Hideki Kamiya

Hideki Kamiya is a famous and renowned Japanese game designer who is best known for his incredibly forceful, sometimes even slightly irritable nature and for his action games that have been highly acclaimed by critics which tend to accumulate ridiculous amounts of stylistic madness and action playability. He previously worked at Clover Studios, a subdivision of Capcom until it closed, and is now working with other former Clover employees at Platinum Games. He is also well known for practicing his English language skills on his Twitter account, which is where he torments his fans mercilessly and where he reprimands and blocks people for asking meaningless or repetitive questions.

• Born: 19/12/1970
• Nationality: Japanese
• Profession: Video game designer

Who is Hideki Kamiya?

Hideki Kamiya is a renowned video game designer who was once part of Capcom and Clover Studio, and who currently works with some former members of Clover Studio in a company he founded.

Hideki Kamiya biography

Hideki Kamiya was born on December 19, 1970 in Nagano, Japan. At the beginning of his career he was very attracted to games that had digital sounds; the whistles and blips that were produced by gaming devices. When he was still very young, Kamiya started playing games in video game rooms, but he could never have a console.

For the same reason, he liked to visit an older boy in his neighborhood with whom he played on his console. The young Kamiya managed to get his own console during his early years in high school. He could also have a personal computer where he studied programming, but instead of doing this, he spent all his time playing. Because of this, he had little time for his studies and eventually failed his first high school entrance exam.

He showed a lot of interest in creating video games after reading an interview with the game’s creator, Masanobu Endo-san. When he graduated from college, he moved to his hometown in search of a job where he offered several video games companies but was turned down. Eventually Hideki Kamiya received offers from 2 video game companies; Namco and Capcom. At Namco, he was offered the position of artist rather than designer and therefore chose Capcom, where he was offered the position of game designer.

He joined Capcom in 1994 and was the planner for the first installment of the Resident Evil video game series. He took over the direction during the production of the sequel Resident Evil.

While at Capcom, he was director of the action-adventure game Devil May Cry that was released in 2001 for PlayStation 2. Devil May Cry began as the fourth entry in the Resident Evil series, however, it differed too much from the previous installments and so the developers decided to make it a independent game. However, Kamiya was not involved in the creation of its sequel Devil May Cry 2.

He joined Clover Studio in 2004 and directed Okami, but after the studio stopped working two years later, he and the other members of Clover Studio formed PlatinumGames. Once at PlatinumGames, he directed Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101. He also wrote the history of Bayonetta 2 in addition to supervising it. Today, Hideki Kamiya is working as director of Scalebound.

Style of Hideki Kamiya

Hideki Kamiya’s games are full of charisma. He possesses a great and varied eccentricity, inspired first of all by the interesting and fascinating Japanese culture, and by his ability to tell stories and transmit feelings as if they were a manga or anime. Also, with his style, he managed to introduce himself and write some scripts for games such as Super Smash Bros., Bayonetta, Resident Evil: Degeneration and Viewtiful Joe 2.

Featured Hideki Kamiya video games

Among the most important videogames of Hideki Kamiya we mention the following:

• Arthur to Astaroth no Nazo Makaimura (1996)
• Resident Evil (1996) game that was the first title in a series released in Japan that was originally released for the console
• Resident Evil 2 (1998)
• Devil May Cry (2001)
• Resident Evil Zero (2002)
• Viewtiful Joe (2003) Gyakuten Saiban 3 (2004)
• Viewtiful Joe 2 (2004)
• Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble (2005)
• Ōkami, PlayStation 2 version (2006)
• Bayonetta, Action game published by Sega (2009)
• The Wonderful 101 (2013)
• Bayonetta 2 (2014)

Acknowledgements

To date, Hideki Kamiya is not known for many personal recognitions, but it is known that his games are highly acclaimed worldwide by players. He was nominated for the Game Developer Awards with his title Okami in 2006, an award he shared with Atsushi Inba.