Yoshihisa Kishimoto


Yoshihisa Kishimoto is a Japanese video game developer known primarily for his involvement with Technos Japan Corp. He is best known as the original creator of the Kunio-kun and Double Dragon game franchises, having worked on the original arcade and NES installments in both series. He is currently the President and Representative Director of a game company called Plophet. He refers himself as the grandfather of the beat'em up genre.

Biography

Kishimoto began his video game designing career in the early 1980s after being employed by Data East, where he worked on the Laserdisc-based video games Cobra Command and Road Blaster. After leaving Data East, Kishimoto was employed by Technos Japan Corp. During his time on the company, he worked on the video games Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun and Double Dragon. Both Kunio-kun and Double Dragon went on to become the main game franchises of Technos and helped established the side-scrolling beat-'em-up game genre.
After leaving Technos during the 1990s, Kishimoto worked as a freelance game designer and producer for various game companies while working under the trade name of Plophet. In 2000, he began working as a game developer for the "Plus e" platform, a computer terminal distributed to family restaurants in Japan. During his freelance career, he also acted as producer for budget games released in Japan, such as The Dungeon RPG for the PlayStation and Rogue: Hearts Dungeon for the PlayStation 2.
On April 1, 2010, Kishimoto founded Plophet Co., Ltd., a self-employed company named after the trade name he used during his freelance days. He has served as a creative consultant for sequels to Technos' former IPs such as Double Dragon Neon and River City Ransom: Underground.

Works