The native form of this personal name is Sakurai Masahiro. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Masahiro Sakurai
桜井 政博
Sakurai in 2021
Born
(1970-08-03) August 3, 1970 (age 53)
Musashimurayama, Tokyo, Japan
Occupations
Game director
game designer
scenario writer
Employers
HAL Laboratory (1990–2003)
Sora Ltd. (2005–present)
Works
Kirby
Super Smash Bros.
Meteos
Kid Icarus: Uprising
Spouse
Michiko Sakurai
Masahiro Sakurai (桜井 政博, Sakurai Masahiro, born August 3, 1970) is a Japanese video game director and game designer best known as the creator of the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series. Apart from his work on those series, he also led the design of Meteos in 2005 and directed Kid Icarus: Uprising in 2012.
Formerly an employee of HAL Laboratory, Sakurai left the company in 2003 and in 2005 with his wife Michiko Sakurai (also ex-HAL Laboratory) founded their company Sora Ltd.[a], under which they work on a freelance basis. He was also an author of a weekly column for Famitsu magazine from 2003 to 2021, and has done voice acting work in some of his games, most notably providing the voice of King Dedede in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and the Super Smash Bros. series. Since 2022, Sakurai has been creating videos for his YouTube channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games, where he discusses game design and his career.
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MasahiroSakurai (桜井 政博, SakuraiMasahiro, born August 3, 1970) is a Japanese video game director and game designer best known as the creator of the Kirby...
character and antihero in Nintendo's Kirby video game series created by MasahiroSakurai and developed by HAL Laboratory. He first appeared in the 1993 video...
2019. Sakurai, Masahiro (host) (2023-04-30). Paint an Accurate Picture of Your Game [Marketing] (Web Video) (in Japanese). MasahiroSakurai on Creating...
produced by Q Entertainment founder Tetsuya Mizuguchi and designed by MasahiroSakurai. Meteos was inspired by the video game Missile Command (1980), the...
GameCube systems. It was the final Kirby game directed by series creator MasahiroSakurai. The game had a convoluted development cycle, starting as one of the...
Super Smash Bros. are typically hosted by series creator and director MasahiroSakurai. In North America, the videos were often presented by Nintendo of America...
action-platformer series starring a pink "puffball" of the same name. Created by MasahiroSakurai and currently under the direction of Shinya Kumazaki, the series is...
Fantasy VII and Advent Children. According to the games' director MasahiroSakurai, Final Fantasy characters were heavily requested to appear in the Super...
character for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, game director MasahiroSakurai jokingly stated that "just because you try hard doesn't mean you'll...
voiced for the first time by Nobuyuki Hiyama. The game's director, MasahiroSakurai, explained that the Hero's inclusion was originally meant to include...
weaponized against opponents. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director MasahiroSakurai chose the Piranha Plant as a post-release addition because he considered...
twenty million games sold worldwide. The franchise was conceived by MasahiroSakurai as a game series for beginners, for which he partially attributes the...
not being a lead character in the Pokémon franchise, game director MasahiroSakurai selected it to appear in Super Smash Bros. due to its similarities...
Gamer. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Whitehead, Thomas (November 7, 2014). "MasahiroSakurai Shows Some Wuhu Island Madness Coming to Super Smash Bros. for Wii...
States and Yie Ar Kung-Fu in the United Kingdom. Video game developer MasahiroSakurai considers 1986 the most incredible year for the video game industry...
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