So the Xbox 360 version will be 800 Microsoft Points, and the PS3 version will be around 900 yen, which makes me wonder if it is OK to be that cheap. I would have bought it even if it was a full priced, packaged release… I’m going to have to unpack my video projector… I’ve been pretty vehement about saying, “PORT IT!” so now I am going to have to put my money where my mouth is and play this game on like a 100 inch screen.

So, since After Burner Climax is one of our brothers-in-Climax so to speak, make sure you pay attention when it is released digitally this spring. And best of luck to everyone working on the title! Oh, and let’s get working on getting Monster Land up on the Virtual Console or XBLA.

Check out the official SEGA After Burner Climax website:

http://sega-afterburner.com/

Wow, I got a little excited and that ended up longer than I thought… Alright, on to the next topic. Last January 30, we held a party for our fans at an authentic Cantonese restaurant on the 39^th floor of our office building, the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka. We called the event Platinum Twilight!

32 fans came for the evening and spend some time with the staff here at PlatinumGames. A good time was had by all. Everyone was very well-mannered, and we didn’t get any “delicate” questions (actually, I kind of wish they had asked us more questions…), so it was a really chilled out evening from start to finish. It was nice to hear some much fervent support from so many people, and it made me feel warm and happy that chose a path for my life that included making games.

Having events like this with our fans is something that we did several times during our Clover Studios days, but having it in the very same building as the studio meant that we just had to make an exception to the rule and give the fans a quick tour of the production floor. Even when it is guests working in the industry, we are especially careful about information leaking, so this was the first time that non-studio guests have been show around the inside of the studio. Right now, we are working hard on Vanquish, which at the time had just been announced, but details had not been released, so even I got a bit nervous leading people around and explaining things to them.

We were only about to show people around the studio for a short period of time, but I think that people more or less got a feeling for the fact that one of the important point to the way we make games is breaking down barriers in our office and communicating with each other. I also think they discovered that we really love toys here. People even saw my cluttered desk… At the least, being able to actually talk with the users we normally don’t even get to place a face on was an incredibly important experience which can’t simply be summed up into a few words.

Of course, we are around to create and release interesting games; however, we are not some sort of “game creating machine. Everyone on the staff are each their own person. Just as when you become interested in one of our games, we are interested in the users who play our creations. Things may change depending on the type of game, its scale, or the people behind (or company) it, but I think that I’d like to make games more like they are a folk craft, filled with the warmth of people, rather than some sort of industrial packaged good. I want to keep holding these types of events, so we can share each other’s true dispositions and get a feel for each other’s humanity, instead of persisting in your stock “producer/consumer” relationship.

It was a little bit hard to figure out when the event ended because of how things were run a bit poorly; however, I am very thankful for all of those who took valuable time out of their lives to spend time with us. Thank you so much! To those fans that weren’t selected to be with us, we plan on holding as many events as we can in the future, so definitely enter to attend the next event if you can.

So here are my notes on the event…

l  When Bayonetta came out, I played it for 30 hours straight on the day of release! -> I beat Super Mario World the day the SNES came out.

l  So that’s the kind of person who wrote those blog entries…

l  Valentine’s Day chocolate

l  Sorry that the printing on the overseas collector’s editions Scarborough Fair gun is wrong…

l  Bayonetta cosplay! Woohoo!

l  Hand-made Scarborough Fair guns are awesome.

l  I love Resident Evil 2 -> I’m kinda proud that I think we might have been the first kissing scene between two polygonal characters rendered in real-time.

l  I like RE2 more than RE1 -> I’m actually a bigger fan of 1. LOL.

l  Make a sequel to Bayonetta! -> If schedules work out…

l  Make a shooting game! -> I’m not opposed to this…

l  Make Viewtiful Joe 3! -> Anyone actually going to play it? LOL

l  Sequel to Okami? -> I did have a story for one in my head, but you know…

l  My paragons of gaming are God Hand and Vagrant Story -> I, too, am a devotee.

