Satoru Okada (岡田智 ''Okada Satoru'', born January 10, 1947) is the former general manager of Nintendo Research & Engineering, the division designing and developing

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

handheld game console A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the con ...

s. He is best known for creating the original

Game Boy The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-ga ...

and its successors. He was also assistant producer and director of and contributor to several Nintendo games, notably '' Metroid'', released for the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

in 1986. Okada entered Nintendo in 1969 and went on to work as an engineer at

Nintendo Research & Development 1 (commonly abbreviated as Nintendo R&D1 and formerly known as before splitting in 1978) was a division of Nintendo, and is its oldest video game development, development team. Its creation coincided with Nintendo's entry into the video game in ...

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: the

Game Boy Color The (GBC or CGB) is an 8-bit handheld game console developed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on October 21, 1998, and to international markets that November. Compared to the original Game Boy, the Game Boy Color features a color TFT scre ...

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, and to international markets that June. It was later released in mainland China in 2004, under the name iQue Game Boy Advanc ...

Game Boy Advance SP The Game Boy Advance SP (SP stands for "Special") is a 32-bit handheld game console made by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on February 14, 2003, and to international markets in March. This model is an upgraded version of the Game Boy Advance ...

and

Nintendo DS The is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens worki ...

. Okada initially opposed the Nintendo DS' dual-screen design but was overruled by Hiroshi Yamauchi. 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 is a 1989 platform game developed by Nintendo Research & Development 1, Nintendo R&D1, the same team that designed the Game Boy. It was published by Nintendo as Game Boy#Launch titles, one of the first four games released for the console. I ...

'' and contributed to many other titles. Okada retired from Nintendo in January 2012.

Notes

External links

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IGN: Okada on the Game Boy AdvanceSatoru Okada - 2022 Retrospective Interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Okada, Satoru Nintendo people Japanese engineers 1947 births Living people General and operations managers