Masahiro Sakurai is a Japanese video game director and game designer best known as the creator of the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series. Apart from his work on those series, he also led the design of Meteos in 2005 and directed Kid Icarus: Uprising in 2012. Formerly an employee of HAL Laboratory, he founded Sora Ltd. in 2005, a company he still leads. He is also an author of a weekly column for Famitsu magazine, and has done voice acting work in some of his games.