Toshihiro Nagoshi
| Toshihiro Nagoshi | |
| Known for | Creator of the Like a Dragon series |
|---|---|
| Birth | June 17, 1965 |
| Death | |
Toshihiro Nagoshi (名越 稔洋, born June 17, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer.
Sega AM2
Nagoshi graduated from the Tokyo University of Art and Design in 1989 and joined Sega later that year as a computer graphics designer for the AM2 division.
He became the manager of design at Sega AM2 in 1993. He was a supervisor on the Shenmue team when it was first being developed. As the game became larger, he left to manage a new studio.
Managing a new division and completing Shenmue
Nagoshi's AM11 division was formed in September 1998. Sega AM11 became Sega Software R&D 4 in May 1999.
During this time period, he was called in to finish the Shenmue project, which was in a state of perpetual development. For the final months of development, Nagoshi had to serve as producer and director in order to finish the game.
Shenmue was finally released on December 29, 1999.
Like a Dragon series
After his development division was spun out into Amusement Vision on April 21, 2000, Nagoshi became its president. While running Amusement Vision, he wanted to develop an open world action-adventure game that would benefit from his experience course-correcting the messy development of Shenmue.
As the game dealt with the yakuza, he brought in Hase Seishū, a Japanese author who is known for writing yakuza crime novels, to supervise the game's storyline. Together, they created the game's protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu. He was originally meant to be in his 20s, however, it was decided that it would be unrealistic for a man to be given his own yakuza family at that age. Thus, Kiryu was aged approximately ten years, and the storyline accounted for this by having him in prison during that time.
Amusement Vision became the New Entertainment R&D Department on April 1, 2005, and Like a Dragon (Ryū Ga Gotoku) was released on the eighth of December of that year. It was released outside of Asia as Yakuza.
New Entertainment R&D became Sega CS2 on May 1, 2008. On August 31, 2011, the studio was renamed Ryū ga Gotoku Studio.
While designing the Like a Dragon series, he also created the characters Goro Majima, Haruka Sawamura, Ryuji Goda, and Ichiban Kasuga.
In 2021, after 32 years at Sega, Nagoshi left his position as the creative director of Sega and as the manager of Ryū ga Gotoku Studio.
Formation of Nagoshi Studio
He formed Nagoshi Studio, as a subsidiary of the Chinese internet company NetEase, on November 1, 2021.