l  I like Devil May Cry 2, too. -> WHAT!?

l  I want one of the mini-dolls from Bayonetta -> Please keep putting in requests…

l  I want one of the Bayonetta love pillows -> Please keep putting in requests…

l  I want Bayonetta’s glasses -> Hehehehe…

l  The original arcade version of Nemesis (Gradius) is awesome!

l  If you live in Juso, you should try the ramen shop near the station. It’s called Yokanise.

l  It’s hard to follow Bayonetta’s story -> Sorry bout that…

That wraps it up for the party, but I have one more thing to report in this post. Since Bayonetta game play commentaries seem to be flourishing online, I thought that I, Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya, in my infinite lack of wisdom, would try and make one myself. I gave it a shot on the prologue and here are my results.

I made this by myself at home, so pardon my complete lack of excitement, the poor AV quality, and terrible technique. I am mainly talking about things behind the scenes things like incidents during development, hidden background information, etc. If you are interest, please check the videos out. It’s been more than 3 months since the game came out, so I figure that many of you may be getting close to wrapping up the game, so beware that the videos contain spoilers! I’m not normally the world’s most motivated person, so I’m not sure how long I will continue this (LOL), be have fun nonetheless.

Until next time!

Picture: Our concept designer Ikumi made these for my birthday. She designed the dolls for the game, and then she made these by hand! But instead of making Jeanne, she made Zero…

I was mainly tasked with background modeling during Bayonetta, and I would like to show a few of them to you in this blog.

Ithavoll Building (Exterior)

According to the background information, the building is incredibly tall, upwards of 3 km!
　
The Ithavoll Building is the symbol of Isla Del Sol. At the time I had just entered the company and was a complete rookie when they told me to model this, so I did feel some pressure, but I was also very happy.
　

This is what the model looks like.

This is what it looks like when textured.

And this is once the shadows are baked in.

At the spire of the building, there is a sphere that floats via a mysterious power. (Perhaps the person inside…)
　
Gjallarhorn Strategic Defense Initiative Building

During the game, these two buildings appear during the final fight with Jeanne.

These buildings have very distinctive sculptures on their front facades. I spent a good deal of time thinking about the feel of the kind of material these sculptures would be made out of.
　

Ultimately, I decided to go with someone very mechanical around the shoulders, and then with something more concrete like as you head downwards.
　

When the defense system is activated, the wings spread out like so. On the wings, written in our Angelic font, are the words: “Our fate rests on the wings of divine providence.”
　

Jeanne’s Last Stand
　
This building is the scene of Jeanne’s last stand…! When I was asked to create this, I proceeded with production with the goal of really wanting to make the building stand out.

The bottom part of the water fountain is broken glass, which allows it to glitter as if illuminated from below.

Water flows down off of the roof.

This is the finished product. Kamiya-san wanted things to pop, so he asked that the small items placed in the area could be destroyed, so I made sure that the water fountain and parts of both sides of the roof could be broken apart.

This is how we went about creating the backgrounds in Bayonetta, in small teams of 3-4 people per stage. Once you put all of these elements into one stage, this is what you end up with.

After this stage, the Effects designers will add special effects, and then I will consult with a programmer to get the stage implemented. Then final tweaks will be made.

I hope you all enjoyed Bayonetta! If you are interested in the game, but haven’t picked it up yet, I assure you that it is really fun, so definitely give it a try!

Hello, everyone. Happy New Year. Bayonetta concept designer Ikumi Nakamura here, humping my beloved Lancer Assault Rifle along with me.

Bayonetta has been released in Europe and North America now. Everyone on staff here is enjoying seeing all your comments about the game everyday.

I wanted to talk about the Premium Theme we made for the Xbox 360.

