Hideki Kamiya is a video game designer formerly employed by Capcom and Clover
Studio. He is currently working with former Clover Studio members at
PlatinumGames. As a game designer, Kamiya states that
he has been most inspired by the games The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
and Gradius. His favorite action game is the original Castlevania. Kamiya has
stated he is interested in making a new Star Fox game, but due to a lot of fans
asking him on Twitter over and over again, he was encouraged to submit ideas
to Nintendo without success. Career
= Early = Kamiya was born in 1970 in Matsumoto in
Nagano Prefecture. At a young age he was already a fan of video games thanks to a
neighbour who often invited him to play with his Epoch Cassette Vision console.
Gaming appealed to Kamiya mainly due to the sounds it produced. During his early
years of junior school he got his own first console, the Nintendo Famicom. The
first game he bought was Nuts & Milk. When reading an interview from the
Family Computer Magazine that featured game creators Shigeru Miyamoto and
Masanobu Endo, Kamiya decided he would become a video game developer.
In high school, Kamiya bought a NEC PC-8801 to study programming but ended
up playing video games every day. His favorite games that he credits as an
influence on his work include Gradius, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past,
Castlevania, Space Harrier, Cybernator, Punch-Out, Wonder Boy in Monster Land,
Snatcher, Sorcerian and Star Cruiser. After graduating from college, Kamiya
applied for jobs at various game developers. He was turned down by Sega
and had an application accepted by Namco. However, Namco wanted him to be
an artist rather than fulfill his desire to be a game designer.
= Resident Evil = Kamiya joined Capcom as a designer in
1994. His early works included planner of the original Resident Evil.
The development of Resident Evil 2 was carried out by a 40- to 50-person group
that would later be part of Capcom Production Studio 4. The game was
directed by Kamiya, who led the team, which was composed of newer Capcom
employees and over half of the staff from the original Resident Evil. In the
initial stages of development, producer Shinji Mikami often had creative
disagreements with Kamiya, and tried to influence the team with his own
direction. He eventually stepped back to an overseeing role as producer, and only
demanded to be shown the current build once a month.
To fulfill Capcom's sales plan of two million copies, director Kamiya tried to
attract new customers with a more ostentatious and Hollywood-like story
presentation. As Okamoto did not want to simply enforce the new direction, he had
Sugimura discuss the plot revisions with Mikami and the development staff. The
planners redesigned the game from the ground up to fit the changes, and the
programmers and other remaining members of the team were sent to work on
Resident Evil Director's Cut, which was shipped with a playable preview disc of
the new Resident Evil 2 version in order to promote the sequel and to apologize
to the players for its belated release. = Devil May Cry =
He was later the director of Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry started out as the
earliest incarnation of Resident Evil 4. Initially developed for the PlayStation
2, the game was directed by Hideki Kamiya after producer Shinji Mikami
requested him to create a new entry in the Resident Evil series. Around the
turn of the millennium, regular series writer Noboru Sugimura created a
scenario for the title, based on Kamiya's idea to make a very cool and
stylized action game. The story was based on unraveling the mystery
surrounding the body of protagonist Tony, an invincible man with skills and
an intellect exceeding that of normal people, his superhuman abilities
explained with biotechnology. As Kamiya felt the playable character did not look
brave and heroic enough in battles from a fixed angle, he decided to drop the
prerendered backgrounds from previous Resident Evil installments and instead
opted for a dynamic camera system. This new direction required the team to make
a trip to Europe where they spent eleven days in the United Kingdom and Spain
photographing things like Gothic statues, bricks, and stone pavements for
use in textures. Though the developers tried to make the "coolness" theme fit
into the world of Resident Evil, Mikami felt it strayed too far from the series'
survival horror roots and gradually convinced all of the staff members to
make the game independent from it. Kamiya eventually rewrote the story to
be set in a world full of demons and changed the hero's name to "Dante". The
cast of characters remained largely identical to that in Sugimura's
scenario, although appearances of the hero's mother and father were written
out of the story. The game's new title was revealed as Devil May Cry in
November 2000. The game was developed by Team Little
Devils, a group of staff members within Capcom Production Studio 4. Some of the
major gameplay elements were partially inspired by a bug found in Onimusha:
Warlords. During a test-play, Kamiya discovered that enemies could be kept in
the air by slashing them repeatedly, which lead to the inclusion of juggles
by gunfire and sword strikes in Devil May Cry. According to the director,
Devil May Cry was designed from the ground up around Dante's acrobatics and
combat abilities. The decision was made late in the development process to
change the game to a more mission-based advancement, instead of the more
open-ended structure of the Resident Evil games. Devil May Cry's difficulty
was intentional, according to Kamiya, who called it his "challenge to those
who played light, casual games." Despite the success of the original
Devil May Cry, the sequel was not created by Hideki Kamiya or Team Little
Devils. The first notice Kamiya's team was given about any sort of sequel
occurred during localization of Devil May Cry in North America and Europe, a
move which greatly surprised Kamiya. Instead, Hideaki Itsuno was appointed as
the director of the sequel. Since the game's release, Kamiya has expressed
disappointment that he was not called on by his superiors at Capcom to direct
Devil May Cry 2. = Clover Studio =
He directed the original Viewtiful Joe. The game was conceived as a
"staff-focused project" aimed at increasing the skill of its creators,
specifically director Kamiya. Kamiya provides the voice for Six Machine in
the game. In 2006, Kamiya worked as the director
for Ōkami. Ōkami resulted from the combined ideas of Clover Studio. The
game was originally built around "depict[ing] a lot of nature", but had
no central concept or theme, according to lead designer Hideki Kamiya. Kamiya
eventually created a minute-long demonstration movie showing a wolf
running about a forest, with flowers blossoming in its wake, but still lacked
any gameplay. Kamiya and other members of the team introduced ideas around the
nature aspect and eventually led to the game's initial prototype, which Kamiya
admitted was "incredibly boring to play". Kamiya suggested that he allowed
so many ideas from the team that resulted in the development moving
off-target, including creating more of a simulation. Eventually, they settled
onto the gameplay found in the final product.
The gameplay style is a mix of action, platform, and puzzle gaming genres, and
has been noted by many reviewers to have numerous similarities in overall
gameplay style to The Legend of Zelda series, an inspiration that director
Hideki Kamiya, a self-proclaimed Zelda-fan, has admitted has influenced
his general game design. Clover Studio was closed by Capcom in
late 2006. = PlatinumGames =
PlatinumGames was founded under the name Seeds, Inc. on August 1, 2006 by Shinji
Mikami, Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya. In May 2008, the company, now renamed to
PlatinumGames, announced a four-game deal with publisher Sega. The games
involved in the development and publishing deal included Bayonetta, a
"stylish action game" for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 directed by
Kamiya. The game was considered as the successor of Devil May Cry with Kamiya
having used its latest sequel Devil May Cry 4 as part of his research. First
announced at E3 2012, Kamiya directed The Wonderful 101 for the Wii U, which
was released in September 2013. He also supervised production on the sequel to
Bayonetta, Bayonetta 2, released on the Wii U in October 2014.
Works References
External links Hideki Kamiya at the Internet Movie
Database Hideki Kamiya blog at Platinum Games
Hideki Kamiya on Twitter Hideki Kamiya on Miiverse