Ex-Team Ninja lead dude Tomonobu Itagaki spared no words for his competition in a recent interview. He did, on the other hand, have kind words for Steven Tyler and Aerosmith.
If Hideo Kojima is the prince of crazy when it comes to big shot Japanese game designers, Tomonobu Itagaki has to be king. Kojima’s a master of misdirection, cerebral hijinks and overall weirdness, but Itagaki, well, he just seems to say whatever he thinks and whatever he thinks usually has to do with his games, his competitors’ games, sexy women and Steven Tyler.
Those were the subjects he touched upon in a recent interview with 1UP. Asked what he thinks of the newest contender to the stylish action game genre crown, Bayonetta, Itagaki had less than kind words to say about the game’s creator, Hideki Kamiya: “If I made a similar game as a game I made in the company I quit, people would say, ‘What an idiot, can’t he make anything else?’ Well, that is more or less the opinion I have for, uh, that Bayo-something game.”
That would seem like just some straight up smack talk, but maybe Itagaki is trying to say something here. Maybe. Kamiya, formerly of Capcom (where he made Devil May Cry), did work Clover (where he made Okami), which went kaput and is kinda now back in the form of Platinum Games, which is making Bayonetta. This isn’t too far from the story of Itagaki, who left Tecmo and Team Ninja to form a new studio, the aptly named Tokyo VIKINGS.
So. If Itagaki is bashing Kamiya for ditching a company and then just making a game that’s arguably similar to the ones he made for his old employer, is he saying that whatever he’s working on right now is something different than what he’s done before? One thing is different about the new Itagaki – he’s not as enamored with cartoonishly sexed-up ladies in games as he used to be.
“I have to admit I’ve gotten tired of that,” he said. “A lot of people are making [games with women like that] recently. I’ll gladly let them take over for me.”
So does that mean his next game won’t have girls as impossibly proportioned as those in Dead or Alive? “Don’t be stupid,” he said when asked this. One thing it definitely won’t have, however, is Aerosmith. And for this, Itagaki is sorry.
“I have to apologize to my fans, but since I won’t be making Dead or Alive games, I won’t be using Aerosmith’s music anymore,” he said. “I want to send the deepest gratitude to Aerosmith and Steven Tyler. The power I needed to make DOA came from Aerosmith and the movie Armageddon.”
Honestly, guys, I couldn’t even make this stuff up.
