Hitoshi Yamagami is a video game designer who works at Nintendo. He is best known for creating the concept behind the Panel de Pon series, he is now the head of Nintendo SPD Production Group 1. Originally hired as a programmer in the R&D division, his superiors realized that he had a natural talent for creating games, and allowed him to take the lead on his own smaller projects. The first of these games was Dr. Mario, a Tetris inspired game, with its own unique twist on the formula. With the great success of Dr. Mario, his bosses gave Yamagami even more power, and appointed him as the "Puzzle Master", who would oversee the development of many classic Nintendo puzzle games. When Intelligent Systems pitched the idea of Panel de Pon to Nintendo, Yamagami became head of the project, and togeth