I recently had the pleasure of meeting Shu Takumi and talking about some of his games over Lunch (All thanks to my friend cvxfreak for setting that up). He was a absolute pleasure to meet with and was so happy to talk about Dino Crisis with me. A lot of the conversation was him telling me about his time on the DC titles (He talked more than I did about Dino Crisis which was great). Afterwards he said it was fine for me to bring up the points that were made in our conversation. I didn't exactly search hard to see what was already known, but I figure a lot of this might be new to many of you(I know a lot of the Dino Crisis content is). It was amazing finally being able to meet the mind behind some of my favorite games of all-time and getting some new insight into how things worked back then.
Ghost Trick Info
- Lynne was given Red hair in Ghost Trick for the same reason Regina was (Listed below).
- Ghost Trick graphics were inspired by Out of this World, which he said is one of his favorite games (The game was called Outer Worlds in Japan)
Dino Crisis Info
- Regina's red hair was chosen to let her stand out as a heroine (Similar to other Japanese entertainment where the Hero wears red)
- Shu confirmed that despite not having the director credit on Dino Crisis 1, he was essentially the director for a lot of the project. He did a lot of work on the title and Mikami fixed the rest (As he did have trouble running things as being a director was still a new position for gaming at the time). This fits with Kamiya tweeting that he still see's Shu as the director of DC, which made some people wonder.
- The recent return of Regina, Gail, and Rick in the Ace Attorney anime was Shu's doing. He went to the anime studio himself and asked the team there to use the designs.
- Dino Crisis 1 being a Survival Horror game had a lot to do with Hardware Limitations. Since the entire game was in 3D it was harder to make something more action-oriented. Which is why the game shifted into survival horror and making the dinosaurs tougher foes to make up for the lack of numbers.
- Dino Crisis 2 went back to 2D Backgrounds to bump up the amount of Dinosaurs on-screen to fit with the action game idea.
- All of the puzzles in Dino Crisis 1 were made by Shu Takumi, after feedback from the puzzles being too hard he was told not to include any puzzles in Dino Crisis 2.
- Shu wasn't a fan of the helmet characters in Dino Crisis 2 (As the story aspects were not handled by him).
- Shu wishes more people talked about Dino Crisis 2's combo/reward system. As he was very proud of that concept (This came up after discussing how the ideas of that concept seemed to inspire later titles such as RE4 - which he hasn't played).
- He's very happy that there are still fans of the Dino Crisis titles. He's very proud of 2 and still finds it to be one of his favorite titles to have worked on.
Ghost Trick Info
- Lynne was given Red hair in Ghost Trick for the same reason Regina was (Listed below).
- Ghost Trick graphics were inspired by Out of this World, which he said is one of his favorite games (The game was called Outer Worlds in Japan)
Dino Crisis Info
- Regina's red hair was chosen to let her stand out as a heroine (Similar to other Japanese entertainment where the Hero wears red)
- Shu confirmed that despite not having the director credit on Dino Crisis 1, he was essentially the director for a lot of the project. He did a lot of work on the title and Mikami fixed the rest (As he did have trouble running things as being a director was still a new position for gaming at the time). This fits with Kamiya tweeting that he still see's Shu as the director of DC, which made some people wonder.
- The recent return of Regina, Gail, and Rick in the Ace Attorney anime was Shu's doing. He went to the anime studio himself and asked the team there to use the designs.
- Dino Crisis 1 being a Survival Horror game had a lot to do with Hardware Limitations. Since the entire game was in 3D it was harder to make something more action-oriented. Which is why the game shifted into survival horror and making the dinosaurs tougher foes to make up for the lack of numbers.
- Dino Crisis 2 went back to 2D Backgrounds to bump up the amount of Dinosaurs on-screen to fit with the action game idea.
- All of the puzzles in Dino Crisis 1 were made by Shu Takumi, after feedback from the puzzles being too hard he was told not to include any puzzles in Dino Crisis 2.
- Shu wasn't a fan of the helmet characters in Dino Crisis 2 (As the story aspects were not handled by him).
- Shu wishes more people talked about Dino Crisis 2's combo/reward system. As he was very proud of that concept (This came up after discussing how the ideas of that concept seemed to inspire later titles such as RE4 - which he hasn't played).
- He's very happy that there are still fans of the Dino Crisis titles. He's very proud of 2 and still finds it to be one of his favorite titles to have worked on.
