Gary Gygax... I don't think he was even on my list.... this saddens me....

Thankfully, while enormously influential, I can easily understand him not making the Top 10, so you're okay.

I'll be writing today's entry later. Time for church right now though.

Sorry I missed yesterday's update. I was rather busy all day. I'm writing yesterday's AND today's right now, and I will post them ASAP. I'll write and post yesterday's, then write today's.

When will that be how long do you know?

DAY FOUR


18: Dan & Sam Houser

Funny that the ONLY picture I could find of Dan and/or Sam Houser was in the art style of their acclaimed series. The Houser Bros. finished off this time with eighteen points, collected between six votes. The Houser Bros. founded Rockstar Games in 1998. They worked to help create the Grand Theft Auto series, and were particularly influential in the creation of Grand Theft Auto III, transforming the series into one of the best-selling series ever and and forever changing sandbox-style gameplay. Today, the series has sold more than 80 million units, placing it as the seventh best-selling game series of all time. The Bros. themselves have directly worked on nearly every Grand Theft Auto title in some way, as well as some work on a few other titles. Indirectly, through having created Rockstar Games, they've has influence over dozens more games and series, including Manhunt, Midnight Club, Bully, Max Payne, and more. Today they're working on the GTAIV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony.

17: Koji Kondo

Koji Kondo. Inarguably the most influential videogame composer of all time. Mr. Kondo finished off with 19 points, amassed through seven total votes. Koji began working for Nintendo as a composer in 1984, composing the music for Duck Hunt, Golf, Famicom BASIC, and Devil World all in his first year there. In 1985, he made his breakthrough legendary composition with Super Mario Bros - the title that singlehandedly makes his music more well-known than any other videogame composer ever. The first three notes alone of the Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 theme song are enough for nearly any youth in America to tell precisely what song you're talking about. Kondo continued after Super Mario Bros. to go directly into working on the Legend of Zelda music - his second most legendary work (no pun intended :p). He has since composed music for every main-series Mario and Zelda title, as well as the wonderfully relaxing music of Pilotwings, the thrilling music of Star Fox, and much of the music for the Super Smash Bros series. His videogame compositional mastery is only rivalled by Nobuo Uematsu, but for the sheer superiority of the various Nintendo franchises' sales, Kondo is today vastly more well-known. Currently, it hasn't been officially announced what he is working on, but we can assuredly know that we will be hearing his work many more times within the next year or so, as New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and the unnamed Zelda Wii all are expected to release within these time slots. Click the picture of Kondo for a treat, by the way.


16: Masahiro Sakurai

The legend behind Sora, Ltd. comes in today with 26 points collected throughout a quick four votes. Sakurai is initially known as the legend behind the creation of Kirby, Nintendo's famed pink fluffball. Besides creating the character of Kirby, Sakurai also designed most of Kirby's original games, from Kirby's Dream Land on the GameBoy in 1992 to Kirby Air Ride on the GameCube in 2003. But Kirby isn't all that Sakurai is to thank for. Oh, no. He additionally is the designer behind all three Super Smash Bros. games, having brainstormed most of the concepts used in all three titles. Thanks to their being featured in the Smash Bros. series, many classic Nintendo franchises have seen tremendous new releases. Various characters that, for a rather long time, had never seen the light of day have since had their own game releases.. He also created the 2005 Tetris-esque puzzle game Meteos, considered one of the best games ever released on the DS and, personally, the best unique puzzle game I've seen released in years. Currently, Sakurai is working with Nintendo through Project Sora, a Nintendo first-party developer also partially owned by Sora Ltd. I've got another minor treat for you guys hidden in the image.