The main point of departure for the Premium Theme was to place it in the same ballpark as the Bayonetta in-game Chapter Screen (the map screen). I started work on the theme right in the middle of the carnage that is the end of development; naturally, I was sweating bullets as I worked out the design. Originally, we created 10 “stages” that followed the story of Bayonetta for the Friends screen.

However, those of you who purchased the theme got to see 7 of the stages I designed for characters to stand on, if my memory serves me correctly.

Months prior, the world famous Hashimoto Producer had directed me to “Keep the data size down to a third of what you’re using.”

No matter how much Kamiya-san complained, we weren’t able to increase the file size. It caused problems not just for me, but also our programmer, Kenji-san. The only way we could make the limit was to cut some of the stages we created. I’d like to show you the 3 character stages that didn’t make the cut.

Cereza’s stuffed cat stage

Paradiso stage

Ithavoll Building stage

I’ve included Kamiya-san’s avatar in the pictures. I think you should be able to use them as wallpapers if you’d like.

I still have no idea why the Ithavoll Building, a crucial locale, didn’t make the cut…

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The event below is now over.)
By the way, on January 30, 2010, we will be having an official PlatinumGames party with our fans. All of the staff here are looking forward to meeting you all.
We hope to see you there!

Bye for now!

So Bayonetta has finally been released worldwide, huh? Is everyone playing it having a good time? The game has been on-sale in Japan for more than 2 months now, and even though it is a game with its own peculiarities, people who love it seem to truly love it, which makes me quite happy.

Which leads me to some news… The one and only TIME magazine wrote about Bayonetta in their 1/25 issue! It was the video game pick for TIME’S PICKS FOR THE WEEK. This is pretty cool, as TIME is a huge magazine, with a circulation of over 3.3 million readers in North America!

Hashimoto said the other day that he wanted to sell more copies of Bayonetta than the original Devil May Cry, to which I replied, “Not happening…” (LOL) Anyways, I think that this game is where we planted the seeds for something that will eventually grow into a tree with a stout trunk. But I just say that kind of thing and then leave things be…Which ends up with me getting stuck with some sort of global label as someone who doesn’t want to make sequels. (LOL)

With Okami, we aimed to make something that would be widely loved; however, making something in the manner we made Bayonetta is making something that really has to “agree” with you. Personally, I’m someone who doesn’t get motivated if I don’t think something is fun, and Bayonetta is something that people actively choose. Like with food, when one forgoes sweet curry, instead picking Thai red curry (which I was actually addicted to recently and was eating every day). For people like that, who can’t get enough of that “je ne sais quoi”-flavor, I hope you keep supporting us in the future.

Continuing on with Bayo-talk, the European strategy guide should be coming out soon (maybe even once this blog is posted?)! It is entirely in English, so I suppose Japanese fans will have a hard time coming to grips with it; however, THIS IS AWESOME! It’s been a while since I’ve seen something so craftsman-like. Speaking of craftsmen, Karitajian, who were kind enough to put out guides for DMC, Joe, and Okami are awesome as well. I wanted to work with them on Bayonetta as well, so I kept trying to court their attention on my own; however, for some reason or another, be it just the people higher up or politics I’m not privy to, things didn’t work out. Karitajian, if you guys have any great ideas, send them our way!

Anyways, back to the topic at hand, the European guide has been put together by Future Press, and they are planning to release it in a hard cover binding with a Bayonetta ribbon bookmark. They’ve also sweetened the deal with an interview with Hashimoto and I!

Picture: This is just a temp design; however, this illustration featuring only Bayonetta’s leg is really, really great!

So the editors of this guide (must have been) truly hardcore gamers, because they delved into every possible angle of Bayonetta. There are in-game strategies, but also reveal almost all of the little easter eggs I hid in the game. They also write about things even I didn’t know you could do, like Dodge Offsetting the Umbran Spear. They are truly a scary group of individuals.

