Rez Creator Stepping Back From Game Development

[The Wooster]

Rez Creator Stepping Back From Game Development

Space Channel 5 producer, Tetsuya Mizuguchi is taking on a "more spokesman-like" role in his company.

Tetsuya Mizuguchi, creator of Rez and producer of wonderfully weird titles like Space Channel 5, Gunpey and Meteos, is apparently giving up game development. According to Q Entertainment director, Nobuhiko Shimizu, Mizuguchi will now be focusing on academic studies and acting as "more of a spokesperson" for the company.

Mizuguchi started his career at Sega, where he produced a number of titles including Sega Rally and Space Channel 5. When his team was dissolved by Sega, he opted to leave the company rather than become a part of Sonic Team. He went on to co-found Q Entertainment, where he worked mainly on handheld titles (Lumnies, Gunpey, Every Extend Extra) before making his directorial debut with Child of Eden, a spiritual successor to the Dreamcast cult hit, Rez. Much like Rez, Child of Eden fared well with critics but sold poorly. According to NPD Group numbers, the game sold just 34,000 units on the 360 during its first month on sale.

Q Entertainment is currently working on a number of new projects, including a game that mixes card-battling mechanics with the kind of music-orientated gameplay the company is known for.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-20-mizuguchi-moves-away-from-game-production]

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[GenGenners]

"Dreamcast cult hit, Rez"???
I remember playing it on the PS2.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Would you say Mizuguchi's career has reached it's... Rezolution?

Well if he goes back, I heartily await his career Rezurrection

 

[Therumancer]

Well, to be fair music games already hit their stride and passed, at least for a while. Also a lot of his games come accross more like mini-games that someone glutted into a AAA production. Most of the titles mentioned there I've seen, but I never thought seemed to be especially good.

The big exception in his career seems to be "Space Channel 5" which while not unique on it's release in absolute terms, probably inspired a lot of later dance and rhythym based games that have included a story (of sorts) or sense of progression. That title was however haunted by legal contreversy, while he/Sega won the legal battle, to be honest I do think they kind of ripped off Lady Miss Kier's style/stage persona/routine for Ulala and didn't give her an appropriate amount of credit, even if they did seem to resolve it socially as well as outside of the legal arena given that she's apparently worked with them again.

Tetsuya Mitzuguchi seems like he'd be a good guy to work on mini-games to fit into other, larger, games. That said, I'm surprised he's remaining a spokesperson, as opposed to being retired outright, given the general performance of his work.

Of course then again I imagine ths company won't be around very long, mixing "Card Battling Mechanics and Musical gameplay" doesn't sound like a recipe for large scale success. The first thing that I thought of somehow was that they wanted to make like a high budget version of Sequence... even if Sequence doesn't really have card battling (it's like Puzzle Quest mixed with a Rhytym game). That could be cool objectively, but I think would only really score with a very seelect audience.

 

[BobisOnlyBob]

"Dreamcast cult hit, Rez"???
I remember playing it on the PS2.

The actually-more-famous PS2 version of Rez was one of the many fleeing-the-sinking-ship Dreamcast ports, that ended up scattered across the various sixth generation consoles. (Ikaruga, Phantasy Star Online, Skies of Arcadia all come to mind.) It's surprising we never saw Rez on the Xbox, but I guess the architecture was too different and the budget too slim.

 

[GenGenners]

"Dreamcast cult hit, Rez"???
I remember playing it on the PS2.

The actually-more-famous PS2 version of Rez was one of the many fleeing-the-sinking-ship Dreamcast ports, that ended up scattered across the various sixth generation consoles. (Ikaruga, Phantasy Star Online, Skies of Arcadia all come to mind.) It's surprising we never saw Rez on the Xbox, but I guess the architecture was too different and the budget too slim.

Well now I know. Learning is fun!

 

[ADDLibrarian]

Aww, that's a shame- I LOOOVED Space Channel 5 and with the exception of a song or two that give me a headache, I enjoyed Child of Eden too.
But what I really want to get me is a copy of Rez with one of those famous Trance vibrator controllers
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz