Iconic pixel artist of Namco, Hiroshi Ono is deceased

Artist who started his career at Namco in 1979, Hiroshi Ono died on October 16 at the age of 64 of a long illness. The news has been published this morning in Japan on the artist s Twitter account.

This graphic designer joined Namco in 1979 and worked for the company until 2013, without retiring since he founded his own visual creation company in 2016. During his career at Namco then Bandai Namco, Hiroshi Ono Participated in the development of more than 80 games, whether as a graphic designer, as the artist of the logos or illustrations of the game boxes.

The Hiroshi Ono s paw is on such emblematic titles that Galaga , of which he was responsible for sprites but also the concept Art of the extraterrestrials on which everyone had the opportunity to draw at least once. The Creator of Galaga , Shigeru Yokoyama, had credited the importance of Hiroshi Ono during an interview in 2011, stressing that it was the starting point of the career of the one we called Mr. Dotman. A useful tribute since Namco did not usually credit game designers in the 1980s.

Fortunately well documented by Video Games Densesu, the artist s resume includes titles like Galaxian , Dig Dug , NEW RALLY X , MAPPY , PAC- Land , POLE position , PAC-MAN or XEVIOUS , games regularly come out by Bandai Namco in its various compilations. Among the personalities who paid tribute to the graphic designer Figure Katsuhiro Harada, producer of the TEKKEN franchise, but also the composer Yuzo Koshiro. The death of Hiroshi Ono intervenes while a group of fans had just launched a participatory financing campaign in order to make a documentary about his life. Having achieved its goal, this documentary will be well done, posthumously.