is a Japanese video game developer. He is the founder of the video game company Millennium Kitchen and is best known as the creator of the video game series Boku no Natsuyasumi.
Biography Ayabe was born in 1965 in Hokkaido as the youngest of three children. He was interested in design from a young age, developing a hobby of drawing maps of imaginary towns as a child, and eventually moved to Tokyo to study animation at Tokyo Designer Gakuin College. After graduating, he took a job as a graphic artist at the video game developer NMK, later becoming a programmer for the company. He worked on several titles for the company, including Psychic 5 (1987), Esper Boukentai (1987), and Rolan's Curse II (1992), before resigning from the company in the early 1990s. He worked as a freelancer for six months before being hired as a designer and project manager at K-Idea, a game design planning company founded by Shōnen Jump games columnist Hajime Kimura.
In 1997, Ayabe resigned from K-Idea to establish the game studio Millennium Kitchen. There, Ayabe would direct, write, and design the video game Boku no Natsuyasumi (2000), which won a New Wave Award at the fifth Japan Game Awards, and was a finalist for the Excellence Award at the third Japan Media Arts Festival. Since then, Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 (2002) and Bokura no Kazoku (2005) were selected as juror-recommended works at the Japan Media Arts Festival, and Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale (2015) was selected as an honorable mention for Best Narrative at the Game Developers Choice Awards.
Since 2014, Ayabe has been the proprietor of "Kasei Curry" (Mars Curry), a Japanese curry restaurant located in Ikebukuro, Tokyo.
Works Year Game Credit(s)1987Psychic 5Programmer1987Esper BoukentaiProgrammer1992Rolan's Curse IIProgrammer, sound1993Jungle Wars 2System assistance2000Boku no NatsuyasumiDirector, writer, game designer 2002Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 Director, writer, game designer 2005Bokura no Kazoku Director, writer, game designer 2007Boku no Natsuyasumi 3 Director, writer, game designer 2009Boku no Natsuyasumi 4 Director, writer, game designer 2013Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo TaleDirector, writer, game designer 2021Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer VacationGame designer, writer 2023Natsu-Mon! 20th Century Summer VacationGame designer, writer 2024Shin-chan: Shiro and the Coal TownSupervisor
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External links Kaz Ayabe on Twitter