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 behind such popular titles 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 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 [Kikizo Staff. [http://games.kikizo.com/features/tetsuya_mizuguchi_iv_oct05_p1.asp Tetsuya Mizuguchi Interview 2005] . October 13, 2005. Retrieved October 15, 2005.] . 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 initially 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. With Q Entertainment, he later produced "Lumines Live!" which was released for the Xbox 360 through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service on October 18, 2006. November 7, 2006 he also produced for the PSP, Lumines II, the sequel to the popular original, and a shooter/puzzle game called Every Extend Extra which was released on August 7, 2006, based on the small project by "Omega" called Every Extend.

Also, Mizuguchi 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.

Most recently, he oversaw the development of Gunpey, a title with versions for both the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable, in honor of Gunpei Yokoi.And a new version of Every Extend Extra was produced for Xbox Live called Every Extend Extra Extreme, which was released on October 17, 2007.

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. On July 7, 2007, the character Lumi from Genki Rockets opened the Live Earth concert in Tokyo in a holographic performance, and introduced a holographic video projection of Al Gore.

Mizuguchi speaks English fluently, and has done many interviews in English with Western media. [ [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj63ZkonBac YouTube - Interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi ] ] [ [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZjvNewdmno YouTube - Lumines 2, interview with creator Mizuguchi ] ] [ [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UxcYfLyCag YouTube - Tetsuya Mizuguchi ] ]

References

External links

* [http://mizuguchi.biz/ Tetsuya Mizuguchi's weblog]
* [http://mizuguchi.1up.com/ Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Page on 1UP.com]
* [http://q.1up.com/ "Northern Lights: A Week With Q Entertainment" 1UP.com coverstory]
* [http://www.g-wie-gorilla.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=131&Itemid=18/ Interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi about his games and his music-video "Heavenly Star"]
* [http://www.spacechannel5.org spacechannel5.org - A Space Channel 5 Fansite]