director
Eiji Aonuma
青沼英二
To keep it alive, you first break the masterpiece you made. Protecting a thing and keeping it alive sometimes point in opposite directions.
About
Eiji Aonuma is a Japanese game director and producer at Nintendo, born in 1963 in Nagano Prefecture. He studied mechanical doll construction at the Tokyo University of the Arts and joined Nintendo in 1988 — a career change so complete that he admitted at his job interview to having barely played any video games. He worked as dungeon designer on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), then directed Majora's Mask (2000), his first full directorial credit on the series, followed by The Wind Waker (2002). He later moved into the producer's role, overseeing entries including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) — proof that a craftsman's eye for construction can outweigh a gamer's instinct.
Timeline & Works
Career milestones and all 3 games in the museum they worked on — in the order they happened.
- 2000
- 2002
- 2006
Also connected to
- Koji Kondo co-created The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask / co-created The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask / co-created The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- Shigeru Miyamoto co-created The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask / co-created The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- Toru Minegishi co-created The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask / co-created The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- Hajime Wakai co-created The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- Kenta Nagata co-created The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Explore the work
Each title has its own page — history, trivia, and collector's notes.
Nintendo GameCube · 2006
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
There was no time left to redraw Link right-handed. Nintendo mirrored the world …
Nintendo GameCube · 2002
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
They drew instead of rendered, and the drawing outlasted everything that tried t…
Nintendo 64 · 2000
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Given one year and old, borrowed parts, they made a world with only three days l…