Tribute to Yoshio Sakamoto

[Boo Destroyer]

First, a warning:
Do NOT use this thread to recklessly bash Other M. This is to raise awareness of everything else the man has worked on at Nintendo.

It is quite disappointing how people recognize this guy just for one thing, when he's really had an otherwise impressive body of work all this time. Clearly, those people have a lot of homework to do:

People always seem to credit Yokoi for everything that R&D1 did, but the creative genius behind many of those projects was Sakamoto. And in reality, Yokoi didn't actually "create" anything. Sakamoto here was responsible for the artwork of the Game & Watch handhelds. Those characters? All him.




All those other old games we always seem to talk about on here? Gumshoe, Balloon Fight, Sky Skipper, Wrecking Crew, X, Teleroboxer? You got it.

And the original Metroid and Kid Icarus were all from him too. Another one of his more ambitious outings was Super Metroid.





He was also largely responsible for the Wario (another one of his and his team's major characters) and Rhythm Heaven series.

(Has anyone else caught on with these games that much anymore, really? They're still excellent)


And then there's this gem:



Though it's kinda underwhelming how his team doesn't have that much 3D experience. I wonder if Nintendo will hire more people with it into there?


Now all this begs the questions: How many of you knew who the fuck Sakamoto was before Other M? And if you did, did you know that he made all this too? Be brutally honest.

Some of you might have known about all this with him already, but he could stand to use some more support after people know him for only one blunder. He's had many more successes than failures. Heck, he's even the supervisor for the upcoming Wii U title Splatoon.

[Leon]

This is my kind of thread.

Personally, I think he entire body of work is much more interesting than Miyamoto's. His biggest problem is that a good portion of his work has been Japan only.

Famicom Detective Club: Check
Heartthrob Highschool: Check
X: Check
Card Hero: Check

For a Frog the Bell Tolls is a real standout game to me. The Prince of Sable is pretty much one of the first (if not the first) Nintendo protagonists to have an actually defined character arc.

[Nester the Lark]

I definitely knew who Sakamoto was before Other M. I think I first really became aware of him when Metroid Fusion came out in 2002. I also knew he was involved with WarioWare, and more recently, Tomodachi Life. (Frankly, I'm glad he's still actively working in game development, and that Nintendo didn't give him the proverbial "window seat" after Other M.)

And for the record, I really like Other M. The game-half of it, at least, is excellent, IMHO.

I still consider him one of Nintendo's "star" game developers.

[TV Eye]

He's definitely good at what he does. I think he just left a sour taste in peoples' mouths when he said he doesn't consider the Prime games canon. Added with a lot of his catalog being Japan only (as Leon stated) had a few Westerner's foaming at the mouths preemptively. Japan treats Metroid like crap. We love the series, and to see it's creator abandon us...

Of course, I'm speaking hypothetically. No WAY am I referring to myself. I also certainly won't be getting into how Other M was too Japanese-y for me, nope.

I just love Fusion and Super so much ;_;

[8bitretroshit]

After reading the thread title I googled to see how he passed away. Atleast it isn't that serious

I didn't even know he was behind Other M. Whatever, I'm not one to hold grudges. Besides if he's responsible for Rhythm Heaven, Tomodachi and For the Frogs he must be a pretty cool dude (and wacky as hell).

Oh, he's supervising Splatoon now? That's cool, seems to be right up his alley.

[Leon]

Do we know for sure he's working on Splatoon? Seems odd for him to be supervising an EAD game...

[Boo Destroyer]

It must have had something to do with Nintendo Land's Metroid Blast.

[Boo Destroyer]

Sept 23, 2014 18:12:31 GMT -5 Nester the Lark said:

And for the record, I really like Other M. The game-half of it, at least, is excellent, IMHO.

Sept 23, 2014 18:58:57 GMT -5 TV Eye said:

Of course, I'm speaking hypothetically. No WAY am I referring to myself. I also certainly won't be getting into how Other M was too Japanese-y for me, nope.

To give it credit, it did have some exceptional enemy designs.

[Nester the Lark]

To me, Other M felt more like "Metroid" than any of the Prime games. Maybe some might feel that it should've been beyond the blatant homages to the Alien series, but I think that's part of the core of Metroid.

Not that I don't respect that the Prime games tried to do their own thing. The squad-based section of Corruption, for example, was as good a way to stretch beyond the standard Metroid template as the narrative structures of Fusion and Other M.

And not to turn this into a rant, but as much as people were annoyed that Other M gave Samus way too many droning monologs, I was just as annoyed that Retro Studios insisted on making Samus a strictly silent protagonist. She had dialog in both Super Metroid and Fusion, and removing that aspect was disrespecting the character, IMHO. But nor do I want her to narrate every little thing that happens. It does not have to be one extreme or the other. It is possible for there to be a middle ground.