15: Yuji Naka

Naka-san comes in today at #15 with thirty points in seven votes. You probably don't know this guy, but you know his brainchild all too well. He's fast. He's blue. He's a hedgehog. He's Soooooniccc the Heeeedgehog. He can really move! He's got an attitude! He's the fastest thing aliiiiiiive! Anyways, Naka essentially is the man that transformed two other men's ideas into playable genius. One guy designed the Sonic character, another designed the Sonic levels, and Naka took those ideas and made them gold. This game changed gaming forever. It proved once and for all that Nintendo didn't have to reign the gaming scene - a concept further enhanced a few years later with the PlayStation - and it helped create the "cooler, more mature gamer" image with its advertisements that attacked Mario. Upon its formation later, Naka became the head of Sonic Team. Besides heading up creation of most Sonic games, Naka is also responsible for production of Nights into Dreams..., Burning Rangers, and Phantasy Star Online. Naka left SEGA later to form Prope, a SEGA-funded but ultimately independent studio that, as of yet, has released two titles for Wii and two titles for the iPhone. As usual now, check the image.

Ok so wheres today please hurry i can't wait...

Be patient. I DO have a life (which involves having a wife =p), and these things take a while to research and write, especially since I'm tossing in little goodies into each submission now. And I am most definitely under no obligation to provide these, anyways.

DAY FIVE

14: Masayuki Uemura

Uemura finishes today at number fourteen with a total of thirty-two points in six votes. Decades ago, Uemura was a toy maker. As he continued making toys more and more complex, he decided he wanted to know more so he could better understand how to make them particularly complex. He went to college in the 1960s, and upon graduating, Sharp Corp. hired him immediately. He worked for Sharp for a few years, until one day Sharp sent him to attempt selling solar cells to Nintendo in 1971. He spoke to Gunpei Yokoi, who was particularly interested in using these solar cells in Nintendo's toys and games. Eventually, Yokoi called him back and hired him directly into Nintendo, stealing him from Sharp. Uemura later used these solar cells to create Nintendo's light-guns. Early on, these guns were mainly the Beam Gun games, games where you'd have a light-emitting gun that would shoot light at a target, which had said solar cells installed on it. Uemura would later become the head of Nintendo R&D2, the team primarily responsible for developing Nintendo peripherals, as well as some games. In the late '70s, Uemura suggested to Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi that they team up with an electronics company to create videogame chips - thus moving Nintendo into videogame development. Later, it was Uemura's solar cell designs that led to creation of the famous NES Zapper, then later the SNES Super Scope. Uemura later oversaw the creation of a variety of games at R&D2, most notably the Super Mario Advance series and the port of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past to Gameboy Advance. Uemura finally retired from Nintendo after thirty-three years of work with them in 2004, and he now relaxes at his home in Kyoto, enjoying the spoils of his decades of hard, fantastic work. If you'll notice, again, there's an orange border on the image...

13: Satoshi Tajiri

Tajiri-san finishes today at thirty-six points in a total of nine votes. Tajiri is, as you can probably tell, responsible for the creation of Pokémon, the series probably responsible for many of you RPG lovers for even knowing what an "experience point" is. Most "Pokéfreaks" are today familiar with the story of why Tajiri created Pokémon, but I'll tell you anyways. When Tajiri was a child, he would go into the forests near his village to chase and collect insects and other small creatures. He was fascinated with collecting more and more unique varieties. However, in the late 1970s - when Tajiri was about twelve or thirteen years old, the forests and fields were torn down and paved over to build a variety of shopping centers. Tajiri saw this and felt sorry for the children later to come, feeling they would never be able to experience the joys of collecting bugs as he once did. Decades later, he finally found a way to share this experience with the children of today's generations - videogames! Tajiri had been working in videogames for some time now, having developed a couple games for Nintendo consoles already. However, in 1991, when he saw a GameBoy with link cables, he instantly thought of insects crawling along the cables, and immediately began work on Pokémon. He received funding from Creatures, Inc, the company best known for creating the Mother (Earthbound) series (under its original name, Ape). Creatures, Nintendo, and Tajiri's newly-formed game company Game Freak each took an equal share in ownership of the new game franchise, and it became a tremendous smash hit. Though Nintendo was in no way in danger of going out of business, many believe Pokémon is today responsible for Nintendo remaining in the gaming business, as it was such a huge hit. Today, the Pokémon franchise is the second most-valuable franchise in gaming history, second only to another Nintendo franchise, the legendary Mario. It has sold almost 200 million units, and continues to sell well today.


