With the PC version of Lost Planet just around the corner (the 26th of June to be exact), Gamespot recently interviewed Producer Jun Takeuchi about the PC version and the challenges of bringing it to both XP and Vista, both DX9 and DX10. You can read it here. And if you missed the candid interview I did with Takeuchi-san back in January, you can still read it here.

—Brian

-PS – Check back here on Friday…

To finish off my string of exclusive developer interviews with a bang, I bring you my conversation with none other than Mr. Keiji Inafune himself. He’s been at Capcom for 20 years. His very first creation at Capcom was Mega Man, or Rock Man in Japan (which means Mega Man is 20 years old this year!), and he has continued to make hit after hit. He is now higher up in the food chain at Capcom, and for Lost Planet he acted as Executive Producer.

Below is my interview with Inafune-san, conducted over lunch on the day of the Lost Planet launch event.

[Brian] Do you have any goals or New Year’s resolutions for 2007?

[Keiji Inafune] Yeah, overall for Capcom, since I’m working more on managing development overall rather than being too hands-on with any particular title, my goal for this year is basically to improve the working conditions for all our talented development staff.

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Okay, so Lost Planet has launched, and now that the dust snow has settled, I have some more treats for you. If you’ve kept up with the blog at all, you know I’ve done a ton of exclusive Lost Planet developer interviews.

This week I am bringing to you an interview I did with Lost Planet Producer Jun Takeuchi. I conducted the interview during lunch on the day of the launch event, since I was with the guys—Keiji Inafune, Jun Takeuchi, and LP Director Kenji Oguro—all day Thursday and Friday as their translator for our “media tour.” Actually, if you have seen any of the video interviews we did, that’s my voice on the video.

So today I have my interview with Takeuchi-san, along with a bunch of pictures from that day, including some shots from a field trip with Takeuchi-san and Oguro-san to the submarine-slash-museum on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Next week will be my interview with LP Executive Producer Keiji Inafune, so be sure to check that out.

Click to read the full interview.

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You may recognize the name Jamie Christopherson from my interview with Soundelux audio designer Peter Zinda, and from my interview with Tomoya Kishi, Capcom sound director on the Lost Planet team.

Jamie is the composer at Soundelux who composed the majority of the music for Lost Planet. Gamespot has posted a great interview they did with him. Very interesting read. Check it out!

—Brian

As a follow-up to my interview last week with Capcom Sound Director Tomoya Kishi, this week I’m pleased to bring to you an interview with Peter Zinda from Soundelux. When you boot Lost Planet, you’ll notice the prominent Soundelux logo before the title screen. Capcom has been working with Soundelux for many years now, and Soundelux has provided sound effects and music for many of your favorite Capcom games.

Click to read the full interview.

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On to the conclusion of my interview with Sound Director Tomoya Kishi.

Jump to:
Part 1
Part 2

[Brian] You mentioned contracting the music for the game out to Soundelux as well. Can you tell me about that? Did they do all of the songs for the game?

[Kishi] Sure. Jamie Christopherson over at Soundelux composed the music. In the first 3 days he came up with 2 full songs. He’s really amazing. And these songs fit the game perfectly. I was so amazed at his work I don’t even know how to begin to describe. I don’t know how we would have done the music without Soundelux.

Click to read the rest of Part 3.

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Here is Part 2 of my interview with Sound Director Tomoya Kishi. If you missed Part 1, click HERE.

[Brian] Did you create the sound effects for the Akrid and weapons and all that on your own? Or how is that handled? Can you go over the basic process involved in creating a sound effect?

[Kishi] The main thing I created myself was the sounds you hear when Wayne is walking and running and jumping. Wayne’s footsteps, the sound of his pant legs swishing as he walks or runs, all of the sounds you would hear yourself if you were out there in the snow instead of Wayne.

Click to read the rest of Part 2.

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Here we are, just a week away from the launch of Lost Planet. I hope you’ve been reading all the weekly developer interviews I’ve been posting.

This week I got to pick the brain of Mr. Tomoya Kishi, the Sound Director for Lost Planet. And if you’ve been following the interviews, you can probably guess that Director Kenji Oguro was present at this interview as well to share a few thoughts.

Since the interview is pretty long, I’ve split it up into 3 parts.

Brian Please share your name and your role on the Lost Planet development team.

[Tomoya Kishi] My name is Tomoya Kishi and I am the Sound Director for Lost Planet.

I manage all of the sound effects for the game and “direct” all sound effects and BGM creation to make sure they fit within the vision for the Lost Planet world.

This includes managing the scheduling for the sound team members and being in charge of working with our external partner, Soundelux. I was also directly involved with the production of the player’s movement sounds, weapon sound effects, and the mastering of the cutscene audio.

Click to read the rest of Part 1 of the interview.

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Here’s the second half of my interview with Lost Planet Cutscene Director, Mr. Yoshiyuki Tonoe.

[Brian] Can you go over the process of how a script gets turned into a full-fledged cutscene?

[Tonoe] Sure. Of course our work doesn’t start until the story is finalized. Then we take the story and draw up storyboards, and take care of whatever motion-capturing we need to do. Next we get the 3D assets, the character models and other props and environments, from the artists in charge of those things, and fuse that with the captured mo-cap data to start putting scenes together. Finally, we show it to the person in charge of story and continuity, Hosokawa-san the designer in this case, and get his OK, or refine it if needed. Once we get the OK, we show it to Takeuchi-san, the producer for final approval.

Click to read the conclusion to the interview.

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I’m blogging from my parents’ place in Seattle. We drove up for the holidays and almost had a White Christmas—it started snowing here on Wednesday night, missing the big day by 2 days.

This week’s interview is a little later than usual, with the holidays, coordinating with Japan and all that. But better late than never.

For this week’s interview, I asked Tonoe-san, the Cutscene Director for Lost Planet, all about the cutscenes in Lost Planet and the work that went into making them. Lost Planet Director Kenji Oguro also added some comments here and there.

Click to read Part 1 of the interview.

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