Masato Kato

Masato Kato is a talented scenario writer whose handprints can be seen on many of Square's most popular titles, including his substantial contributions to every game in the Chrono series.

After graduating from college, Kato worked part-time for about a year as an animator and then joined Nintendo to work on a title called "Captain Tsubasa" (a job which included punching in dots for Tsubasa's animation sprites). He continued on to work on the game series known as "Ninja-Ryu-Ken-Den", whose second title saw him writing scenarios for the first time. He soon left to work for the animation studio Gainax, but left just before its creation of Neon Genesis Evangelion to join Square in the development of Chrono Trigger and continued on to pen the final Xenogears script three years later. He later left Square to work on Baten Kaitos with gaming studio Monolith Soft, which had been joined by former Square employees after the creation of Chrono Cross.

Throughout his career, Kato has maintained a close friendship with prolific game composer Yasunori Mitsuda, which began during the time of their work together on Chrono Trigger. Since then, they have collaborated on other titles (including sequel Chrono Cross) and together released the album Kirite--a novel written by Kato and accompanied by Mitsuda's score.

Masato Kato continues to work as a freelance scenario writer to this day, most recently re-joining Square Enix to grant his contributions to the World of Mana project.