For the interview portion of the special edition guide, one of their editors came here to interview us, and asked a bunch of really deep questions. Usually you go through the paces with nothing but questions like, “Why is the lead character female?” But the Future Press crew hit me with a rapid succession of truly hardcore questions like, “Why Year 5 Class 3?” or “You know at the end of Viewtiful Joe’s hand sign…” (LOL) The final interview runs completely unedited (as the foreign press has the occasionally tendency to do), so everything we said is down on paper, making it a bit of a sticky situation! (LOL) Of course, there is plenty of idle chat, but in Japan, editors will think about this sort of thing during editing and cut it out for you right from the beginning; however, here they are right there for all the world to see! Of course, places where we crossed the line (personally, I didn’t think we went that far) ended up getting cut once the higher ups stepped in and asked for changes, but I still think it gives you a good idea of what actually went on during the interview. If you are well versed in English, I hope you look forward to checking out the guide!

There is even a trailer (!), so check it out!

Video: Hard work and polish… You can feel the love they put into the guide. That’s what making something is all about!

It all leads me to wonder why Japanese press interviews seem so much less simulating? I feel like I’m always saying stuff that is really interesting; however, it always ends up being edited into something milder. I know I’m saying things that I wouldn’t even print myself (LOL), but I still find it strange to see things cut out even before we’ve gotten to check the interview ourselves.

Getting back to some comments, recently there was a Q&A with me posted online where someone got the great idea to conveniently rewrite my answers to suit their needs, leading to a situation where I felt like “I didn’t say this BS.” It’s scary to see words that I didn’t intended get spread around so freely. With this blog, sure there is a bit of censorship, but at the very least, we are in charge of editing/translating the entries, so we aren’t going to send out any information that just isn’t correct. That’s why I sometimes feel it is hard for me to tell you how I feel day to day, so it was fun for the first time in quite a while for me to read the interview in the European strategy guide and see that it was imparting everything we wanted to tell you. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Another bit of Bayonetta news to share. I wonder if you are all aware of a game called Valkyria Chronicles 2? In-game, they have these stickers that you can place on tanks, and they were kind enough to make one of them the Bayonetta logo!

Picture: This is what the logo looks like on a tank.

By placing this sticker on your tank, it seems you get a +5 AP (Action Points) and +5 HP (Health Points) buff. The power of the Bayo logo… (?) To get this sticker, just go to the official site and get the password that allows you to download it, so everyone go check out the Japanese Valkyria Chronicles 2 site now.

http://valkyria2.jp

Hopefully in the future, I’d love to see a Bayonetta sticker that makes the tank a bit more like a tank version of an “itasha.” Mr. Shuntaro Tanaka, please make it happen!!

Well, that’s all for now!

Picture: I got a little birthday present from the SEGA marketing staff. Secreted away unsuspectingly in my iTunes playlist is the ultimate piece of musical entertainment: Happy Harrier! The one and only maestro Hiro work on the arrangement, joined by the equally impressive Takenobu Mitsuyoshi on vocals! It’s a Happy Birthday song that begins with the Space Harrier intro song! Hearing “Happy Birthday, Dear Kamiya-san” in the same voice as “DAAYYTOONNAAA” is just unbelievable… I went right past being simply happy, and was trembling with gratitude as I broke out into a grateful cold sweat listening to this absolutely priceless treasure. Thank you so much!!!

Bonus Picture: We finished up work on our Bayonetta love pillow CG mock-up picture…!? Bayonetta’s got a look on her face that you definitely wouldn’t see in game… And I’m sure there is no shortage of bad boys ready to use this for nefarious means! I want to be a bad boy too, so will someone please actually make one of these already!?!?

