Keiji Inafune
Keiji Inafune is a Japanese video game producer, character designer, game designer, and businessman. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original Street Fighter and Mega Man in 1987. He was then a character designer and planner of the Mega Man series during the NES and Super NES era. For Mega Man X, he created and designed the character Zero.
Inafune then moved onto the position of producer with his first title being Mega Man 8 in 1996. In addition to being the producer for Mega Man X4, the three Mega Man Legends games, the Mega Man Zero series, the Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force series and Mega Man ZX and Advent, Inafune was also a producer of the Lost Planet, Dead Rising and Onimusha series. In 2006, he was promoted to Senior Corporate Officer of Research & Development. In 2010, he became Global Head of Production at Capcom.
He left Capcom in late 2010, and later founded his own companies Comcept, and Intercept. He also became Representative Director of DiNG, a mobile game studio. Intercept worked on the game Kaio: King of Pirates which was announced in 2011 and cancelled in 2015. While at Comcept, Inafune oversaw work on such games as Mighty No. 9, Soul Sacrifice, and the unreleased Red Ash: The Indelible Legend. In 2017, Comcept was purchased and became a subsidiary of Level-5, becoming Level-5 Comcept. In March 2025, it was revealed that Inafune left Level-5 after 7 years in the company.
Early life
Inafune was born in Kishiwada, Osaka in 1965. He received a degree in graphic design in 1987 from the Osaka Designers' College.Career
Early
Soon after graduating, the 22-year-old Inafune joined the Capcom corporation in 1987, in search of a job as an illustrator. Inafune had initially wanted to join Konami, but Capcom was much closer. In many early game credits at Capcom, he is credited under the name "INAFKING", which he got by combining the name "Snufkin" from the anime series Moomin with his own name. The first two titles Inafune worked on at Capcom was Mega Man for the Famicom and the original Street Fighter for arcades, both of which were released in 1987. For Street Fighter, Inafune drew character portraits for the game.For Mega Man, Inafune designed several minor enemy characters, and also designed the boss character "Elec Man", who was the first original game character that Inafune designed. Inafune had tried to design him as if he was a character an American comic series such as Spider-Man or X-Men. Inafune also drew the Japanese box art and promotional illustrations and worked on in-game animations and pixel art. Director Akira Kitamura created the original static pixel art sprite for Rock Man. This was to ensure that the sprite could be properly seen against the game's backgrounds, and could work in the game. After that, the pixel art was handed over to artist Inafune, who created a refined illustration of the character. Inafune refers to this process as "like a reverse character design" as it is the opposite of what typically occurs, where artists create concept art which is then translated into game's graphics. During a special event at TGS 2007, Inafune clarified his role in the creation of Mega Man.
The first Mega Man game was released in December 1987, after which sales in both countries were decent, but as Inafune later notes, "While it did sell more than we had expected, wasn't a huge success as far as the numbers go."
Akira Kitamura suggested to create a contest to solicit designs from fans for Robot Masters for Mega Man games. The first game to do this was Mega Man 2 and it was Inafune's job to turn those winning designs into finished professional designs.
Starting with Mega Man 3, Inafune was not only doing character designs, he was also heavily involved in the game design aspects of the series. However, Inafune considers Mega Man 3 to be one of his least favorite Mega Man games. From an interview with Nintendo Power in the October 2007 issue, Inafune explained that the reason was because of "...what went into the game and what was behind the release of the game." He also stated that the team was forced to put the game out before they thought it was ready and that during the game's production, the developers had lost the main planner, Inafune having to take his position. 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 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."
Inafune also designed the original boss characters for the Mega Man titles on the Game Boy. These included Enker from Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge, Punk from Mega Man III, and Ballade from Mega Man IV, also known as the "Mega Man Killers".
Capcom set on the development on a new series for the Super NES, Mega Man X, which continued the plot of the original series, but set a darker tone and took place 100 years after the previous storyline. Inafune designed the character Zero for the games as well as two of the bosses: Chill Penguin and Storm Eagle. "I didn't get to completely design a Mega Man from scratch until Zero. Back when the SNES was coming out, I was asked to give Mega Man a redesign, so I created this character. But I realized that this design wouldn't be accepted as Mega Man, so I had another designer create the new Mega Man, and I worked on Zero to release him as the 'other main character' that would steal all the good scenes!"
