Akira Kitamura (born 1965) is a Japanese

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the rules and content of video games in the Video game development#Pre-production, pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the Video game development ...

and artist. He is the creator of the ''Mega Man'' series and the eponymous character. He worked on the first three games in the series as a planner and artist. He is also the director of the 1991 game '' Cocoron'', which was released only in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Due to the prominent practice of only using

pseudonyms A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's ow ...

for credits, Kitamura is variously credited as "Famicon Akira" or "A.K" on many of the games he worked on.

Career

He worked as an artist, and overall director for Mega Man (known as Rockman in Japan) for the Famicom. He created the original static pixel art sprite for Mega Man. This was to ensure that the sprite could be properly seen against the game's backgrounds, and could work in the game. After that, the pixel art was handed over to artist

Keiji Inafune is a Japanese video game producer, character designer, game designer, and businessman. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and ...

who created a refined illustration of the character. Inafune refers to this process as "like a reverse character design" as it is the opposite of what typically occurs, where artists create concept art which is then translated into game's graphics. At a special event during the 2007

Tokyo Game Show , commonly known as TGS, is a video game trade fair and convention held annually in September in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Japan. It is presented by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) and Nikkei Business Publication ...

, Inafune commented on his and Akira's role in the creation of Mega Man. "I'm often called the father of Mega Man, but actually, his design was already created when I joined Capcom,". "My mentor (Akira Kitamura), who was the designer of the original Mega Man, had a basic concept of what Mega Man was supposed to look like. So I only did half of the job in creating him." He again worked on ''

Mega Man 2 ''Mega Man 2'' (stylized as ''Mega Man II'') is a 1988 action game, action-platformer, platform game developed and published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in Japan in 1988 and in North America and PAL region ...

'' as the game's director. He left Capcom during the development of ''Mega Man 3''. He joined the game design company

Takeru is a masculine Japanese given name. Orthography Takeru can be written using different kanji characters and can mean: * 武, "warrior" * 猛, "fierce" * 健, "health" * 尊, "noble" * 岳, "mountain" The name can also be written in hiragana or ka ...

. There he directed a game called '' Cocoron'' which bore similarities to Mega Man. Despite his retirement from game development in the 1990s, he announced his return to the profession in 2024, working with Brave Wave Productions; one project unrelated to the company's music releases is related to the ''Mega Man'' series. In June 2025, he started a

Patreon Patreon (, ) is a monetization platform operated by Patreon, Inc., that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service and sell digital products. It helps artists and other creators earn a recurring income by provid ...

-funded blog named Kitamura's Blueprints, detailing the development of ''Mega Man''.

Gameography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Inafune, Keiji 1965 births Capcom people Japanese video game artists Japanese video game directors Japanese video game producers Living people Mega Man