Draft:Takeshi Yamazaki

Takeshi Yamazaki (山崎 剛) is a Japanese video game producer and author. Employed at Capcom from 2004 until his departure in 2020, he is known for heading up development on several games in the Ace Attorney series, taking over from former director Shu Takumi. He currently works freelance, continuing to write mystery stories for various publishers. He lives in Tokyo.

Career
Yamazaki attended Waseda University. As a member of the school's Mystery Club, he became a fan of Ace Attorney in his second year at a friend's recommendation. Working off of this interest, he interviewed for a position at Capcom in 2003, and was hired in April 2004.

Initially assigned to assist in the development of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, it was soon put on hiatus, and he was switched over to production for the Nintendo DS re-release of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. On the project, he interfaced with the English translation team in regards to what kind of emotion was meant to be conveyed by different parts of the story, as well as various aspects of the presentation. After the game was complete, he continued working with the team on Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, creating specification documents directly under Shu Takumi, in addition to flavor text and varied gameplay segments.

Yamazaki would then be given the opportunity to lead the creation of his own game, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, a spinoff of the main series focused on its recurring antagonist. This spawned a sequel, Ace Attorney Investigations 2. With these two combined selling over 400,000 copies, and Takumi working on side projects such as Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Yamazaki was given creative control over the main series. He would go on to write and direct the fifth and sixth entries, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice.

Four years after the release of Spirit of Justice, in July 2020, Yamazaki left Capcom in what he referred to as his "graduation". As of January 2024, he has not been hired at any other permanent development position, and is instead a freelancer. He has continued to write mystery fiction, including a light novel, Kodomo no Kuni (こどもの国) published under the pseudonym Masayuki Fujimori (藤守麻行).