Inafune contributed some designs for Mega Man 7, which was released in 1995. He designed the character of Auto, as well as the initial sketches for two new characters named "Baroque" and "Crush". These characters were handed over to Hayato Kaji who finished the design, and they became known as Bass and Treble.
Producer
Long time producer Tokuro Fujiwara, departed Capcom. Inafune was then made producer for the next Mega Man title, Mega Man 8 in 1996. After an internal restructure at Capcom, Inafune became the general manager of Capcom Production Studio 2 in 1998. He produced the three-dimensional Mega Man Legends series after receiving requests from Sony to develop a new 3D Mega Man series exclusively for the PlayStation. Although he envisioned high sales and was an ambitious supporter to the development of the game, it was not a massive success and Inafune likens it to a "clumsy son". Inafune says it was quite difficult to promote the game, as there was little media interest in yet another Mega Man title. Inafune was a promotion producer for Resident Evil 2, which in contrast to Mega Man Legends, had huge interest and was an easy game to sell.Originally, Inafune had intended to end the series with Mega Man X5, stating, "I had very little to do with X5. I just told the team to 'finish off the series with this title,' and left it at that. That's why the game itself has a real feel of finality to it." Instead, he became co-producer for the new Mega Man game that Inti Creates had been commissioned to develop, and requested that they make Zero the main character. However, Capcom chose to continue the X series without him, extending it to Mega Man X8.
Inafune also developed another series, the samurai-era Japanese themed Onimusha, which has spawned various sequels.
Keiji Inafune was producer for the Mega Man Battle Network series, which is set outside the continuity of the rest of the Mega Man story lines and introduced role-playing and strategic elements. According to Inafune, he received the basis for creating the series from observing his son. Inafune contributed the Battle Network redesign of Punk from Mega Man III, and he says it took quite a bit of convincing for the artists to let him do it, and even then they made additional changes to Inafune's redesign.
Senior Corporate Officer
In 2006 Inafune was promoted from corporate officer to senior corporate officer. Inafune and his team's next creation was Dead Rising for the Xbox 360. Dead Rising, initially started as a sequel to Shadow of Rome, with the same team members, before changing story, setting, and time period. The game is a zombie-slaying game heavily influenced by George A. Romero's 1978 movie Dawn of the Dead. It was released by Capcom in the U.S. on August 8, 2006.Inafune became acquainted with Ben Judd when he was working on Dead Rising. After this, Judd would often act as a translator for Inafune in public events.
Inafune was a producer for Inti Creates' game Mega Man ZX, and the sequel title Mega Man ZX Advent.
Inafune had the idea of going back to the simple gameplay of the original Mega Man series, and was a producer for the game Mega Man 9. The game was developed by Inti-Creates along with Capcom, and Inafune contributed two designs for the project: Splash Woman and Plug Man. The game was followed up by a similar sequel, Mega Man 10 in 2010.
Inafune was a producer for the Dead Rising 2, and opted to hire Canadian developer Blue Castle Games as a developer rather than having it developed in-house at Capcom like the first game was. The game was released in 2010. In addition, he made his director debut in the short film series Zombrex: Dead Rising Sun.
The last mainline Street Fighter game was Street Fighter EX3 in 2000, and there was reluctance at Capcom to release another numeric entry in the series. Producer Yoshinori Ono pitched Street Fighter IV to Inafune, who was head of R&D at the time. Inafune approved the project, due to the positive reception to Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting on Xbox Live Arcade and fans interest. Street Fighter IV was released first in arcades in Japan in 2008, and then on home consoles in 2009. The original console version of SFIV went on to sell 3.4 million copies.
On April 22, 2010, it was announced that Inafune would be Capcom's Global Head of Production. Inafune stated "I want to end comments that Capcom games made in Europe aren't really Capcom games... basically saying that whether games are created in America or Japan or anywhere in the world, I will be the one overlooking it and so it will have that Capcom flavor that fans know and love."