Hideki Kamiya Says It Like It Is About Okami (Wii)
Poor, poor Clover Studios. Shortly after creating the enormous success that was Okami for the PS2, they were dissolved and never heard from again. Okay, so that was a big of an overstatement, but they certainly didn't get to reap the rewards of their hit title. Now Capcom is taking the proverbial defibrillator to their cold, under appreciated corpse.
Not so long ago Ready at Dawn, creator of the Daxter series, was asked to port Okami to the Nintendo Wii. Not necessarily a bad idea, great game, right controller for the title with all the sumi-e style painting you have to do. It seemed like it was a match made in heaven. Then the controversy hit. First it was noted that the Clover team had been cut from the credits, then the the whole watermark "snafu". Hideki Kamiya was recently asked what he thought about the conversion:
I really don't know what under pretext the credits were cut... What do you all think? I feel dejected, and not only because my own name has been erased from my creation. Of course we have pride in our work and we want to scream "We made this!" from the top of our lungs. But more than that, the fact that they cut the entire staff is utterly deplorable.
Capcom says that the names were removed from the credits due to legal reasons. The short of it is that say that they cannot use the Clover logo that was in the original credits video so it had to be remade. The real question is, if they just had to remove the logo, why did the remove the original staff's names as well?
Capcom F*** Clover's Sad Panda Corpse [Updated] [Kotaku]
Asterick
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 1 May 2008
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: capcom, clover, hideki kamiya, okami, ready at dawn, wii
Alright, now I'm not really sure how I feel about this port of Okami anymore. I had seen a friend play it on PS2 a few times and was pretty excited when they announced a Wii port. By the time it came out on the Wii, I had bought myself a slim PS2 and wasn't sure which to buy.
I eventually settled on the Wii version (mainly because I just got a spiffy new widescreen TV). I was a little upset they dulled down the paper filter, but I'm pretty much over that now. Then the cover art watermark thing. (I get some spiffy new art, but still...) I haven't seen the original credits, but apparently they're worth seeing, but they were cut. And now I find out they didn't even give credit to the people who MADE THE GAME??
What the hell Capcom? I really wanted to support this port because I could help increase sales numbers and maybe get a few more games like this put on the Wii...but this is just lazy.
RE4 was great on the Wii, IMO. Capcom showed that they can port a game properly. Is it so much to ask that RaD puts in the effort that Clover put into this game? Or at least give them credit?
Game credit is a touchy subject for good reason. The amount of time, effort, and thought that goes into any game is something special to everyone involved. It's a shame that the Wii release has been a series of gaffs and mix ups on Capcom's part. Okami is easily one of Capcom's best releases in years. It's just sad that they treat "the best game you've never played" like this. This game deserves better.
This is totally unacceptable. Sure, Capcom owns the rights to this work, and legally it may be fine, but I strongly feel this is an ethical breach.
Hell, I was disappointed enough to skim through the credits of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and not find any mention of Hironobu Sakaguchi. And before you say "he didn't do any direct work on it" -- neither did Nobuo Uematsu, but he got a music credit. Consider that Sakaguchi envisioned much of the FF7 world, it's sad to see him ignored by the company he took from bankruptcy to one of the most respected developers in the world. I suspect there's some delicate Japanese business politics going on here, since the only real difference between Sakaguchi and Uematsu in this case is that Uematsu still has a working relationship with Square Enix while Sakaguchi does not. One of the commenters on Kotaku writes that Sakaguchi was erased from the credits of the FF GBA remakes, and that's so wrong on so many levels that I feel a blood vessel expanding on my forehead.