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in: Staff, Game Developers, Real-Life People

George Kamitani

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George Kamitani is a japanese game developer, who has been developing and creating video games available for console platforms since the mid 1990s, being mostly known at the time for directing Princess Crown, on the Sega Saturn. He founded his own gaming company, Vanillaware, in 2002.

Kamitani is the creator of Odin Sphere, a 2D dimensional action role playing released May 17th 2007 for the PlayStation 2, which later got a remake, Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, released in 14th of january 2016. He also created other 2D dimensional action role playing games such as GrimGrimoire (2007), Muramasa: The Demon Blade (2009) and Dragon's Crown (2013).

Profile Overview[]

George Kamitani is the CEO staff of the vanillaware corporation, his occupation is a video game maker, it is the odin sphere's game developer company, that he started in february 8, 2002 as an independent establishment, he is the creator/inventor of odin sphere game and he was the one who made most of the work efforts dedicated for this game's creation, such as through dialogue ideas, drawings of scenarios, cutscenes, weapons, locations, character names and designs, kamitani has also made many other video games in the later years after he created the odin sphere, while the other ones who participated in the creation of odin sphere mostly took place as voice artists for it's characters, voice ambiences, music composers and game publishers.

Background Story[]

As a child, Kamitani enjoyed movies, particularly those with special effects and dreamed of filming. However, he was unable to get a camera so he focused instead on video games.​ The fantasy of the Norse mythology presented in NEC PC-8801 RPG game The Black Onyx impressed Kamitani. This was the first time that he saw anything related to fantasy. As such, it deeply affected the way Kamitami represents the fantasy worlds in his games.

Kamitani has continued to work in the game industry since high school. Kamitani got into the video game business when he was a senior high school student. One of his friends helped him to get a part-time job as a subcontractor for a video game company and Kamitani continued to work there while going to college until he graduated. As a subcontractor, Kamitani was a 2-D pixel artist for several Famicom games and as a programmer in some MSX games. He convinced his parents to allow him to work part-time by saying it would improve his math skills.

After graduating from college and moving from Hiroshima to Osaka, Kamitani joined Capcom around 1992 because he wanted to learn how to direct a game project. In Capcom, Kamitani was a subordinate of Yoshiki Okamoto, producer of the original Street Fighter II. Akira "Akiman" Yasuda was also Kamitami's boss at Capcom's design department . It was in Capcom where he developed a profound attachment to 2D games as it was the height of 2D arcade games such as Capcom's Vampire, Alien vs. Predator and Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom.[ Kamitami worked in the last one and it had a lasting effect on his future works. Kamatami's departament worked mostly on action side-scrolling games. He decided to left Capcom because he felt he would never be able to direct a game in the company due to the great amount of talented people that were there already.

After his stay in Capcom, he joined a small game company at the invitation of a former senior classmate and then went on to work freelance with several companies, such as Atlus, Racjin and Sony Computer Entertainment.​​ At the end of 1995, while working on Princess Crown, the development company went bankrupt, but thanks to a friend at Sega that introduced him to Atlus, the project was saved, an action for which he is still grateful to Atlus.​​ Atlus would repeat this feat with Dragon's Crown years later. Kamitani then joined Atlus Kansai and was very attached to the Princess Crown team, but, despite being critically critically acclaimed, Princess Crown was not a commercial success due to having been released at the end of the Sega Saturn life cycle and the staff that worked on it wasn't looked upon favorably. Atlus Kansai soon after closed. and the Osaka company Racjin took many of the team members, effectively dissolving the team that worked on Princess Crown.

Invited to Tokyo by Shigeo Komori, the scenario writer of Princess Crown, Kamitani went to work at Sony Computer Entertainment in confidential projects, where he unsuccessfully tried to do game planning. By 2001, Only Kamitani and Kentaro Ohnishi, current Vanillaware programmer, remained and were living in complicated conditions. With 32 years of age, Kamitami couldn't return to Osaka with no job, so he decided to stay in Tokyo. He got introduced to a job that made him became involved with Fantasy Earth: The Ring of Dominion, later renamed as Fantasy Earth: Zero, with which his involvement shifted the world theme from a conflict between humans and vampires into a more traditional fantasy setting.​ A Square Enix game, it was a project that started with Enix prior to their merger with Squaresoft and from which Kamitani did not part on good terms with Square Enix after the company took the project from Kamitani and his staff. While working on Fantasy Earth: Zero, Kamitani met Hitoshi Sakimoto, the head of the company Basiscape which does the music for most Vanillaware games since Odin Sphere. Kamitami consider his involvement in Fantasy Earth: Zero has been his toughest and most stressing experience in the video gaming industry. Shigatake, a current Vanillaware artist, helped Kamitami with this project. Shigatake turned out to be and admirer of Princess Crown, so Kamitami convinced him to join his project and later Vanillaware.

In February of 2002 Kamitani founded the video game company Puraguru, the predecessor of Vanillaware. Puraguru worked in Fantasy Earth: Zero. After moving the company to the Kansai area, in the autumn of 2004 Kamitani decided to rename the company to Vanillaware, inspired by the enduring popularity of the ice cream flavor ad his desire to create games that achieve the same kind of stability that vanilla ice cream has.

Vanillaware was founded in order to produce games that Kamitani and his staff wanted to develop. It was soon after leaving Fantasy Earth: Zero that Kamitami began Vanillaware projects properly. At the beginning, Shigatake, Kentaro Ohnishi, Takashi Nishii (the only other original member of Princess Crown) and a newcomer from the Fantasy Earth: Zero project joined Kamitani in the new five people company. Five more members later joined the company despite the lack of notability of Kamitani at the time.

Due to the reputation gained by Princess Crown by unsuccessful commercially and the fact that Kamitani hadn't made a new game in several years, Kamitani faced difficulties to get funding from Atlus for Odin Sphere, the first game developed by the recently renamed Vanillaware. On top of that, sales of Persona 3 were so strong that Atlus deleayed the release date of Odin Sphere, which was already completed, from 2006 to 2007 to avoid cannibalizing the market.​ This forced Kamitani to seek new funds, which eventually led to GrimGrimoire with Nippon Ichi Software and Muramasa: The Demon Blade with Marvelous Entertainment. Even so, Kamitani had to personally borrow around 20 million yen by the time GrimGrimoire was completed (which ended up being released before Odin Sphere despite being developed much later), as the company was almost without funds, which caused him great worry for some time.

He is the one who made up the Baromett Seed, he had heard about a 17th century document about a plant called "Scythian Lamb" that was eaten by wolves, and ever since he had heard about the Scythian Lamb he had always wanted to see the idea of a Scythian Lamb in a video game.

With the release of Odin Sphere and its success, Kamitani was able to pay back his debt and even give bonuses to his workers as Atlus had set high royalties.

Games in which Kamitani has participated[]

External links[]

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