Inti Creates Interview – President Talks Dragon: Marked for Death, Gal*Gun 2, and Fanservice

Azario Lopez May 24, 2018 1:06 PM EST

Inti Creates’ President Takuya Aizu provides new details on Dragon: Marked for Death, and explains how there is more than fanservice in Gal*Gun 2.

Inti Creates is best known for its side-scrolling action titles, and more recently their dedication to delivering DLC to their newest titles including Blaster Master Zero and Mighty Gunvolt Burst. The developer is also supporting Nintendo’s new hardware with their upcoming game, Dragon: Marked for Death. A multiplayer side-scrolling action game that received a delay not too long ago.

We recently sat down with Inti Creates President and CEO Takuya Aizu and Associate Producer and International Affairs Coordinator Matt Papa to provide details on not only Dragon: Marked for Death, but also what it’s like to work on a game like Gal*Gun 2.

Azario: Since Dragon: Marked for Death was announced, there have been few new details about the game, could you tell us more?

Takuya Aizu: One of the biggest things you wouldn’t know just from the original trailer is that there’s a main story for the game. Also, each of the four characters, Empress, Warrior, Shinobi, and the Witch, have their own individual stories. When playing online, players will be able to progress their respective character’s story by playing the same map and advance that character’s story at the player’s own pace. There comes a point in the story where the stories intertwine and you find a common enemy to fight later on in the game.

A: What made these key members of the Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX development teams want to come together and tell this story?

TA: This all started when Yoshifumi Hashimoto of Rune Factory fame came to us and said that he wanted to work with the developers of Mega Man Zero. At his request, we were able to thankfully pull that team together.

I really enjoy this project, but as the producer, it gives me a huge headache. Mostly because the team is having a lot of fun working on this project to the point where no matter how much they work on it they want to keep doing more. This means the schedule has to be changed and development time longer.

A: With Nintendo being more family friendly, was it tough to get Gal*Gun 2 onto the Nintendo Switch and published in the west?

TA: From both Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Japan, we didn’t meet any resistance at all during development, which was a little surprising. So we were prepared for that when showing the game, but they replied with, “That’s fine”. I think one of the things that should be understood is that they don’t see this as a sexual game. They look at it as a shooting game that happens to have cute girls in it and that diversity is nice to have on the new hardware.

We feel that one thing Nintendo is set out to do with the Switch to have different types of games. This way you can bring in a whole bunch of consumers and fans, to create a broader scope for the hardware.

A: As a developer is it tough to create a game with sexy content and then try to market it?

TA: When it comes to Gal*Gun, we do our own marketing for that in Japan and PQube handles the western marketing. So speaking specifically about the Japanese marketing, we focus on how we have these crazy scenarios and ridiculous situations. That is the overlining goal, but this is still fairly difficult. So while the sexy parts may grab your eye and click on an article, we hope that the gameplay and mechanics make the player want to actually play and discover that this isn’t a hentai game. We love the zaniness of game and that’s what we want players to have fun with.

We have seen gamers typically go through three stages when first seeing Gal*Gun. First, they see it as just some ecchi game, and then they look to realize that there is some craziness to the game, but then they get into the game and figure find the mechanics and gameplay are addicting and go perfectly with the craziness of the game.

Matt Papa: Some people don’t get past that first step, but there isn’t much we can do about that. We understand that this might turn some people away, but that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Gal*Gun 2. I think it’s a little unfortunate when people can’t see it for more than just an ecchi game.

A: Gal*Gun 2 has some pretty wild situations that occur during the game, can it be assumed that this has something to say about the developers of the game’s own fantasies?

TA: All of the characters in Gal*Gun 2, from the main characters to the side characters are created by the game’s director Masanori Ito. So, I can’t really say what any of his fetishes are, but these are all characters that he’s thought would be really fun to have in this game. I’d like to add that he’s also the main illustrator.