Kenichi Nishi (西 健一, Nishi Ken'ichi, born June 20, 1967) 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]
Career
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: Moon: Remix RPG Adventure and L.O.L.: Lack of Love.[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 directedGiFTPiA 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]
Personal life
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]
