Keiji Inafune

Keiji Inafune (稲船 敬二) is the head of Research & Development and Online Business at Capcom, known for being the character designer of Mega Man and producer of Onimusha and Dead Rising video game series. In most game credits, he uses the name "INAFKING". Characters from the Street Fighter and Mega Man series have become some of the most well-known and recognizable video game characters, making Keiji Inafune a large part of Capcom's success.

Early Projects
In 1987, 22-year old Keiji joined the corporation of Capcom not long after graduating in search of a job as an illustrator. His first assignment as graphic designer was Street Fighter (1987), which became a very popular fighting game series after the release of Street Fighter II in 1991. At the time, Capcom focused on the expansion of the home video gaming market; particularly the Famicom from Nintendo. Previously, most games released to the system were ports (release of a game to a different system). Now wanting to capitalize on the fledgling Nintendo system, Keiji's superiors directed him to create a new video game character called "Rockman". Capcom's artist and developer teams were still diminutive at that period in time, and so Keiji was directed to be one of the leading artists to the new project.

When it came to the design for the Rockman game (which was later changed to "Mega Man" in North America), Keiji developed all the character art and designs. Due to the small taskforce, he also constructed the characters into pixel form, as well as the game's respective logo, package design, and instruction booklet. As the Famicom was an early gaming system, only 56 colors were available for display, the majority of which were blue-tinted. Keiji noted that this affected the decision to color the character blue (as result, fans have nicknamed the character "the blue bomber"). The designs of Keiji's character was also heavily influenced by Japanese animation he used to watch when he was a child, and he notes that he took observations from other video game characters present at the time, such as Mario.

It is unknown were he got the idea for Mega Man but it is in popular belief that the anime "Shinzou Ningen Kashaan" ((Neo Human Casshan, also known as Casshan) had a large role in the creation of Mega Man. Since this show ran during Keiji’s childhood it is believed to be a source of inspiration during his education which he then brought to his career. Casshan is about robots going insane and attacking humans. To save the world a boy volunteers to become a fighting android to combat the robots. He also had a robot dog to help him out. This shows a mix of the Mega Man X series and the Mega Man Classic series.

In development of the game, Keiji incorporated many references to various music genres, such as Rock, which is the source of the Japanese name of "Rockman". Along with this, the team made a gaming system pertaining to the rock-paper-scissors concept, one which the various Mega Man series still revolves around today. The first Rockman/Mega Man game was released in December 1987, after which sales in both countries were competent, but as Keiji later notes, " "While it did sell more than we had expected, the first Rockman wasn't a huge success as far as the numbers go,". Noting this, Capcom superiors dictated that the team begin on a new project called Professional Baseball Murder Mystery, which was only released in Japan. However, the team felt strongly about the Rockman series, and urged that they be permitted to construct another iteration in order to amend the previous failings of the original and continue in the light of creativity. Capcom allowed the Rockman team to continue, with the prerequisites of completing Professional Baseball Murder Mystery as well. The team did so, completing the project on their own time, and on December 24, 1988, released Rockman 2, with Mega Man 2 being released later in North America in 1989. The project proved to be a huge success, earning more than its previous iteration. Inafune stated in a interview that Mega Man 2 is his favorite Mega Man game. Coincidentally, fans widely consider it to be the best Mega Man game, because of its production values, such as graphics, music, etc. Capcom realized that the Mega Man series was a profitable investment, and many ports were constructed along with regular installments released on a yearly basis. The next game in the "classic" series was Mega Man 3, released in Japan on September 28, 1990 and later released in North America in November 1990. Inafune considers Mega Man 3 as one of his least favorite Mega Man games. From an interview with Nintendo Power in the October 2007 issue, Inafune explained the reason why is because of "...what went into the game and what was behind the release of the game." He also stated that he was forced to put the game out before he thought it was ready and during the game's production, the developers lost the main planner, so Inafune had to take over that job for completing the game. Inafune concluded, "I knew that if we had more time to polish it, we could do a lot of things better, make it a better game, but the company (Capcom) said that we needed to release it. The whole environment behind what went into the production of the game is what I least favored. Numbers one and two - I really wanted to make the games; I was so excited about them. Number three - it just turned very different."

The success of the Famicom began to fade into obscurity in light of its successor, the Super Famicom (SNES), and Keiji set his sights on the development on a new series called "Rockman X", which continued the plot of the original series, but set a darker tone and took place 100 years after the previous storyline. Keiji developed the characters X, and Zero, and as before, released yearly installments of the series, beginning with the first game, Rockman X.

Originally, Zero was meant to be the leading character of the X series, but Capcom executives convinced Inafune to continue with the analogous design from the original game. Ironically Zero became quite popular anyway, obtaining his own game series years later (Mega Man Zero).

