is a Japanese video game director,

game designer Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems, rules, and gameplay of a game. Game design processes apply to board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, Wargame (video games), war ga ...

HAL Laboratory formerly shortened as HALKEN, is a Japanese video game developer based in Chiyoda, Tokyo. It was founded on February 21, 1980 by Mitsuhiro Ikeda. The company started out developing games for home computers of the era, but has since establishe ...

employee, and

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

who is the current general director of the ''Kirby'' series and voice of

King Dedede This is a list of characters from the '' Kirby'' franchise, who are featured in video games and other media across the franchise. Main characters Kirby is the protagonist of the series and a playable character in every game except '' Dedede' ...

Biography

Early life

Born in the

Gifu Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Gifu Prefecture has a population of 1,910,511 () and has a geographic area of . Gifu Prefecture borders Toyama Prefecture to the north; Ishikawa Prefecture ...

in 1979, Kumazaki studied at the

Kanazawa College of Art The , colloquially known as Bidai or Kanabi, is a public university in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan. About Kanazawa College of Art was founded in 1946 by the Kanazawa municipal government following World War II, and became a full-fledged universi ...

and the Suidobata Fine Arts Academy.

Early work at HAL Laboratory

Kumazaki first joined HAL Laboratory in 2002, where some of his early roles included debugging the game '' Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land'' and designer for ''

Kirby Air Ride ''Kirby Air Ride'' is a 2003 Racing game, racing video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. A spin-off of the Kirby (series), ''Kirby'' series, the player controls Kirby (character), Kirby or his multicolo ...

'' (for the levels) and '' Kirby Canvas Curse'' (for the battle with the final boss Drawcia). His first game as director came in 2008 as the

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 ...

remake ''

Kirby Super Star Ultra ''Kirby Super Star Ultra'' is a 2008 anthology Action game, action-Platformer, platform game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. The game is an Video game remake, enhanced remake of ''Kirby Super Star'', ori ...

'' where the original game was further expanded to include four additional sub-games.

As director

In 2010, he was working on the built-in software for the then-new

Nintendo 3DS The is a foldable dual-screen handheld game console produced by Nintendo. Announced in March 2010 as the successor to the Nintendo DS, the console was released originally on February 26, 2011 and went through various revisions in its lifetime, ...

system when he was roped into the development team of the then unfinished ''Kirby Wii'' game; under his supervision the development team eventually managed to incorporate elements from the three unfinished concepts for the project and the game was finally released as ''

Kirby's Return to Dream Land (released as ''Kirby's Adventure Wii'' in PAL regions for the platform) is a 2011 action-platform game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Wii. It is the ninth mainline installment and the twenty-second game in the ...

''. Since then, Kumazaki has helmed the role of Director and later, General Director for various main ''Kirby'' platformers, including ''

Kirby's Dream Collection ''Kirby's Dream Collection Special Edition'' is a 2012 video game compilation developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Wii. It is an anthology disc celebrating the 20th anniversary of the ''Kirby'' series, and includes six ...

'' 20th anniversary compilation (2012), '' Kirby: Triple Deluxe'' (2014), '' Kirby: Planet Robobot'' (2016) and ''

Kirby Star Allies ''Kirby Star Allies'' is a 2018 Action game, action-platform game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the twelfth mainline installment in the ''Kirby (series), Kirby'' series; the player controls ...

'' (2018). In addition, he has worked on the drafts of the box comics of the ''

BoxBoy! is a series of puzzle-platform games developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The series centres around Qbby, a square-shaped character who can produce a string of connected boxes. The boxes are used to overcome obstacles in stage ...

'' series games since 2016 and is the voice actor of

of the ''Kirby'' series, a callback to

Masahiro Sakurai is a Japanese video game director and game designer best known as the creator of the ''Kirby (series), Kirby'' and ''Super Smash Bros.'' series. Apart from his work on those series, he also led the design of ''Meteos'' in 2005 and directed '' ...

’s role as voice actor of King Dedede in '' Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards''. As general director of the ''Kirby'' series games, Kumazaki considers "devices, maps, and tough boss battles" the essential components of quality action games. Kumazaki is also well known within the ''Kirby'' fandom for incorporating lore (the most notable being the Ancients first mentioned in ''

'' by Magolor) and backstories of various characters and unifying the canon of the series through the pause screen descriptions of various bosses and interviews. As of 2021, Kumazaki is also in the Board of Directors of HAL Laboratory.

Personal life

Kumazaki used to own a pet

cat The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the ...

by the name of Tom; he sampled the voice of Tom for the voice of the final boss of '' Kirby: Planet Robobot'' (2016). The cat died in 2017, aged 17. Kumazaki also maintains his own personal blog and a public

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

profile. In his free time Kumazaki creates digital paintings of

cosmic horror Lovecraftian horror, also called cosmic horror or eldritch horror, is a subgenre of horror, fantasy fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is nam ...

art, commonly depicting original subjects with occasional renditions of ''Kirby'' bosses.

Works

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kumazaki, Shinya 1979 births Living people Japanese horror artists Japanese lyricists Japanese male voice actors Japanese portrait painters Japanese video game directors Nintendo people People from Gifu Prefecture