39. weekend short: happy halloween! ...unless you're capcom

samanosuke and jaques from onimusha 3

capcom has been responsible from some of my favorite time sinks in my lifelong pattern of gaming nerdery, actually increasing their presence in my gaming interests as gaming evolved.   in the 80's and early 90's, an when my NES and/or the NES consoles of my associates were on, a lot of it was on the mega man series, ghosts n goblins, and bionic commando.  street fighter II above all else was a prominent mainstay in the SNES era, with the king of dragons and final fight backing it up.  eventually in later generation consoles, the resident evil, devil may cry and onimusha series completely took over the action-adventure genre, as well as physical space in my game collection.  unfortunately since then, as i've written about previously, we've seen japanese gaming, including capcom, start to slip.

keiji inafune, from kotaku

now unfortunately, whatever little talent capcom had left is gone.  last week, keiji inafune publicly announced that he would be leaving capcom in november.  he is the mastermind behind games like the megaman, resident evil, and onimusha series, and earlier in his career a designer in a lot of capcom's other hits.  inafune claims that after spending 23 years with capcom (and daletto, one of their subsidiaries), he's reached the highest heights one in his position can achieve, and how a creative person like him can't just settle down and be a figurehead.  does this mean that he's got something else lined up?  probably.  he's drawn comparisons between himself and legendary film giant akira kurosawa, who made movies until he died.  inafune went on to say kurosawa was a "true creator who was recognized around the world."  in recent times he also felt as though he no longer had a shared vision with capcom management, and there was really nothing more he could do.  this is all from his blog at daletto.

so what's next for capcom?  out of the developers and designers that made capcom a powerhouse, they literally have no one left.  in addition to inafune, shinji mikami (resident evil) and yoshiki okamoto (street fighter), and hideki kamiya (devil may cry) are ALL GONE.  they can't rely on making franchise hits anymore - i'm just not sure they have the talent left to pull it off.  they still have monster hunter, i mean, i guess.  maybe they'll start focusing on mobile platforms.  or some sort of social games, who knows.

all the english versions of this news and translations from keiji inafune's blog was gotten at andriasang.  come on people, i don't speak japansese.  yet.



UPDATE: as of today, november 1, inafune's blog was deleted from daletto.