James Mielke over at the good airship EGM/1up spent some time in Japan back in the late spring, conducting interviews with a wide range of super-creative Japanese game developers, artists and composers. Most of his work turned up in a stellar feature article in the September issue of EGM, and has since rolled out to 1up.com . Milkman shot us a series of Qs for three of Capcom’s current top developers — Keiji Inafune, Jun Takeuchi and Ryozo Tsujimoto — and the As we received from the three of them in turn totally blew my mind.  In all my years of facilitating interviews between media and game developers, I have never, ever seen or heard such great, thoughful answers come back. All three of our guys spoke their minds, made critical assesments of the games industry in general and Japanese game development in particular, talked about creating games with universal appeal and even exposed some of their secret sauce for making the hotness that Capcom is known for.

It’s rare for Japanese developers to speak their minds in totally open and honest ways; Japanese business culture and etiquette usually boxes developers into making very low-key, almost apologetic responses, usually capped with heart-breaking entreaties to please enjoy their game or to forgive any potential errors. If you’re interested in why this mode of communication is so prevalent in just about any non-Itagaki Japanese interview you’ll ever read/see, check out this book . In the meantime, enjoy these thought-provoking responses from Capcom.

Inafune-san

Tsujimoto-san

Currently there is a bit of a SNAFU on 1up, and they’ve accidentally misplaced Takeuchi-san’s responses. I’ll update this entry when his interview is posted.

Special shout-out to Capcom Japan marketing staffers Kanda, Yoko, and Emi as well as CEI’s Keeper of Secrets ^TM and International Problem Solver Kaori for not only making these interviews happen but also providing awesome translation.

* Once again, Auto Modelista and Final Fight Streetwise blow the curve.