Goro Abe

Goro Abe during an interview conducted by Satoru Iwata in 2009.

Goro Abe (阿部 悟郎 Abe Gorō, born 1975) is a Japanese video game designer and programmer working for Nintendo since 1999. He is one of the key developers of the WarioWare series since the first title of the franchise and directed many of the games.

Life and Work

Goro Abe was born in 1975 in Toda in the Saitama Prefecture of Japan. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in the Department of Health Sciences and Nursing at the University of Tokyo. Abe joined Nintendo in 1999 and worked as one of the programmers of the game Wario Land 4 which was released in 2001.

He took part in the development of all WarioWare titles, starting with the first game WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania released in 2003. While he worked as one of the designers and programmers of the original WarioWare, Inc., the game's multiplayer remake WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! directed by him was Goro Abe's first experience being at the head of the team.

Goro Abe speaking at the 2004 Japan Media Arts Festival.

Afterwards, he also directed the next titles of the franchise, WarioWare: Twisted! and WarioWare: Touched!, being the chief director of the former game while Ryuichi Nakada took this role for Touched! WarioWare: Twisted! was awarded the Grand Prize in the Entertainment Division at the 2004 Japan Media Arts Festival. Goro Abe went to the festival to receive the prize and spoke to the audience, representing the Twisted! development team.

Abe worked as the chief director of WarioWare: Smooth Moves, too. At the moment the Wii Remote was revealed to him, Abe got the idea to create a WarioWare game for the Wii. Goro Abe was involved in everything from the initial experiments using the Wii and the Wii Remote to pulling everything together into the finished product. He decided which ideas from the staff were best for the game.

Masahiro Sakurai contacted Goro Abe during the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl because of Wario's appearance in this game, asking Abe to review the Wario character design for Brawl.

In the development of the sixth WarioWare title, WarioWare: Snapped!, Abe took the role of the supervisor. He was also involved in the making of the most recent games WarioWare: D.I.Y. and WarioWare: D.I.Y. Showcase and had the initial idea for them. Abe already noted his thoughts for WarioWare: D.I.Y. in September 2003, about the time when Mega Party Game$! was finished. He thought that since microgames only last a few seconds, gamers could easily create microgames themselves. Abe still wrote the game's concept for "Iris", which was the code name of a Game Boy Advance successor that was the foundation for the Nintendo DS. However, Abe felt that it was somehow missing something, and so time flew by.

Later, plans for the Nintendo DS arose. While Abe thought that the system is perfect for drawing pictures due to its touchscreen, he was involved in developing other games then and therefore put D.I.Y. on hold again. During development of WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Abe heard that with WiiConnect24, players can exchange data. He thought about the possibility of adding and sharing microgames as well as transferring microgames between the Nintendo DS and the Wii, allowing players to play their games on the home console. Development of WarioWare: D.I.Y. eventually started after that of Smooth Moves, and the game still keeps Goro Abe's basic concept thought up years before its release in 2009.