Yoshio Sakamoto (坂本 賀勇, Sakamoto Yoshio?, born July 23, 1959) is a Japanese video game designer working for Nintendo. He is a key member in the development of the Metroid series, as he was its co-creator. Sakamoto grew up with Nintendo toys, which he noted to be inventive and occasionally "strange". The company hired him in 1982, when he came out of art college. His first projects at Nintendo were the design of pixel art for the Game & Watch handheld Donkey Kong, and the arcade game Donkey Kong Jr. He turned to the Nintendo Entertainment System afterward, for which he designed the games Wrecking Crew, Balloon Fight and Gumshoe. Sakamoto co-directed and created characters for Metroid (under the aliases 'Yamamoto' and 'Shikamoto'), and was a game designer on Kid Icarus. He also directed and wrote Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid: Other M.
Sakamoto's design work is also found in various other Nintendo titles and franchises, including Balloon Kid (1990), Kaeru No Tame Ni Kane Wa Naru (1992, Japan only), Teleroboxer (1995), Galactic Pinball (1995), Game & Watch Gallery (1997), Wario Land 4 (2001), Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001), Wario World (2003), WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! (2003), WarioWare: Smooth Moves (2006) and Card Hero DS (2008). He is one of the most prominent members of Nintendo's former Research and Development 1 division. Sakamoto has stated that he wants to live up to public expectations of Nintendo to deliver products similarly unique to those of his youth, describing WarioWare, Inc. as a prime example of this effort. Regarding his professional relationship with Shigeru Miyamoto, he believes his own mission is not to compete with but to "always come up with something very different from what Mr. Miyamoto is likely to do".