Hiroyuki Takahashi (game producer)

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Hiroyuki Takahashi
Takahashi in 2005
Born	(1957-10-30) October 30, 1957 (age 67) Japan
Occupation	Video game designer
Employer	Camelot Software Planning
Known for	Shining series Golden Sun series Mario sports games

Hiroyuki Takahashi (Japanese: 高橋 宏之, born October 30, 1957), is the president of the video game development studio Camelot Software Planning.^[1] He has participated in most of the company's projects as a game designer, producer, and writer.

Hiroyuki Takahashi started his career in video game production as an employee at Enix, where his work on the Dragon Quest franchise included roles as assistant producer on Dragon Quest IV and executive producer for the North American release of Dragon Warrior II.^[2]

Takahashi left Enix and in April 1990 founded the game development studio Climax Entertainment alongside Kan Naito, the chief programmer of Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest IV at Chunsoft.^[3][4] Takahashi and Naito were also joined by two former Enix freelancers, artist Yoshitaka Tamaki and programmer Yasuhiro Taguchi.^[5][6] Climax's first project was Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Mega Drive, a game which Takahashi wrote and produced.

On June 12, 1991, Takahashi registered a new game company, Sonic! Software Planning, with an 85 percent investment from Sega Enterprises to develop further role-playing games for the Mega Drive. The studio was named after Sonic the Hedgehog, a Sega mascot character whose first game would release that month.^[7]

Sonic supported Climax in the development of the first Shining Force, for which Takahashi has design, production, and writing credits. After Climax's departure from the series, Sonic became the primary developer of subsequent Shining games, which Takahashi would continue to produce.

In April 1994, Hiroyuki Takahashi's brother, Shugo Takahashi, founded Camelot Software Planning as an independent studio to develop games for Sony's PlayStation starting with Beyond the Beyond.^[8] Camelot would also support Sonic in the development of games in the Shining series including Shining Wisdom and Shining the Holy Ark. After the release of the latter, Sega merged its investment in Sonic into its subsidiary Nextech, and Hiroyuki Takahashi moved to Camelot, where he became president during the development of Shining Force III.^[8][9][10]

In late 1998, Sega began focusing their resources on the Dreamcast, leaving Sonic with its last scenario for Shining Force III for the Sega Saturn in jeopardy. After the project was complete, Camelot formed a partnership with Nintendo.^{[citation needed]}

Since working with Nintendo, Camelot has developed many Mario sports games, mainly related to golf and tennis. They have also developed the Golden Sun series of role-playing games.

• Hiroyuki Takahashi at MobyGames