Who Made Animal Crossing (& What Other Games Are Out There)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons released over a year ago in March 2020 and continues to be incredibly popular. New Horizons is on its way to becoming the best-selling Switch game, surpassing Mario Kart 8. There are likely many people who bought a Switch just to play Animal Crossing, and are looking to find other games that might interest them. Luckily, Nintendo is prolific in the video game industry, boasting many quality franchises and releasing plenty of titles.

The exact development team behind Animal Crossing: New Horizons is called Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development Division, or Nintendo EPD for short. Nintendo EPD is the largest division within the video game giant, and likely has many different teams working on many different projects at once. Not only does Nintendo EPD develop its own games, but also co-develops with other studios inside and outside of Nintendo, as well as produces games it has no part in developing. Nintendo EPD is the product of two separate divisions merging in 2015, and since then has been solely responsible for the development of such titles as Miitopia, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Ring Fit Adventure, and more.

Nintendo is a massive company, and Nintendo EPD is a massive division within that company, so it isn’t always helpful to look solely at the development team responsible for a Nintendo title. Many Nintendo games, including Animal Crossing: New Horizons, have well-known developers in key roles who have worked at the company for quite a while, and are strongly attached to other projects.

Important Developers of Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Game director of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Aya Kyogoku, has been at Nintendo since 2003. She began work there as a scriptwriter for the Zelda series on Four Swords Adventures and Wii launch title Twilight Princess. Since working on those games, she has almost exclusively been filling major roles in the Animal Crossing series. She was the sequence director for Animal Crossing: City Folk, and then director of New Leaf and New Horizons.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ producer is Hisashi Nogami, who has been at Nintendo for even longer. He began his career at Nintendo as a character designer for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, which released on the Super Nintendo in 1995. He had a hand in the development of major titles such as Mario Kart 64, Banjo-Kazooie, and Super Smash Bros. Melee before being the director of the first, second, and third Animal Crossing games. While directing the Animal Crossing series, he also served as a supervisor for Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. 4. Since becoming a producer, Nogami has helped develop Splatoon and its sequel, and all Animal Crossing spin-off and mobile titles.

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