Yoshio Sakamoto is a Japanese video game designer, director and producer employed at Nintendo.  Sakamoto joined Nintendo in 1982 as an artist and was assigned to Nintendo’s Research and Development 1 division where he worked along side Gunpei Yokoi and Toru Osawa.

His first project at Nintendo was to handle the graphic design of the Game & Watch version of Donkey Kong followed by the graphic design for the arcade game Donkey Kong Jr.  He spent a short period of time continuing to work on the Game & Watch handheld line before being reassigned to focus on Nintendo’s new home console at the time, the Family Computer.  His first project for the Famicom was to handle the graphic design for Balloon Fight and then transitioned to full game design.

Sakamoto designed some of Nintendo’s most popular titles in the early stages of the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment Systems life cycle such as Wrecking Crew, Gumshoe, Metroid and Kid Icarus.  As his career progressed with Nintendo he became one of the most prominent members of Nintendo’s R&D1 division where he would become responsible for the direction of the Metroid franchise.  He would go on to direct and write the story line for Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid: Zero Mission, Metroid: Other M and was the producer for Metroid: Samus Returns.

Along with handling the direction of the Metroid series he has been instrumental in the creation of the WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven series becoming the series producer.  In late 2011 he was promoted from his position as head of Software Planning and Development Group 1, to the Deputy General Manager of the Software Planning and Development Department and later Executive Officer of Nintendo Entertainment Planning and Development Department in 2015.