Yoshiki Okamoto is a Japanese video game designer credited with designing a number of the most important games in the industry. He was born on June 10th, 1961, in Ehime Prefecture, Japan.

Early career

His early games such as Gyruss, Time Pilot and its sequel Time Pilot '84 set new and inovating standards in the shoot'em up genre during the Golden age of arcade games. While these early sucesses were extremely profitable for his firm Konami, internal disagreements (presumably financial) forced him to change companies. Joining Capcom in the late 1980's, he created the Street Fighter series which remains one of the most important and successful video game franchises ever created. Of course, the idea of two players fighting each other was hardly a new idea, having always been an integral part of arcade, home, and computer video games. Indeed, Pong, Combat, and Computer Space pioneered such competitive formats in their respective video game genres, while Karate Champ and Yie Air Kung-Fu predated Street Fighter by many years in terms of employing a martial arts theme in the arcade. Nonetheless, Street Fighter and its infinitely more sucessful sequel Street Fighter II (in fact the first incarnation is largely forgotten) elevated graphics and gameplay to become a world wide phenomenon and essentially establish the fighting game as an institution within the industry.

Later career

Not one to rest on his laurels, Yoshiki Okamoto continued to develop extremely successful videos games for Capcom through Flagship, including Resident Evil, also known as Biohazard in other countries. Additionally, he produced the film and it sequel. In 2004, he resigned from Capcom to form his own game designing company.