Hello, I am an animator here at PlatinumGames. You can call me Nakajo. It seems early, but it is already Christmas, huh? The office building that houses PlatinumGames has an enormous Christmas tree that really sparkles and shines, attracting huge crowds of revelers even on the weekends. This is the third tree that has welcomed the Bayonetta project, but this year things have calmed down, so I was able to look at the tree in a new light. (Don’t ask what it was like before this year…)

About My Role on Bayonetta
I jointed Team Little Angels primarily as an enemy animation designer. The senior animators on the team have already gone over much of the animation here on the blog; however, I thought I would talk a little bit about one of the Cardinal Virtues, Temperantia, and the Infernal Demon summon that finishes off the boss.
(I thought the animators’ blogs were finished up with Uchi’s blog… But I got called in to write one… I’m writing this now half-crying because I just couldn’t figure out what to include…)

When animating the Temperantia fight, I worked making sure to absolutely avoid destroying the sense of scale, all the while paying attention to the sense the heft and speed the fight had. With something as big as Temperantia, getting a sense of heft and scale requires the attack motions to get bigger and bigger, so I had to go through numerous… numerous… numerous… revisions to make sure the attacks didn’t come from off-screen. (If you are attacked from off-screen, you can’t see the locus of the blow, making it impossible to dodge, right?)

Since the main part of Temperantia is SO big during that fight, the boss actually ends up being the stage, and we included various gameplay devices to this end. Some new big of gameplay would be put into the game and then go through numerous… numerous… numerous… revisions. (Again!!)

With the Infernal Demon summons, they would start by deciding Bayonetta’s summoning pose. Uchi-san also posted about the motion capture process in a previous blog, but I would patch things up using some of the stored motion capture data.

However, there is a limit as to how far you can use this data, and having things like “win poses” overlap with each other wouldn’t be good, so it was always a bit of a difficult situation when we’d begin to argue over poses:
“Hey, I’m using that pose already.”
“Really? I’ll look for something else…”

Once Bayonetta’s pose was locked down, I then moved on to how the Infernal Demon and Temperantia would interact. In Temperantia’s case, he is met by the six-armed demon Hekatoncheir. It was consulting with Kamiya-san, who wanted to make sure that this thing was powerful, that we decided to increase his number of arms from two to six. (Huh? He only used to have two… But six is three times as powerful! And three times as much work!! *cries*) During production, I got a really weird sweat and two or three times I thought that my soul might literally escape out of my mouth; however, I was able to finish the product.

Bayonetta is a game that holds many things and memories; however, having users play it and enjoy it would make me happy.

That’s all for now!

The update will automatically be downloaded to PlayStation 3 when users launch BAYONETTA.

BAYONETTA is available now on Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system.

Speaking of the soundtrack, it isn’t just songs created by PlatinumGames staff. We had the opportunity to work with lots of people outside of the company, which I am really grateful for. From Rei Kondo, to all the staff at GEM Impact, to Hiro-san at SEGA, thank you from the bottom of my heart! I’d love to work together again!

On to the next… A while back Wizard Magazine held an art contest entitled Bayonetta Re-Envisioned, and lots of great works were selected as prize winners. Of course, we had a say in who won, and the staff all looked at all of the entries! The Grand Prize winner was one that I selected personally.

The idea of taking Bayonetta’s design and using that as a starting point for a brand new concept was a rather unusual experiment for a contest, and all of the entries obviously showed a lot of passion, each one amazing in its own right. Because of this, there were works that we weren’t able to include in the contest, but were so good that we just couldn’t get them out of our heads. That is why we would like to point them out and recognize them here on the blog.

First up is a work by Michael Hiscott. Our concept designer Ikumi Nakamura picked this one. The cherry blossom trees in the background mesh well with Bayonetta.

Shimazaki picked a work by Chuan Ju Lee. Bayonetta started with the idea that witches had to be black, but this image boldly threw black right out the window.

Shimazaki also picked another work, this one by Alexander Gordon. It’s fancy, like it could be an illustration in a fairy tale collection.

Next is a work by Brent Patrick Wilson. This one is incredible… It was a design contest for Bayonetta, but Rodin and Jeanne are so prominent that they are the only thing we really noticed.

Actually, this work by Joshua Meeks was the most popular among the team. It looks like it was created with colored pencil on drawing paper (?), but posing Bayonetta in such a dynamic drop kick is the work of no mere amateur.

Finally, we have a work by Randall Louis. The design, expression, and pose got stuck in our heads and we just couldn’t forget it. If there were a CD with this image as its cover, I would buy it without question.

So what do you think? For all the works that we picked up in this post, we are going to send the artists a copy of the Bayonetta soundtrack, which is currently on sale only in Japan! Because of the differences in markets and the such, we aren’t sure if the Bayonetta soundtrack will be released officially overseas; however, this 5 disc set is a gem, filled with what we feel is only the best content, so I think that you will find it enjoyable.

Well, that wraps it up. Until next time!

Picture: A promotional item that will be given out in Germany. Here is a picture of the back…

Picture: It has a Gates of Hell logo. What could be inside?

Picture: A lollipop! Cherry flavored, I think? But it’s got a kick to it. Definitely not that kind of flavor you would encounter in Japan. (LOL)

I’ve seen on the web lately that some fans have been creating Scarborough Fair and All 4 One models. As a member (and leader) of the PlatinumGames Weapons Development Division, I am quite pleased to see these efforts.
I decided to lend my little bit of support by preparing multi-direction and exploded views of the guns in question. Print them out, line them up, and get a taste of how much fun it must be to be Rodin himself. The charms are also included, so I suppose you may want to make these as accessories as well.

So please accept these as a token of my gratitude, and enjoy your lives as witches!

These images are also available on the PlatinumGames Flickr page.

It has been something like two months since Bayonetta saw release in Japan. For those of you still playing Bayonetta, or those of you taking a little break, we’ve still got more Bayonetta to give you, so stay with us just a bit longer.

Which brings me to today’s announcement.

As Hashimoto-san mentioned on the Xbox Live Park broadcast here in Japan, we are going to put out a book collecting the design materials we used for Bayonetta. Woohoo!

It will be a little while until it’s released, but here are the details:

Bayonetta Design Collection (Temporary Title)
Release Date: Q1 2010 (Planned)
Price: TBD
Publisher: Enterbrain

It’s going to be a really thick book, as we are going to include almost all of the images we’ve used in promoting Bayonetta! (We were unable to get rights clearances for a few of them…)

Japanese gamers will get a chance to see art that we’ve only released in the West (which there were quite a few we made behind the scenes), as well as peeks at unreleased character, enemy, background, and weapon designs. There will also be CG illustrations and some new easter-egg illustrations (that I’m working on right now) amongst others. Overall, there will be more than 500 pieces of content to sink your teeth into! There will also be tons of comments from the development team (which they are working on now) to round out this monster collection! Look forward to it!

Whenever I end up working on one of these expansive books, I always end up feeling like, “This is sad. I have to show off all of these designs that got shot down… And they are from years ago as well.”
Even though I love looking at others people’s stuff… this poses a real dilemna for me.

Well, enough of my grumbling, I’m going to stay focused on working on the book for now, and even though it will be a while until it is in your hands, I hope you all look forward to it.

Well, I guess the world is all wrapped up in Christmas colors now.

How did you all spend the Christmas holidays? December 25 was actually our last work day here at PlatinumGames, but I am sure plenty of us went out drinking after we wrapped up.

Until next time.

More…

Happy New Year!

I decided to draw Bayonetta on a New Year’s Card. The more I drew, the more I was surprised by how detailed the design was becoming, and even though it was too late, ended up saying “Wow, this is how this turned out…”

Today also marks the start of Bayonetta’s worldwide release!

I am happy to see her spread her wings and fly overseas, and I really hope that everyone let’s go of time and has fun while playing the game.

So I hope that this year you all support Bayonetta, and continuing supporting us here at PlatinumGames.