Katsuya Eguchi

Katsuya Eguchi
江口 勝也
Eguchi on stage during Nintendo's press conference at E3 2012 holding a white Wii U GamePad
Born	(1965-04-07) April 7, 1965 Tokyo, Japan
Occupations	video game designer, director and producer
Years active	1986–present
Employer	Nintendo
Notable work	Star Fox Animal Crossing Wii Sports
Title	Manager at Nintendo EAD (2003-2013) Deputy General Manager of Nintendo EAD (2013-2015) Deputy General Manager of Nintendo EPD (2015-present) Director at the board of directors in SRD Co., Ltd.

Katsuya Eguchi (Japanese: 江口 勝也, Hepburn: Eguchi Katsuya; born April 7, 1965)^[1] is a Japanese video game designer, director and producer at Nintendo. He is the co-creator of the Animal Crossing series and has worked on games including Super Mario World (1990), Star Fox 2 (1995), Wave Race 64 (1996) and Yoshi's Story (1997).^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Eguchi was born in 1965 in Tokyo and grew up in Chiba Prefecture. He began work at Nintendo in 1986 and spent some time doing promotional artwork before starting as a designer on Super Mario Bros. 3. He first served as director for Star Fox in 1993.^[2][3][4] Eguchi became a senior producer of his own EAD software development group and now serves as the Deputy General Manager of Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development division.^[9]

After Nintendo's acquisition of SRD Co., Ltd. (System Research and Development) in 2022, Eguchi became the Nintendo representative as part of the board of directors.^[10]

Eguchi is credited with the creation of the Animal Crossing series.^[11][12][13] Mental Floss writes that "Animal Crossing was inspired by Eguchi’s experiences...when he was a 21 year-old graduate who’d taken the decisive step of moving from Chiba, where he’d grown up and studied, to Nintendo’s HQ in Kyoto."^[14] And in addition: "Eguchi wanted to recreate the feeling of being alone in a new town, away from friends and family."^[14]

In an interview with Edge, Eguchi described the beginnings of Animal Crossing:

"Animal Crossing features three themes: family, friendship and community. But the reason I wanted to investigate them was a result of being so lonely when I arrived in Kyoto! Chiba is east of Tokyo and quite a distance from Kyoto, and when I moved there I left my family and friends behind. In doing so, I realised that being close to them – being able to spend time with them, talk to them, play with them – was such a great, important thing. I wondered for a long time if there would be a way to recreate that feeling, and that was the impetus behind the original Animal Crossing."^[15][16]

And in an interview with Gamasutra he also described the game's role in a family like his:

"Another thing is that I'd always get home really late. And my family plays games, and would sometimes be playing when I got home. And I thought to myself – they're playing games, and I'm playing games, but we're not really doing it together. It'd be nice to have a play experience where even though we're not playing at the same time, we're still sharing things together. So this was something that the kids could play after school, and I could play when I got home at night, and I could kind of be part of what they were doing while I wasn't around. And at the same time they get to see things I've been doing. It was kind of a desire to create a space where my family and I could interact more, even if we weren't playing together."^[17][16]

• Iwata Asks: Wii Sports - Development Staff Interview Archived 2010-07-16 at the Wayback Machine
• Iwata Asks: Animal Crossing: City Folk - Development Staff Interview
• Iwata Asks: Wii Music - Development Staff Interview Archived 2010-07-25 at the Wayback Machine
• Iwata Asks: Wii Sports Resort - Development Staff Interview
• E3 2005 interview with IGN Archived 2011-05-14 at the Wayback Machine
• 2006 interview with Kikizo Archived 2016-03-13 at the Wayback Machine
• E3 2006 interview with IGN
• E3 2006 interview with Game|Life