Shinji Mikami

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Shinji Mikami, circa 2002.

Shinji Mikami (三上真司, Mikami Shinji^?, born August 11, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer at Capcom, currently employed by subsidiary Clover Studio. He is best known for creating the Resident Evil survival horror series (known as Biohazard in Japan) and has also contributed in the creation of some of Capcom's most popular post-32-bit franchises, including Viewtiful Joe and Devil May Cry as a producer.

1 Career
2 Works
3 External links
- 3.1 Interviews

[edit] Career

Mikami first joined Capcom in 1990 as a planner for the company after graduating at the Doshisha University. His first title within Capcom was a quiz game for the Game Boy titled Capcom Quiz: Hatena? no Daibôken, which took over three months to develop. His following three games were all based on Disney-licensed properties; Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1991, Game Boy), Aladdin (1993, SNES) and Goof Trop (1994, SNES). Between the release of Roger Rabbit and Aladdin, Mikami also worked on an untitled F1 game that was cancelled by the company after eight months of development.

After the release of Goof Troop, Mikami began development of a horror-themed adventure game for the PlayStation set in a haunted mansion, an idea loosely based on Sweet Home (an earlier Famicom game by Capcom based on the Japanese horror movie of the same name). The resulting game became Biohazard, an action-adventure game which combined 3D polygonal characters and objects with prerendered backgrounds and featured zombies (among other monsters) heavily influenced by George A. Romero's Dead movies. The game was retitled Resident Evil for the western market under Capcom USA's suggestion and was released in Japan and North America on March 22, 1996 and became one of the PlayStation's first successful titles. While not considered by certain critics to be the first survival horror game, Resident Evil was the game which coined the term and popularized the genre, inspiring similar games.

After the success of Resident Evil, Mikami was promoted from planner to producer, becoming more involved in the business side of the company. As producer, he oversaw the development of the Resident Evil sequels (Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Resident Evil Code: Veronica) and also directed another survival horror title, Dino Crisis in 1999.

Shortly after the release of Resident Evil 3 in Japan, Capcom Production Studio 4 was established in 1999. The studio's staff were mainly the key developers in the company's survival horror projects. Mikami was appointed as the general manager of the studio, and worked as executive producer for various games, including the original Devil May Cry (originally conceived as a Resident Evil game). In 2001, in what has to be one of his most controversial business decisions, Mikami formed an exclusivity agreement with Nintendo in which the main Resident Evil games would be sold only for the Nintendo GameCube. The GameCube would receive, in addition to ports of previous PlayStation and Sega Dreamcast installments, three new games in the series; a remake of the original Resident Evil, Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil 4 (the deal did not include spinoff series, such as the Gun Survivor and Outbreak games). Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0 were both released in 2002. Although both titles received critical acclaim, sales did not meet Capcom's projected numbers and were considered commercial failures.^{[citation needed]}

In spite of this, Mikami remained confident in his support for Nintendo and announced four exclusive titles for the GameCube under development by Production Studio 4 in addition to Resident Evil 4; P.N. 03, Viewtiful Joe, Killer7 and Dead Phoenix. This lineup became known as the Capcom 5.

The first of these games to be released was the Mikami-directed P.N. 03. The game was both a commercial and critical failure, receiving lukewarm reviews from the press and selling below expectations. As a result, Mikami stepped down as manager of Production Studio 4, while remaining as one of the head producers within the team. Mikami decided to concentrate instead on the team's creative aspect and took over directioral duties for Resident Evil 4 (from previous director, Hiroshi Shibata), taking the project to a different direction.

On April 21st 2004, Capcom announced the formation of the Clover Studio, and Shinji Mikami was added into the amount of people that will be transferred there. However, as he was having several projects at that time, he was to only scheduled to start working there after finishing all of them (the last game to be released among his projects are none other than Resident Evil 4).

Resident Evil 4 was released in 2005 and was one of the GameCube's top-selling titles, selling over 1.2 million units worldwide. The game was critically praised, winning many game of the year awards. During an interview, Mikami expressly stated that he wasn't making RE4 mainly for Resident Evil fans and that he was going after a different audience, which was apparent in its action-centric gameplay. He realized that the series needed an overhaul, upon playing Resident Evil 0 himself, which he thought to be more of the same. After the success of Resident Evil 4, Mikami left Studio 4 and was transferred over to Clover Studio, as scheduled on 2004.

Mikami supervised the development of "God Hand", a beat'em up genre that parodies American and Japanese pop culture.