atsushi inaba

Platinum Games Say Black And White Ain’t Easy

11:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Platinum Games’ MadWorld is black and white — and red. Besides blood, everything is monochrome. Just because early video games were black and white that doesn’t mean it’s easiest to churn out a B&W title. Platinum Games producer Atsushi Inaba says that it’s actually pretty hard. More »

MadWorld Is Totally ‘At Home On The Wii’

3:00PM Brian Ashcraft | Bloody MadWorld isn’t your typical Wii game by any stretch. It’s got mini-games, but violent ones. Wii Sports, this ain’t. But for Platinum Games, the developers of MadWorld, the fit makes perfect sense. Says the game’s producer Atsushi Inaba: We’re really interested in the Wii platform so we wanted to create a really cool and stylish game for that… As you can see [from our Leipzig presentation] it’s really easy to pick up and play so when we came up with the concept of Mad World the Wii felt like a good console for that. It feels like a game that is at home on Wii. Stuff like this is good for the Wii as a platform, you know. It really is. The machine is starting to get pigeonholed. MadWorld concept “really suited Wii” [CVG] More »

MadWorld Isn’t Just About Throwing People Into Walls Of Spikes, Y’know

7:20AM Michael McWhertor | Sega wanted to clear something up about MadWorld at Games Convention. You won’t just be cruising the black and white streets of Mad City, tossing scores of chumps into meat grinders, slicing them in half with Dumpster lids and beheading them in style with daggers akimbo. There’s more to it than that. First of all, there are mini-game challenges, like the Death Press, in which Jack, the star of MadWorld, will have to toss as many bodies into a spike-filled crusher before time runs out. You know, to break the monotony of turning faces into pulp and being showered with blood. More »

Okami Producer Weighs in on PS3 vs. Xbox 360

3:51PM Brian Ashcraft | Shinji Mikami, Resident Evil creator and current boss at Platinum Games (formerly Seeds, formerly Clover) has announced the start-up developer is going to get down to work. But on what? In a recently posted 1Up interview from last TGS (thanks for the leisurely update!), Platinum Games cohort and Okami producer Atsuhi Inaba (pictured) expresses interest in the Wii and DS. But what about the PS3 and Xbox 360? Inaba says: So if it’s a concept that will be matching the Japanese market, we’re going to try to probably concentrate on the Japanese market, but of course the Western market is the biggest market now, so we are concerned about the Western market, and have the Western market in mind. We might even do some testing specifically in the Western market to create a game…. To be honest, if we’re going to consider the Western market, we should be thinking of creating a game on the 360; however, the 360 is not doing that good in Japan, and we’re a Japanese studio, so do we want to ignore Japan? And let’s think about the European market. Well, is 360 doing good there? No. So OK, what about PS3? Well, how well the PS3 is doing is still kind of vague, you don’t know where to go with PS3. Multi-platform anyone? Seems to be suiting Inaba’s former employer Capcom just fine. Inaba Profile [1Up via Go Nintendo via DS Fanboy] [Pic] More »

Inaba Teases Us With “Redone” Okami

7:30PM Luke Plunkett | Our 2007 Game Of The Year awards weren’t a factual representation of my game of the year. See, living in a PAL nation, I didn’t get Okami until early 2007. And had I been able to vote for it, Mario Galaxy and Uncharted may as well have packed their bags and gone home. Many of you will share similar sentiments. Which is why seeing Okami producer Atsushi Inaba teasing us with how much he’d like to do a reworked version of the game hurts. Like nails being driven into the spine. When asked which Clover games he’d like to go back and work on again, he answers: In a purely creative sense, it would be Viewtiful Joe. I’d like to really wring all of the inherent potential out of the concept. Another idea would be to redo Okami, like the recent DS Zelda. There are ideas we weren’t able to include in both games which are still in our minds. This is probably the cruellest sentence of 2008 so far. Fuck you, Inaba. Seeds of Change [Next-Gen] More »