During the 32-bit era, Keiji produced the three-dimensional Rockman DASH/Mega Man Legends series after receiving requests from Sony to develop a new 3D Rockman series exclusively for the Playstation, he concurred. Although, he envisioned high sales and was an ambitious supporter to the development of the game, it wasn't a massive success. The series is currently on hiatus and has spawned the fewest sequels and is mostly released in parts.

Originally, Keiji had intended to end the series' plot at the installment of Rockman X5, and had begun development on the Rockman Zero series, in order to elaborate on the character of Zero. However, he had departed to another studio in cooperation with Inticreates, and unbeknown to him, another installment (Rockman X6) was created. This set a slight continuity error in Keiji's intention for the plot, but through some changes in the storyline, was alleviated.

Later projects and beyond
One of Keiji Inafune's recent creations is the popular Rockman.EXE/Megaman Battle Network series, which is set outside the continuity of the rest of the Mega Man story lines and introduced RPG and strategy elements. According to Inafune, he received the basis for creating the series from observing his son. On April 2, 2005, Inafune was promoted from corporate officer to senior corporate officer. Keiji Inafune is the head of Capcom Production Studio 2. Being a corporate officer most of his career he was happy to hear that he was promoted. Keiji also developed another series, called Onimusha, which has spawned various sequels, and focuses on past Japan, Samurai warriors, and magic. Also, Inafune is involved in Inticreates' creation of the latest Rockman project, Rockman ZX.

Inafune and his team's next creation was Dead Rising for the Xbox 360. Dead Rising, released by Capcom in the U.S. on August 8, 2006, is a zombie-slaying game heavily influenced by George A. Romero's 1979 movie Dawn of the Dead. Dead Rising is the second zombie game Inafune has worked on, the first being Resident Evil 2.

Inafune's most recent project was another Xbox 360 game, titled Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, which is based on the scenario of an entirely frozen planet, and swaps between on foot and mech based gameplay. Inafune has said that the setting is based in part on John Carpenter's The Thing. The game was released in Japan on December 22nd 2006, and in the US on January 12th 2007.

According to a recent interview in Dorimaga Inafune is currently working on a Wii game, although details about the game have yet to be revealed.

Works
He has been credited for more than just an illustrator in the credits of the Mega Man games; he has also been credited in production, design, support, and graphics. In the credits he does not go by his real name, he goes by Inafking. This is believed to be because in that time it was considered geeky to have worked on designing a game, this information is unconfirmed though.

Rockman/Mega Man
Note: Keiji Inafune has not been involved directly with some iterations of the Mega Man series (such as Mega Man X6 and Mega Man X: Command Mission).

Original Rockman/Mega Man series

 * Mega Man -- Character Designer
 * Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 -- Character Design
 * Mega Man 3 -- Sub Planning
 * Mega Man 4 -- Planner, Special Designer
 * Mega Man 5 -- Object Designer, Adviser
 * Mega Man 6 and Mega Man 7 -- Object Designer
 * Mega Man 8 and Mega Man & Bass -- Producer
 * Mega Man Soccer -- Illustration (uncredited)
 * Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters -- Special Thanks
 * Mega Man Battle & Chase -- Producer
 * Mega Man Powered Up -- Executive Producer

Rockman X/Mega Man X

 * Mega Man X, Mega Man X2 and Mega Man X3 -- Character Design, Illustrations (uncredited)
 * Mega Man X4 -- Producer
 * Mega Man X5, Mega Man X7, Mega Man X8, Mega Man Xtreme and Mega Man Xtreme 2 -- Special Thanks
 * Mega Man Maverick Hunter X -- Executive Producer

Other Rockman Series (Producer)

 * Rockman Zero/Mega Man Zero -- Producer
 * Rockman DASH/Mega Man Legends -- Producer
 * The Misadventures of Tron Bonne -- Game Concept, Producer
 * Rockman.EXE/MegaMan Battle Network -- Producer
 * Mega Man ZX -- Producer
 * MegaMan Star Force -- Producer

Other games

 * Street Fighter -- Graphic Designer
 * Pro Yakyuu? Satsujin Jiken! (Professional Baseball Murder Mystery) -- Graphic Designer
 * Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers -- Graphic Designer
 * DuckTales -- Graphic Designer
 * Capcom Barcelona '92 -- Graphic Designer
 * Breath of Fire -- Character Design, Illustrations
 * Capcom Fighting Evolution, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Shadow of Rome and Black Cat -- Executive Producer
 * Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap, and Dead Rising -- Producer
 * Final Fight: Streetwise -- Very, Very Special Thanks
 * Lost Planet: Extreme Condition -- Original Story
 * Resident Evil 2 -- Promotion Producer
 * Resident Evil 4 -- Executive Producer (PS2 version)
 * Onimusha Warlords and Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny -- Producer
 * Onimusha Blade Warriors, Onimusha 3: Demon Siege and Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams -- Executive Producer