Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Princess Peach Toadstool is a character in Nintendo's Mario franchise. Originally created by Shigeru Miyamoto, Peach is the Princess of the... fictional Mushroom Kingdom, which is constantly under attack by Bowser, and often plays the damsel in distress role within the series and is the lead female. She is often portrayed as Mario's love interest and has appeared in all the Mario games to date; with the most notable being Super Princess Peach where she is the main protagonist. Princess Peach's initial appearance was drawn by Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto later asked Yōichi Kotabe to redraw Peach with his instructions. He had asked Kotabe to draw her eyes to be "a little cat-like" and that she should look "stubborn, but cute". With Kotabe's influence, Princess Peach changed considerably throughout her gaming system. Peach was not a playable character in New Super Mario Bros. Wii because it would require special programming on how the game handles her dress, however, she is the main protagonist in Super Princess Peach and is a playable player in most Mario spin-offs such as Mario Party, Mario Kart and also sports games.
more

Bowser Koopa, also known as King Koopa, is a video game character and the main antagonist of Nintendo's Mario series. In Japan, the character is... known as Koopa and bears the title of Daimaō . Bowser is the leader and most powerful of the Turtle-like Koopa race and is Mario's greedy archnemesis beginning with his first appearance, in the game Super Mario Bros. His ultimate goals are to marry Princess Peach, defeat Mario, and conquer the Mushroom Kingdom. Since his debut, he has appeared in almost every Mario series game. Currently, Bowser is voiced by both Scott Burns and Kenny James. Bowser was the creation of Nintendo designer and producer Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto had first envisioned Bowser as an ox, basing him on the Ox King from the Toei Animation film Alakazam the Great. However, Nintendo designer Takashi Tezuka pointed out to Miyamoto that the character looked a lot more like a turtle than an ox. Despite popular misconception, Bowser is, in fact, supposed to be a turtle, not a dragon.
more

Mallow is a character in 1996 Super Nintendo release Super Mario RPG. In the course of the game, Mallow is the second character to join the list of... playable characters, after Mario initially encounters him while visiting the Mushroom Kingdom. His Thunderbolt skill, which attacks all enemies at a low cost, makes him a powerful ally throughout the game. Mallow was found by Frogfucius, a sage amphibian meant to clearly be a play on the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Mallow was raised to believe the he was a tadpole, despite the fact that he looks nothing like the aquatic creatures. Later in the game, Mallow learns that he is not in fact a tadpole, but the long-lost son of King and Queen Nimbus, rulers of Nimbus Land, a mythical weather kingdom. Mallow and the rest of the party arrive to defeat the usurping Valentina and Dodo, avian creatures that have seized control of the kingdom.
more

Yoko Shimomura is a Japanese video game composer. She has been described as "the most famous female video game music composer in the world". She has worked in the video game music industry since graduating from Osaka College of Music in 1988. From then until 1993, she worked for Capcom, where she composed wholly or in part the scores for 17 games, including Final Fight and Street Fighter II. From 1993 to 2002 Shimomura worked for Square , where... she composed for a further eight games, including the popular Super Mario RPG, Legend of Mana, and Kingdom Hearts games. Since then she has worked as a freelance composer, writing for over a dozen titles. Her works have gained a great deal of popularity, and have been performed in multiple video game music concerts, including one, Sinfonia Drammatica, that was focused half on her "greatest hits" album, Drammatica: The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura, and half on the music of a previous concert. Music from several of her games has been published as arranged albums and as piano scores. Yoko Shimomura was born in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan on October 19, 1967.
more

Hironobu Sakaguchi is a Japanese game designer, game director and game producer. He is world famous as the creator of the Final Fantasy series, and has had a long career in gaming with over 100 million units of video games sold worldwide. He left Square Enix and founded a studio called Mistwalker in 2004. Sakaguchi was born in Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan. He studied electrical engineering while attending Yokohama National University, but dropped... out in 1983 mid-semester with Hiromichi Tanaka. On leaving the university, Sakaguchi became a part-time employee of Square, a newly formed branch of Denyūsha Electric Company founded by Masafumi Miyamoto. When Square became an independent company in 1986, he became a full-time employee as the Director of Planning and Development. Sakaguchi then decided to create a role-playing video game which he named Final Fantasy as a result of his personal situation; had the game not sold well, he would have quit the games industry and gone back to university. The game was released in Japan for the Nintendo Entertainment System on December 18, 1987, and was successful across Japan.
more

Chihiro Fujioka is a video game director at the Nintendo developer AlphaDream. He was previously a composer of several video games, making contributions to the Burai and Final Fantasy Legend series. His directing work includes Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Koto Battle: Tengai no Moribito, and Tomato Adventure. He also designed Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.

Square Co., Ltd. was a Japanese video game company founded in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto. It merged with Enix in 2003 and became part of Square Enix. Squaresoft was also a brand name used by Square to refer to their games, and is often used incorrectly to refer to the company itself.... Square was founded in Yokohama in September 1983 by Masafumi Miyamoto after he graduated from Waseda, one of Japan's top universities. Back then, Square was a computer game software division of Den-Yu-Sha, a power line construction company owned by Miyamoto's father. While at the time game development was usually conducted by only one programmer, Miyamoto believed that it would be more efficient to have graphic designers, programmers and professional story writers working together on common projects. Square's first two titles were The Death Trap and its sequel Will: The Death Trap II, both designed by part-time employee Hironobu Sakaguchi and released on the NEC PC-8801.
more