Eiji Aonuma

Eiji Aonuma, born Eiji Onozuka, is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer at Nintendo who serves as the producer of the Legend of Zelda franchise and a senior officer within the company’s Nintendo EPD division.¹¹³ Since directing the series’ first fully three-dimensional entry, he has led every major mainline installment, first as director and later as producer, becoming the public face of the series alongside its creator Shigeru Miyamoto.¹⁶¹⁸

Aonuma was born on March 16, 1963, in Nagano Prefecture?, Japan.¹³¹⁴ His grandfather and uncle were carpenters, and he has said that watching them work as a young boy inspired him to create things with his hands.²²¹⁸ He studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts, graduating in 1988 from a master’s course in composition design, where he built mechanically controlled Japanese puppets known as karakuri that could play instruments in their hands.¹⁴¹⁸

Aonuma joined Nintendo in April 1988, initially working as a graphic artist in the company’s Research & Development 2 Division.¹³ He secured the job after an exhibition of his puppets drew the interest of people in the video game industry; through Yōichi Kotabe, a Nintendo animator and fellow alumnus of his university who had worked on Heidi, Girl of the Alps and Super Mario art, he obtained an interview and met Miyamoto, who took a liking to his creative work.¹⁸¹⁴ Despite having no prior experience with video games, he was hired and began producing pixel art for early titles such as NES Open Tournament Golf? in 1991.¹⁴¹³

Having never played video games as a student, Aonuma was introduced to them by his girlfriend, who lent him the original Dragon Quest? and a PC version of The Portopia Serial Murder Case?, both created by Yuji Horii.⁸¹⁴ Though his first Zelda game was the original on the NES, its difficulty left him unattached to the series until The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the Super NES, whose non-combat actions — cutting grass, lifting stones, opening doors with keys — gave him a sense of participating in a story that he had previously found only in text-based adventures.⁷ That realization convinced him he wanted to make Zelda-like games.⁷

His first opportunity to direct came in 1996 with Marvelous?, a Super NES game built on the Zelda style of adventure events that was never localized outside Japan.⁷¹³ Aonuma has said the game shared a certain Zelda essence, and after Miyamoto played it, he recruited Aonuma to the Zelda team.¹⁶¹⁴

Work on The Legend of Zelda

Aonuma joined the development of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? because, as he later recalled, there was nobody to design the game’s dungeons; he was invited to fill that role and, working largely without precedent, gradually became a kind of system director.⁹⁸ He designed the dungeons of Ocarina of Time, released in 1998, addressing what he considered flaws in earlier Zelda games — such as making a dungeon’s boss room visible from the entrance so that players who died could quickly return rather than restarting from the beginning.⁹¹³ The 3D freedom of the project appealed to him after years of finding 2D worlds limiting.¹⁸

He went on to direct Majora’s Mask? (2000), which he built in less than a year, reusing character models and assets from Ocarina of Time as both a time-saving and stylistic choice for its parallel world of Termina.³⁴ He has described the compressed schedule as a lesson learned, joking that making a game from scratch in a year left the staff tired and gave him white hair.⁴ He then directed The Wind Waker? (2002) for the GameCube.¹³⁷

By the mid-2000s Aonuma felt he had done nearly everything he could with the series and asked Miyamoto for permission to move on.¹⁶ Miyamoto agreed but soon assigned him another Zelda project — Twilight Princess? (2006) — telling him to step back from direct game design and take a higher, producer’s view.¹⁶ Aonuma has described the series as a kind of destiny he stopped trying to flee.¹⁶ From Phantom Hourglass? (2007) onward he has served as producer of the major mainline entries.¹⁶¹³

His producer credits span Spirit Tracks? (2009), Skyward Sword? (2011), A Link Between Worlds? (2013), Breath of the Wild (2017), and Tears of the Kingdom? (2023), among others.¹³ He also oversaw the series’ many collaborations and remakes, working with HAL Laboratory director Masahiro Sakurai on Zelda’s presence in Super Smash Bros. Melee, with Namco on SoulCalibur II, and with Capcom? on the Game Boy Oracle titles.⁷¹⁸

A Link Between Worlds and Breath of the Wild

A Link Between Worlds, the 3DS successor to A Link to the Past announced in April 2013, was developed by Aonuma and his team at Nintendo EAD.¹ He introduced a mechanic allowing Link to become a 2D drawing and move along walls, and a mirrored kingdom, Lorule, ruled by a Zelda counterpart named Hilda.¹⁵ Aonuma used the game as a testing ground for ideas he intended for the next console Zelda, saying he wanted the series to keep changing because things that do not change with the times get forgotten.⁵

That console project became Breath of the Wild, which Aonuma first announced in January 2013 and which released in 2017.¹⁸ It became the best-selling Zelda game to date, and won Game of the Year at the 2017 Game Awards.¹⁸ When a direct sequel was revealed at E3 2019, Aonuma said he wanted to revisit Hyrule and reuse that world while incorporating new gameplay and story, and confirmed that Hidemaro Fujibayashi? would return as director.⁴¹² That sequel became Tears of the Kingdom.⁴

Aonuma has continued to guide the franchise into the Nintendo Switch 2 era, noting in 2025 that Nintendo’s collaboration with Koei Tecmo on Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment — a musou spin-off developed with Koei Tecmo’s AAA Games Studio — may influence the next mainline Zelda title.¹⁵ His approach to design has consistently emphasized gameplay over story.¹⁷

Aonuma is a founding member of the Wind Wakers, a brass band formed in 1995 of more than 70 Nintendo employees.¹⁴ He received a lifetime achievement award at the 2016 Golden Joystick Awards and was made a knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 2023.¹⁴