12: Yu Suzuki

Mr. Suzuki finished with 42 points, given to him by four voters. Once called the "Miyamoto of SEGA", Suzuki obviously did for SEGA what Miyamoto did for Nintendo. Suzuki created the majority of SEGA's greatest arcade (and non-arcade) hits, most notably the Out Run, Virtua Fighter, Virtua Cop, and Shenmue franchises. His production history spans over thirty titles, most of which are available in arcades today. One of the earliest designers to seek out 3D gaming, his work has influenced most of what we play today. He originally tried 3D concepts as early as 1985 with Space Harrier. Though not actually 3D, it gave an absolutely fantastic "3D feel" that was unsurpassed in any other games at the time. He continued toying with 3D gaming throughout the years, with titles such as the massive hit Out Run, Space Harrier 3D, Hang-On, Enduro Racer, and many, many others. He finally entered true 3D gaming in 1992 with Virtua Racing, the first 3D racing game ever and what was considered the "most realistic" racing game of its time. Continuing with the "Virtua" theme, he later released the first 3D fighting game ever, Virtua Fighter, creating one of the most popular fighting series' to date. Particularly popular for arcades, Virtua Fighter 1 can still be found in arcades today, let alone its various sequels. Although the graphics quickly became obsolete, the game still revolutionized the fighting genre forever, effectively being the spiritual ancestor to a variety of other popular fighting franchises, most notably Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Dead or Alive. It is unknown what Mr. Suzuki is working on today, but it's believed he is currently at work on a new Shenmue MMO, as well as the next iteration in the Virtua Fighter franchise.

11: Will Wright

Will Wright comes in at eleventh today with 47 points, from eleven total voters. Wright released his first game in 1984, called Raid on Bungeling Bay, and it was a mild success. Wright continued developing for the game, not for the game's success, but simply because he absolutely enjoyed it. He realized part of what he enjoyed was designing the various maps and factory/warehouse layouts, and decided other people may enjoy designing similar concepts. A couple years later, he and Jeff Braun formed Maxis in 1986 so Wright could bring this concept to fruition. A few years later, they released their massive breakthrough hit, Sim City. Sim City came to be known as one of the most important PC game releases of all time, giving Maxis the funds and the encouragement to continue development. Wright moved on to design a variety of other games based on the "simulation" concept, including SimEarth and SimAnt, as well as a number of sequels to SimCity. SimCity 3000 began involving the city's citizens more, effectively leading Wright to try out a game in which players actually control the lives of individuals, instead of the city as a whole. This resulted in the release of The Sims, Wright's masterpiece series, becoming the bestselling PC videogame of all time and one of the bestselling videogame franchises of all time (currently fourth behind Mario, Pokémon, and Tetris). Wright and Maxis recently released Sims 3 and Spore, Wright's two biggest projects ever. He is currently working to expand the Spore franchise, extending beyond the "Sim" brand bubble.

Wow Will Wright only at number 12. Of course I already saw Shinji Mikami and Gabe Newell up there too. Of course I didn't expect this to be anywhere what I would think but that is the norm haha.

Can't wait to see what we did vote for the top 10.

Well, it would help if I didn't foul up the numbering on that last set. It was supposed to be 11-14, not 12-15. Oops. Fixing...

Your comment about "what we DID vote for the top 10" prompted me to check what they actually were, which made me realize I fouled up the numbering.

Yea I knew it was just a typo which is why i still said top 10.  I figured you were already fixing it.  Didn't want to sound like a jerk haha.