Akira Kitamura

Akira Kitamura
北村玲
Pronunciation	Kitamura Rei
Nationality	Japanese
Citizenship	Japan
Years active	1987–1991
Employer	Capcom (former)
Known for	Designing Mega Man
Notable work	Mega Man, Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3

Akira Kitamura is a former video game artist and director. He is the creator of the character Mega Man. He worked on the first three games in the series as a planner and artist. He is also the director of the 1991 game Cocoron, which was released only in Japan.

Due to the prominent practice of only using pseudonyms for credits, Kitamura is variously credited as "Famicon Akira" or "A.K" on many of the games he worked on.

Career

He worked as an artist, and overall director for Mega Man (known as Rockman in Japan) for the Famicom. He created the original static pixel art sprite for Mega Man. This was to ensure that the sprite could be properly seen against the game's backgrounds, and could work in the game. After that, the pixel art was handed over to artist Keiji Inafune who created a refined illustration of the character. Inafune refers to this process as "like a reverse character design" as it is the opposite of what typically occurs, where artists create concept art which is then translated into game's graphics.

At a special event during the 2007 Tokyo Game Show, Inafune commented on his and Akira's role in the creation of Mega Man. "I'm often called the father of Mega Man, but actually, his design was already created when I joined Capcom,". "My mentor (Akira Kitamura), who was the designer of the original Mega Man, had a basic concept of what Mega Man was supposed to look like. So I only did half of the job in creating him."

He again worked on Mega Man 2 as the game's director. He left Capcom during the development of Mega Man 3. He joined the game design company Takeru. There he directed a game called Cocoron which bore some similarities to Mega Man.

In the early 90's, he retired from game development.

Gameography

Year	Title	Role
1985	Section Z	Game designer
1986	Legendary Wings	Planner, character designer
1987	Mega Man
	Avengers	Special thanks
1988	Last Duel: Inter Planet War 2012
	Mega Man 2	Planner, character designer
1989	Willow	Game designer
1990	Mega Man 3	Original game designer (uncredited)
1991	Cocoron	Director
	Nostalgia 1907	Planning advisor
1992	Funky Jet	Planner
1994	Virgin Dream	CG director
	Nontan to Issho: KuruKuru Puzzle	Planner, graphic designer