing as a kid and it remains my favorite hobby today. It’s no coincidence that fishing has become a big part of Zelda games. Recall the fishing zone in Ocarina? That was a programming project that I worked on secretly behind the scenes and surprised the development team with. Fortunately, they really liked it, so the fishing zone made it into the game! Actually, there are several people on our team that like fishing as much as I do, and we get away once each year for a big fishing camp. No surprise, then, that Nintendo has previously said that fishing gameplay will return in Twilight Princess. Of course, the first Zelda game that featured fishing was Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy. That happened during a short period of downtime after the massive Link to the Past project ended in the early ‘90s. I wanted to learn how to program for the Game Boy, and did a lot of experiments. Once I started, I discovered that Game Boy programming was quite sophisticated, yet very accessible. Far beyond our original expectations, we did so many wonderful things with our experiments that we decided to reconceive it all as part of a Zelda game for the Game Boy." —Kazuaki Morita (Inside Zelda: Part 9.)
- ↑ "Even now, fishing games recur in the home console The Legend of Zelda games. The one Morita-san made for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening started all that." —Eiji Aonuma (Like an afterschool club.)
- ↑ "When Nintendo made its shift from the Super NES to the Nintendo 64, I needed to forget absolutely everything that I’d learned to make the jump from 2-D to 3-D programming. That’s easier said than done! Star Fox 64 was my first 3-D project. Lucky for me that Star Fox 64 was primarily about nonhuman objects like space fighters and tanks. It was a great opportunity for me to sink my teeth into 3-D programming, since I could learn a new way of thinking without tackling the far greater challenge of programming human characters, which would come soon enough for me after that!" —Kazuaki Morita (Inside Zelda: Part 9.)
- ↑ "I'm Morita from SRD. As Takizawa-san mentioned, I was mainly in charge of programming the bosses. I also worked on the fishing minigame." —Kazuaki Morita (Fun days.)
- ↑ "You didn't just do the programming, but you also wrote the script for the Pond Owner who appears at the Fishing Pond." —Eiji Aonuma (Fun days.)
- ↑ "In addition to the dialogue, Morita-san made lots of requests regarding that character's face and movements. He requested specific movements like this one (gesturing as if scratching his side) and even drew a rough sketch of how his face should look." —Eiji Aonuma (Fun days.)
- ↑ "Miyanaga: If you swing the sword at an angle, the sign splits diagonally. Who made it so you can cut the signs different ways like that? Morita: I think I designed that. I thought of it like a little wheel of cheese cut into six pieces. Iwata: Like cheese, huh? (laughs) Aonuma:In addition to cutting it, a piece will float in the pond. Was that you, Morita-san? Morita: Yeah, that was me." — (Making the Fields.)
- ↑ "This time, I gave Mr. Morita the freedom to do whatever he liked and he came up with such a wonderful thing; he even developed the input operations for the Wii remote. For me, the fishing pond’s a sacred place; I was totally speechless. (laughs). It even makes you wonder if the Wii remote was created for fishing (laughs). There’s a married couple from NOA who enjoy bass fishing. When they came to Japan, we let them play with the remote. We didn’t tell them how to use it, but they started fishing all of a sudden, caught a fish and were amazed. When they asked us why they were able to do it without being told the instructions, we simply replied that it was because they had done exactly the same things they would’ve done had they gone fishing (laughs). I thought the Wii remote was awesome. The water gets all muddy after it rains so the player has to observe the changes and enjoy fishing. When Mr. Morita told me he wanted to include weather changes, I thought, “Eh? You want to go that far? If you have some extra time I’d rather”... But he said that there would be no fishing without that, so I told him to go ahead (laughs)." —Eiji Aonuma (Interview:Nintendo Dream February 2007.)
- ↑ "He used the only Game Boy development kit we had at the time to recreate something like a Zelda game. We weren't particularly planning to make a Zelda game for Game Boy, but we thought we'd try it out to see how it will work. So at first there was no official project. We'd do our regular work during normal work hours, and then work on it sort of like an afterschool club activity." —Takashi Tezuka (Kirby and Chomps in Zelda.)
- ↑ "Even now, fishing games recur in the home console The Legend of Zelda games. The one Morita-san made for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening started all that." —Eiji Aonuma (Like an afterschool club.)
- ↑ "I'm Morita from SRD. As Takizawa-san mentioned, I was mainly in charge of programming the bosses. I also worked on the fishing minigame." —Kazuaki Morita (Fun days.)
- ↑ "This time, I gave Mr. Morita the freedom to do whatever he liked and he came up with such a wonderful thing; he even developed the input operations for the Wii remote. For me, the fishing pond’s a sacred place; I was totally speechless. (laughs). It even makes you wonder if the Wii remote was created for fishing (laughs). There’s a married couple from NOA who enjoy bass fishing. When they came to Japan, we let them play with the remote. We didn’t tell them how to use it, but they started fishing all of a sudden, caught a fish and were amazed. When they asked us why they were able to do it without being told the instructions, we simply replied that it was because they had done exactly the same things they would’ve done had they gone fishing (laughs). I thought the Wii remote was awesome. The water gets all muddy after it rains so the player has to observe the changes and enjoy fishing. When Mr. Morita told me he wanted to include weather changes, I thought, “Eh? You want to go that far? If you have some extra time I’d rather”... But he said that there would be no fishing without that, so I told him to go ahead (laughs)." —Eiji Aonuma (Interview:Nintendo Dream February 2007.)