Tetsuya Mizuguchi
Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Japanese: 水口哲也, Mizuguchi Tetsuya, born May 22, 1965 in Otaru, Hokkaidō, Japan) is a video game designer and founder of the video game developer firm, Q Entertainment.
Career
Mizuguchi worked for Sega from 1990-2003 and was the man behind such popular titles such as Sega Rally Championship, Space Channel 5 and Rez. His last position was Chief Creative Officer of Sega's United Game Artists game division.
On September of 2003, Sega performed an internal restructuring of its staff. Among these changes was the dissolution of United Game Artists and the transfer of its members into Sonic Team. The following month, Mizuguchi announced that he would leave Sega on October 10, 2003. He cited the changes in the corporate culture after the Sega-Sammy merger, and viewed that as an obstacle to what he wanted to do[1]. He announced that he would freelance for the video game industry through an at the time unnamed company.
He has since founded Q Entertainment and produced two puzzle games for portable systems: Lumines for the PlayStation Portable and Meteos for the Nintendo DS. Both games have been released in Japan, North America and Europe. He also produced Lumines Live! which was released for the Xbox 360 through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service on October 18, 2006.
Q Entertainment is currently working on versions of Lumines for Xbox 360, Playstation 2 and mobile phones, a PSP sequel to Lumines, and a Disney edition of Meteos for the DS.
Mizuguchi also worked on Ninety-Nine Nights as an external contractor and is the main producer for the Quest Beat label. He regularly flew back and forth between Japan and South Korea to work at Ninety-Nine Nights developer Phantagram.
At the moment he is working on Gunpey, a title for Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable in honor of Gunpei Yokoi. According to Electronic Gaming Monthly's October 2006 issue's rumor section, Tetsuya Mizuguchi is also working on another Rez, to come out for either the PlayStation 3 or Wii. He had previously expressed interest in doing another Rez game.
Mizuguchi claims he had no aspirations to become a game designer until he interviewed at SEGA in 1990. Before entering the game industry, Mizuguchi majored in media aesthetics at Nihon University's Faculty of Arts.
Besides designing video games, Mizuguchi has expressed interest in directing music videos. One of the music videos included in Lumines II for the song Heavenly Star by Genki Rockets was directed by Mizuguchi, who also co-wrote the lyrics of the song. He is known for collaborating with various DJs and music producers for the soundtracks of his games, including Ken Ishii, Tsuyoshi Suzuki, and more notably Shinichi Osawa a.k.a. Mondo Grosso.
References
- ^ Kikizo Staff. Tetsuya Mizuguchi Interview 2005. October 13, 2005. Retrieved October 15, 2005.