Looking for early Nintendo artist name(s)

[NeoZeedeater]

A lot of Nintendo games in the early to mid '80s had similar styles in character designs, especially in the facial expressions. I'm trying to find the name of the artist that drew them(assuming it's all one person which it very well may not be).

These are examples of the style I'm thinking of(mostly arcade games, some first-gen NES stuff).









Miyamoto's sketches for Donkey Kong don't look quite the same as what's in the game so I don't think it's him I'm looking for.

Not many early NES games have credits so it's hard to find names. Kid Icarus looks like it might have been done by the same artist as those arcade games and it lists "Mr. Haigo" for character design.

Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! has Makoto Wada on character design so that could be the name I'm looking for although the style looks different than the arcade games before it.

Can anyone shed any light on this?

[rama]

even though the styles look different it might be the same guy. maybe there were some limitations and things that the designer was able to overcome as time went on....wich would make his/her stuff look different between games. but...i really have nothing to offer in the way of any real help.

[Zerodash]

Good luck. Japanese developed games, especially during the 80's-90's used a lot of pseudonyms and aliases in game credits. Presumably to prevent "headhunting" of staff.

[Geen]

It may be the same person, but I also just think that Nintendo had a standarized look going on in the early 80's among all their games to try and build a recongizible brand in their company rather than just pumping out games with the same characters over and over again (Unlike now where we had six goddamn Mario games come out in a three to four month stretch). I could be wrong, though.

[NeoZeedeater]

Good luck. Japanese developed games, especially during the 80's-90's used a lot of pseudonyms and aliases in game credits. Presumably to prevent "headhunting" of staff.

Yeah, it's a pain in the ass. Finding aliases is better than nothing though as they often have resemblances to their real names.

[Zerodash]

What about the names that use Wingdings font? Such as "lucky Ino (heart symbol) watawa"