Hidemaro Fujibayashi

Before he entered the video game industry, Fujibayashi had designed layouts of haunted attractions for Japanese theme parks.^[2] At that time, he had considered finding an occupation involving production, and came upon a job opening from a company that developed video games.^[2] He was fascinated with the fact that his application for employment had to include a sample of his work that would be inspected directly upon transmittal, and he became enamored with the idea of being a game designer.^[2] Fujibayashi joined Capcom in 1995, where he gained experience as planner for the interactive movie Gakkō no Kowai Uwasa: Hanako-san ga Kita!! and the mahjong game Yōsuke Ide Meijin no Shin Jissen Maajan.^[2][3] He became part of the company's Production Studio 1, and designed and directed the puzzle game Magical Tetris Challenge.^[2]

Fujibayashi's first involvement with the Zelda series was with the Game Boy Color games The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages.^[2] In the initial development stages, he acted as sort of a clerk, who gathered all staff ideas and created presentations to propose the game concepts to producer Shigeru Miyamoto.^[3] Fujibayashi eventually became the director, participated as planner and scenario writer, and devised a system to link the two games for consecutive playthroughs.^[3] During his time at Capcom, he also directed the Game Boy Advance games The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords and The Minish Cap.^[4][5] Following his switch to Nintendo, Fujibayashi was assigned to The Legend of Zelda team and became the subdirector and story writer for Phantom Hourglass.^[1][6] He has since directed Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom.^[7][8][9] According to Fujibayashi, the most important aspect of game design is making the fundamental rule set of a video game absolutely clear to a player.^[2]