| Kenichi Nishi | |
| Birth Date: | 20 June 1967 |
| Birth Place: | Tokyo, Japan |
| Occupation: | Founder of Love-de-Lic, Skip, Ltd., Route24 Game designer and director |
| Nationality: | Japanese |
| Website: | http://www.route24.jp/ |
is a Japanese video game designer. He has helped found a number of notable video game companies and develops games at Route24, his own private limited company. The number 24 in the title comes from its founder's name: "Ni" (2) and "Shi" (4).[1]
Nishi previously worked for both Telenet Japan and its subsidiary Riot. He was later hired by Square as a field designer for two of its larger releases.[1] [2] After leaving Square in 1995, Nishi helped establish Love-de-Lic, Inc. with many of his former Square coworkers. There, he designed two of the small company's three game releases: and .[1] [3] [4] He also helped design and write the script for the 1999 Polygon Magic title Incredible Crisis.[5] Nishi then co-founded skip Ltd., a second-party developer for Nintendo. Acting as vice president of the company, he also directed GiFTPiA and co-directed Chibi-Robo!.[2] Shortly thereafter, he left skip and founded Route24 on February 23, 2006.[3] According to Nishi, he felt that working on large projects with a large group of people such as those at skip limited his freedom in designing games.[6]
At Route24, Nishi and a staff of four other people developed LOL for the Nintendo DS, which was published by skip in 2007.[7] He worked on Newtonica and Newtonica2 for the iPhone and iPod Touch with Kenji Eno, among other independently developed mobile games. In 2010, Nishi expressed interest in developing a sequel to Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, asking fans to voice their support via Twitter.[8]
Nishi lives in Meguro, Tokyo. He is a fan of British rock music and once had a dog named Tao, who Nishi featured as a character in many of his games including Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, GiFTPiA, L.O.L.: Lack of Love, Chibi-Robo and Captain Rainbow.[4] [6] [7] Tao died in October 2009 due to kidney complications.[9] It is said that Dragon Quest III is Nishi's favorite game.[1]
| + Video game credits of Kenichi Nishi[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] | |||
| Year | Title | Developer | Role(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Tenshi no Uta | Telenet Japan | Planning |
| Exile | Telenet Japan, Riot | ||
| 1992 | Psycho Dream | Riot | Story |
| 1995 | Chrono Trigger | Square | Field planning |
| 1996 | Super Mario RPG | ||
| 1997 | Love-de-Lic | Game design | |
| 1999 | Incredible Crisis | Polygon Magic | Game design and script |
| 2000 | Love-de-Lic | Writing | |
| 2003 | GiFTPiA | Skip Ltd. | Director |
| 2005 | Chibi-Robo! | ||
| 2007 | LOL | Designer | |
| 2008 | Captain Rainbow | Scenario | |
| Newtonica | Route 24 | Designer | |
| Morinaga Takurou no Okane no Shin Joushiki DS Training | |||
| Newtonica2 | |||
| 2009 | Wacky World of Sports | Tabot | Concept and advice |
| PostPet DS | AlphaDream, Route 24, Vanpool | ||
| 2010 | iCLK | Route 24 | |
| Geotrion | Producer and director | ||
| Followars | Designer | ||
| 2012 | Paper Mario Sticker Star | Intelligent Systems | Special thanks |
| 2013 | Cobits | Route 24 | Designer |
| 2021 | Pixel Game Maker Series Puzzle Pedestrians | ||