Age: 79
male
Satoru Okada (岡田 智 Okada Satoru) is the former general manager of Nintendo Research & Engineering, the division designing and developing Nintendo handheld game consoles (such as the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, and Nintendo DS consoles). He is best known for creating the original Game Boy.[1][2] He was also assistant producer and director of and contributor to several Nintendo games, notably Metroid, released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. Okada entered Nintendo in 1969, and went on to work as an engineer at Nintendo Research & Development 1 with Gunpei Yokoi, who developed the hugely successful Game & Watch and Game Boy handheld game consoles. In 1996, Yokoi left Nintendo which caused R&D1 to split, its engineers creating a portable hardware division of which Okada became the general manager. His team lacked Yokoi but nevertheless developed hugely successful handheld consoles, those being the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Advance SP and most recently the Nintendo DS. Okada initially opposed the Nintendo DS' dual-screen design, but was overruled by Hiroshi Yamauchi.[3] Okada also participated in the development of several Nintendo games, as the chief director of Metroid, director of Kid Icarus, Solar Striker (along with Keisuke Terasaki) and Super Mario Land and contributor to many other titles. Okada retired from Nintendo in January 2012.[4]
Metroid Prime is a first-person action-adventure video game developed by Retro Studios and Nintendo for the GameCube video game console.[1] It was released in North America on November 17, 2002, and in Japan and Europe the following year. Metroid Prime is the fifth main installment in the Metroid series, and the first Metroid game to use 3D computer graphics. Because exploration takes precedence over combat, Nintendo classifies the game as a first-person adventure rather than a first-person shooter.[2] On the same day as its North American release, Nintendo also released the Game Boy Advance game Metroid Fusion, marking the return of the Metroid series after an eight-year hiatus following Super Metroid (1994). Metroid Prime is the first of the three-part Prime storyline, which takes place between the original Metroid and Metroid II: Return of Samus.[5][6] Like previous games in the series, Metroid Prime has a science fiction setting in which players control the bounty hunter Samus Aran. The story follows Samus as she battles the Space Pirates and their biological experiments on the planet Tallon IV. The game was a collaboration between Retro's staff in Austin, Texas, and Japanese Nintendo employees, including producer Shigeru Miyamoto, who suggested the project after visiting Retro's headquarters in 2000. ]
