Eiji Aonuma’s way into The Legend of Zelda was to imitate it. Given the chance to direct his own Super Famicom game, he made Marvelous, an action role-playing game he openly modelled on Zelda. “I really wanted to incorporate some essence of Zelda into it,” he told Edge. Shigeru Miyamoto noticed, and came to him with an offer: “Come on, if you want to make this type of game, why don’t you try the real thing? We’re making the new Zelda game.” The new game was Ocarina of Time, and Aonuma has worked on the series ever since. Since Twilight Princess he has been the series’ producer.
Fast facts
- Born: 1963, in Nagano. Edge gave his age as 42 in June 2005.
- Joined Nintendo: 1988, from art school in Tokyo.
- First Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), as dungeon designer.
- Director: Majora’s Mask (2000), The Wind Waker (2002), Twilight Princess (2006).
- Producer: Twilight Princess and the series since, including Skyward Sword (2011), A Link Between Worlds (2013), Breath of the Wild (2017) and Tears of the Kingdom (2023).
From art school to Marvelous
Aonuma studied design at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and joined Nintendo straight from college in 1988. Edge tells the story that Miyamoto had his eye on him from his job interview, where Aonuma turned up with a mechanical doll he had made as his final course project. His first task was as an artist, adapting the sprites of Mario Bros. for a special Famicom Disk System version made to promote a food company.
The game that set him on his path came out after he joined. “The first Zelda game I played” was A Link to the Past, he said in 2010. “I was really impressed, especially with the potential I saw. I realised that the game was doing many things I did not think videogames could do.” Marvelous followed, released only in Japan, and led to Miyamoto’s invitation. By then, Aonuma said, his own job had been working with Nintendo’s outside developers, and here was a chance to make a game himself: “It took no time at all for me to say yes, of course.”
Ocarina of Time’s dungeons
On Ocarina of Time Aonuma was “mainly responsible for the dungeon design”. He traced the dungeons back to his course: at art school he had worked with 3D objects and “became fascinated with the relationship between architecture and 3D shapes”, including the mechanisms inside them. The game took three years. “In order to expand the field we need manpower, we need data, we need additional hours of hard work,” he told Edge in 2005. “In the end we spent three years in order to complete Ocarina Of Time, one single game.” Edge reminded its readers that he had been “the chief architect of Ocarina’s notorious Water Temple”.
Director: Majora’s Mask and The Wind Waker
The follow-up had to be made faster, on the same engine. “If we cannot expand the area, the game field, what should we do? Our conclusion was, let us use time.” Aonuma directed Majora’s Mask, with Miyamoto as producer: three days that repeat, a moon that will fall on the world at the end of them, and a town full of people living their own schedules. The darkness, he said, came from that premise. The townspeople cannot understand their fate, “which is a tragedy of its own kind. Only Link, or the player, is aware of the world’s fate.”
For the GameCube he directed The Wind Waker, whose cel-shaded cartoon look divided fans. Aonuma explained the choice in terms of the hero: once the team decided on a child Link, they wanted to show “the very cheerful side of his character” with the exaggerated animation of Japanese cartoons, and toon shading also let them draw the open sea without the processing cost of realistic water. When Edge put to him in 2005 that the game felt unfinished, he took the blame: “To tell the truth, originally we were thinking about something bigger, and in order to make it on time we had to make it more compact-sized… that was my fault.”
Producer
Aonuma also co-produced Four Swords Adventures and advised on The Minish Cap, which was made outside Nintendo. After three Zelda games he asked Miyamoto whether he could “graduate” from the series. Miyamoto agreed, then handed him the next one, Twilight Princess: “I say that you are going to be the producer, not the director, this time.” The team had grown past 40 people. Aonuma told Edge that Zelda kept pulling him back: “sometimes I think it is a kind of… fate for me, so I should give up escaping from that!” Nintendo now describes him as having been both director and producer of Twilight Princess, released in 2006.
He has produced the series since. Edge called him “series producer” on Skyward Sword for the Wii, and in 2013 interviewed him about A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS, a sequel to the game that had first inspired him: “It’s the game that inspired me to make games.” He produced Breath of the Wild (2017) and Tears of the Kingdom (2023) for the Switch; Hidemaro Fujibayashi directed Tears of the Kingdom. Introducing himself for Nintendo’s Ask the Developer series in 2023, he summed up the career: “My first role in the series was designing dungeons for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I served as the director and producer for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and I’ve been the series’ producer ever since.”
One habit has stayed the same throughout: Link does not speak. “Because Link is you!” Aonuma told Edge. “I do not want the players to feel the existence of a wall between you and Link by having Link speak with a stranger’s voice.”
Sources
- Edge, issue 150 (June 2005), pp. 72–76: preview of the new Zelda (Twilight Princess) with Aonuma (his age and home town; joining Nintendo in 1988; the Mario Bros. promotion; Marvelous; Miyamoto’s approach; the dungeon design and the Water Temple; three years on Ocarina; Majora’s Mask and the use of time; The Wind Waker’s look and its shortened development; Four Swords Adventures and The Minish Cap; asking to “graduate”; producer of a team of more than 40; why Link is silent).
- Edge, issue 210 (January 2010), pp. 60–63: interview with Eiji Aonuma (the mechanical doll and Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music; A Link to the Past; Marvelous and Miyamoto’s invitation; working with outside developers; dungeons and architecture; Majora’s Mask’s three days and moon; cel-shading in The Wind Waker).
- Edge, issue 217 (August 2010): Skyward Sword preview (“series producer Eiji Aonuma”). Issue 230 (August 2011): producer of Skyward Sword.
- Edge, issue 255 (July 2013), p. 76 onwards: “An Audience With… Eiji Aonuma” (A Link Between Worlds; graduating in Tokyo in 1988; A Link to the Past as “the game that inspired me to make games”).
- Nintendo, “Ask the Developer Vol. 9, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Part 1”, 9 May 2023 (web): Aonuma’s introduction; Hidemaro Fujibayashi as director. https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-9-the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-part-1/
- Wikipedia, “Eiji Aonuma” (web, secondary): date of birth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiji_Aonuma