Shimbori has had a long-term passion for fighting games; he had a tournament of a "certain well-known fighting game", and held his own tournaments while he was a student. His personal goal was to make an online fighting game, so he studied IT and basic programming in college and around the time he started working. This led to Shimbori being hired by Tecmo to work on Dead or Alive Ultimate (the first Dead or Alive game to feature online co-op), mostly as a tester. Currently, Shimbori is the director for Dead or Alive 5.