63 Facts About Hideo Kojima

Hideo Kojima is a Japanese video game designer, director, producer and writer.

Hideo Kojima is regarded as an auteur of video games.

Hideo Kojima is known for producing the Zone of the Enders series, as well as writing and designing Snatcher and Policenauts, graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation.

Hideo Kojima was born on August 24,1963 in Setagaya, Tokyo.

Hideo Kojima's father, Kingo, was a pharmacist who frequently traveled on business, and named Kojima after the most common name among doctors he met.

Hideo Kojima took an interest in filmmaking when a friend brought a Super 8 camera to school.

Hideo Kojima tricked his parents into funding a trip to an island off the coast of Japan without telling them he wanted to film there.

Hideo Kojima has discussed the impact of his father's death in interviews, and the subsequent financial hardship faced by his family.

Hideo Kojima enrolled at university to study economics, and it was there that he decided to join the video game industry.

Hideo Kojima wrote fiction while studying, even including a short story in his thesis.

At the beginning of his career, Hideo Kojima was initially searching for a way into film production.

Hideo Kojima hoped that, if he were to win awards for his written fiction, he would be approached about directing a film.

Hideo Kojima joined video game publisher Konami's MSX home computer division in 1986.

Hideo Kojima applied to Konami because it was the only games developer listed on the Japanese stock exchange.

Hideo Kojima was disappointed with the job initially, hoping to make games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and feeling that the 16 colour palette of the MSX was too restrictive.

Hideo Kojima was asked to take over a project, Metal Gear, from a senior associate.

Hardware limitations hindered the development of the game's combat, and Hideo Kojima altered the gameplay to focus on a prisoner escaping instead of fighting, inspired by The Great Escape.

Hideo Kojima has openly criticized many of the changes made in the port, including poor translation and the abridged ending.

Hideo Kojima planned for the game, a graphic adventure with visual novel elements, to have six chapters, but was instructed to trim it down to two.

Former Konami artist Satoshi Yoshoioka designed many of Snatcher's characters, said he was persistently guided by Hideo Kojima to make the game as cinematic as possible, which later critics have cited as a staple of his work.

In 1990, Hideo Kojima wrote a remake of Snatcher, SD Snatcher, a role-playing video game which adapted the storyline of the original Snatcher but significantly changed the environments, details of the plot, and core gameplay mechanics.

When Hideo Kojima was riding on the Tokyo transit system, he was told about Snake's Revenge by a colleague working on the project, who asked him to make a new Snake game of his own.

Hideo Kojima wanted the game to remain in the adventure genre, feeling it was the best method to express what he wanted with video games.

Hideo Kojima was growing frustrated with game development and wanted "a way to take creative control back from the programmers".

In 1994, Hideo Kojima began to plan a 3D sequel to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, titled Metal Gear Solid and originally planned for release on the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer.

Hideo Kojima became a celebrity in video game news media, and was surprised when he began to be recognized in public.

In early 2001, Hideo Kojima released the first details of the sequel to Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, for the PlayStation 2.

At that time, Hideo Kojima produced Boktais sequel, Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django for the Game Boy Advance.

Hideo Kojima wanted Solid Snake to appear in Super Smash Bros.

Hideo Kojima received a lifetime achievement award at the MTV Game Awards 2008 in Germany.

Hideo Kojima was at E3 2010 to show off his team's latest project, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

Hideo Kojima was seen in Nintendo's 3DS interview video, where he stated he was interested in making a Metal Gear Solid game for the 3DS and wondered what it would be like in 3D.

Nevertheless, Hideo Kojima is the game's executive producer and showed interest in working in the game's demo.

Hideo Kojima was satisfied with the final product and expressed the possibility of a sequel if Platinum were to develop it.

On July 8,2011, Hideo Kojima announced that Project S was a radio-show sequel to Snatcher, titled Sdatcher as a reference to the show's producer Suda.

In mid-2012 and in the following years after Hideo Kojima finished work on the Fox Engine, Hideo Kojima has been connected to the Silent Hill series.

At the 2013 Game Developers Conference, Hideo Kojima unveiled Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which was set to be his final Metal Gear game, noting that this time unlike previous announcements that he had stopped working on the series, was very serious about leaving; it was preceded by Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, a shorter game released in 2014 and serving as a prologue to The Phantom Pain.

On December 16,2015, Hideo Kojima announced that Hideo Kojima Productions would be re-established as an independent studio, partnered with Sony Computer Entertainment, and that his first game would be exclusive to PlayStation 4.

At E3 2016, Hideo Kojima personally announced the game's title as Death Stranding in a trailer.

The trailer featured Norman Reedus, whom Hideo Kojima had previously worked with in the canceled Silent Hills.

Hideo Kojima launched his own YouTube channel in 2016, where he and film critic Kenji Yano discuss their favorite films and matters pertaining to Hideo Kojima's studio.

Hideo Kojima went on to explain that he sees that movies, TV shows, and games competing in the same space in the future, thanks to streaming technology, and that this will encourage new formats to emerge.

At several game expos in 2022, Hideo Kojima has cryptically teased the casting of an upcoming game being developed by Hideo Kojima Productions, with Elle Fanning and Shioli Kutsuna confirmed to star.

However, at The Game Awards 2022, Hideo Kojima officially revealed the game as the sequel to Death Stranding, with the working title Death Stranding 2.

Hideo Kojima has cited Yuji Horii's The Portopia Serial Murder Case and Shigeru Miyamoto's Super Mario Bros.

Hideo Kojima cited a contrast between films and games as while in his games he intends to portray violence like in a movie, in the game it is up to the player to decide.

Hideo Kojima wants people to understand the effects of violence.

Hideo Kojima has written that Metal Gear was "strongly influenced" by the "anti-war and anti-nuke" themes of the Planet of the Apes film franchise.

In 2019 Hideo Kojima published a collection of essays in Japan discussing the influence of pop culture on his work under the title The Gifted Gene and My Lovable Memes.

Hideo Kojima has influenced a number of actors and auteurs in the film industry.

In 2020, Hideo Kojima was a member of the international Jury of the 77th Venice International Film Festival, Virtual Reality section.

Hideo Kojima has been noted for predicting and exploring themes in his works years before they gained mainstream notoriety on numerous occasions, ranging from the sociological to the scientific.

Hideo Kojima's father Kingo Kojima died when he was 13 and his mother died in early 2017.

Hideo Kojima was misidentified in July 2022 as the assassin of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by some news outlets and politicians.

Hideo Kojima Productions said that it would be considering legal action in response to the pictorial misidentifications.

At the 2008 MTV Game Awards, Hideo Kojima was given the award show's first Lifetime Achievement Award for a game designer and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Game Developers Conference.

At the 2014 National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers awards, Hideo Kojima was credited for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes' nomination for the category Game, Franchise Adventure.

In December 2015, Hideo Kojima was invited to accept an award from The Game Awards 2015 for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, but was prevented from attending by Konami.

In December 2016, Hideo Kojima was able to attend The Game Awards 2016 and accepted the Industry Icon Award.

Hideo Kojima was named a BAFTA Fellowship in 2020, to be awarded to him during the British Academy Games Awards in April 2020, making him the second Japanese person to receive the award for work on video games after Shigeru Miyamoto.

Hideo Kojima holds the distinction of having directed four games out of the 27 total to have achieved a maximum possible score of 40 from the Japanese video games magazine Famitsu.

On January 20,2022 Hideo Kojima received an Industry Legend Award from the Arab Game Awards.

On March 15,2022, Hideo Kojima announced on Twitter that he had received the 72nd Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts from the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs.