Hiroji Kiyotake (清武 博二, Kiyotake Hiroji), born December 21, 1960, in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan^[1]) is a game designer for Nintendo and has been a part of the history of Nintendo since 1983.^[2]

Kiyotake graduated from Kyoto Seika University with a BA of Visual Design and was part of the rugby club.^[3]

Kiyotake started his employment at Nintendo in 1983, working in the Nintendo Research & Development 1 and Product Engineering Departments, and is currently a member of the Planning and Development Department.

Hiroji was a designer for Metroid, which was originally designed for the Famicom Disk System. Hiroji is the character designer of Samus Aran and named the Metroid character after Pelé, but he later found out that Pelé's full name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento, not Samus Arantes. Hiroji and Yoshio Sakamoto and the rest of the team decided at the end of Metroid to reveal that Samus was a female character, making Samus Aran one of the first female protagonists in a video game.^[4]

Kiyotake is the original designer of Mario's rival Wario^[5][6] and one of the key people in the Wario series. Kiyotake and Takehiko Hosokawa were the directors and graphic designers of Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins and Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3.^[7] For Virtual Boy Wario Land, he acted as a director, and for Wario games released after Wario Land 4, his role is mostly limited to the Wario design and advising, according to the staff credits of the respective games. During the development of Wario: Master of Disguise, Kiyotake supervised the numerous forms of disguised Wario designed by SUZAK.^[8]

• Super Mario Land 2 - 1992 Developer Interview (Shmuplations)
• Nintendo Dream: Famicom Disk System
• Metroid Developer Interview - NES Classic Edition