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Hideaki Itsuno
Hideaki Itsuno (伊津野 英昭, Itsuno Hideaki) is a Japanese video game director and designer. He was born in Osaka Japan, and formerly worked at Capcom. He has been a director and producer for several series at Capcom, including Rival Schools, Power Stone, Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma.
Hideaki Itsuno was a fighting game fan who was hired by Capcom in 1994; his entrance exam happened the same day as the Super Street Fighter II Turbo location test. He went for it over other companies because it would be an easy commute. There, he was assigned work as a designer on their arcade division (which by 1997 had been reorganized as Production Studio 1), starting with two quiz games. In that first year at the company, a project for a Street Fighter prequel was brewing; Itsuno's superior Noritaka Funamizu saw there was no designer attached, and asked him to take that role in December. Other members of that team came from the same background, all gathered so Street Fighter Alpha had a broader appeal and captured the audience drawn to SNK fighters.
His first director job was on another fighter, Star Gladiator, a project he entered halfway through to fulfill a desire: "at the time I wanted to make that kind of game with a large scale cabinet, because Capcom had never done anything like that before. That's why I joined the company". Due to visual effects and hardware constraints, that game runs at 30 frames per second, to Itsuno's chagrin: "At 30fps, I feel you can't have a real competitive fighting game, so I wanted to make a linear fighting game with 60fps in mind". Driven to make a 60fps polygon-based fighting game, he conceived an original project with wide appeal—driven so partly by a more story-heavy approach and the inclusion of role-playing elements—which became Rival Schools: United By Fate.
Most of Itsuno's output for the first nine years of his career was fighting games, both in 2D and 3D, as either director or designer. As the genre and the arcade market declined, he worked on console games of various genres, within both positions he'd been in before: One Piece Mansion, GioGio's Bizarre Adventure and Auto Modellista.
After Itsuno had finished work on Capcom vs. SNK 2, he started conceiving a role-playing video game. Since he appeared to be "idle", his boss ordered him to work on Devil May Cry 2. Itsuno was asked to "reorganize the project" in a supplementary role, which effectively meant taking over leadership, as upper management saw it as director-less. In exchange, he would go uncredited, but ended up the only director listed in the final version of the game. Most of Team Devil (the staff on that title) had not worked on Devil May Cry and lacked experience in 3D action-adventure games, which resulted in a production severely behind schedule with six months left on the deadline. Itsuno accomplished the request, but was dissatisfied with his level of involvement and the final product's quality.
He didn't want Devil May Cry 2 to be his legacy within the series, so before development had wrapped, Itsuno asked his higher-ups for Devil May Cry 3, with himself as director from the start of the project. He rallied Team Devil to stay for it; some members shared his sentiment, with many wanting to work with what they learned making Devil May Cry 2. Gameplay elements such as the size of environments and the game's battle engine were reconsidered, and common criticisms such as decreases to Dante's cockiness and the game's difficulty were brought back in line with the first game. These changes were met with praise and the game was very well-received.
Itsuno returned to direct Devil May Cry 4. He stated that the visual design sought to deliver a satisfying sensation of floating in the air, and that the actions of Nero's Devil Bringer could not be done on contemporary generation consoles, necessitating a new generation of consoles such as the PlayStation 3. Devil May Cry 4 (2008) was met with both commercial and critical success.
The next game in the series, DmC: Devil May Cry, was developed by British developer Ninja Theory; Itsuno was the supervising director on that project. When discussing this decision, Itsuno said: "With DmC this time, we wanted to avoid the problem that befalls some series where you keep making it with the same team, same hardware, and it tends to decrease and fans move away from it... We don’t want the series to die." The development team included over ninety members, several of whom were from Capcom. Alex Jones and Motohide Eshiro acted as producers, aiming to help Ninja Theory make DmC play like the previous Devil May Cry games. Devil May Cry 5, was released in 2019.
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Hideaki Itsuno
Hideaki Itsuno (伊津野 英昭, Itsuno Hideaki) is a Japanese video game director and designer. He was born in Osaka Japan, and formerly worked at Capcom. He has been a director and producer for several series at Capcom, including Rival Schools, Power Stone, Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma.
Hideaki Itsuno was a fighting game fan who was hired by Capcom in 1994; his entrance exam happened the same day as the Super Street Fighter II Turbo location test. He went for it over other companies because it would be an easy commute. There, he was assigned work as a designer on their arcade division (which by 1997 had been reorganized as Production Studio 1), starting with two quiz games. In that first year at the company, a project for a Street Fighter prequel was brewing; Itsuno's superior Noritaka Funamizu saw there was no designer attached, and asked him to take that role in December. Other members of that team came from the same background, all gathered so Street Fighter Alpha had a broader appeal and captured the audience drawn to SNK fighters.
His first director job was on another fighter, Star Gladiator, a project he entered halfway through to fulfill a desire: "at the time I wanted to make that kind of game with a large scale cabinet, because Capcom had never done anything like that before. That's why I joined the company". Due to visual effects and hardware constraints, that game runs at 30 frames per second, to Itsuno's chagrin: "At 30fps, I feel you can't have a real competitive fighting game, so I wanted to make a linear fighting game with 60fps in mind". Driven to make a 60fps polygon-based fighting game, he conceived an original project with wide appeal—driven so partly by a more story-heavy approach and the inclusion of role-playing elements—which became Rival Schools: United By Fate.
Most of Itsuno's output for the first nine years of his career was fighting games, both in 2D and 3D, as either director or designer. As the genre and the arcade market declined, he worked on console games of various genres, within both positions he'd been in before: One Piece Mansion, GioGio's Bizarre Adventure and Auto Modellista.
After Itsuno had finished work on Capcom vs. SNK 2, he started conceiving a role-playing video game. Since he appeared to be "idle", his boss ordered him to work on Devil May Cry 2. Itsuno was asked to "reorganize the project" in a supplementary role, which effectively meant taking over leadership, as upper management saw it as director-less. In exchange, he would go uncredited, but ended up the only director listed in the final version of the game. Most of Team Devil (the staff on that title) had not worked on Devil May Cry and lacked experience in 3D action-adventure games, which resulted in a production severely behind schedule with six months left on the deadline. Itsuno accomplished the request, but was dissatisfied with his level of involvement and the final product's quality.
He didn't want Devil May Cry 2 to be his legacy within the series, so before development had wrapped, Itsuno asked his higher-ups for Devil May Cry 3, with himself as director from the start of the project. He rallied Team Devil to stay for it; some members shared his sentiment, with many wanting to work with what they learned making Devil May Cry 2. Gameplay elements such as the size of environments and the game's battle engine were reconsidered, and common criticisms such as decreases to Dante's cockiness and the game's difficulty were brought back in line with the first game. These changes were met with praise and the game was very well-received.
Itsuno returned to direct Devil May Cry 4. He stated that the visual design sought to deliver a satisfying sensation of floating in the air, and that the actions of Nero's Devil Bringer could not be done on contemporary generation consoles, necessitating a new generation of consoles such as the PlayStation 3. Devil May Cry 4 (2008) was met with both commercial and critical success.
The next game in the series, DmC: Devil May Cry, was developed by British developer Ninja Theory; Itsuno was the supervising director on that project. When discussing this decision, Itsuno said: "With DmC this time, we wanted to avoid the problem that befalls some series where you keep making it with the same team, same hardware, and it tends to decrease and fans move away from it... We don’t want the series to die." The development team included over ninety members, several of whom were from Capcom. Alex Jones and Motohide Eshiro acted as producers, aiming to help Ninja Theory make DmC play like the previous Devil May Cry games. Devil May Cry 5, was released in 2019.