Hiroji Kiyotake

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 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.