Viewtiful Joe - Development

Development

Viewtiful Joe was developed by the design staff "Team Viewtiful", a part of Capcom Production Studio 4. The game was announced in late 2002 as part of the Capcom Five, a line-up of five then-upcoming GameCube games to introduce new content to the console. It was directed by Capcom alumnus Hideki Kamiya, whose previous credits include the planning of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 and the direction of Devil May Cry. It was produced by Atsushi Inaba, who previously worked on the Ace Attorney series and Steel Battalion. In its earliest stages of development, Viewtiful Joe went under the working title "Red Hot Man", but the name was changed due to copyright conflicts with the American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. Viewtiful Joe's development team initially consisted of six people working under a twelve-month deadline. As work continued, the size of the team grew, and development ended up taking a full 21 months to complete. The game was conceived as a "staff-focused project" aimed at increasing the skill of its creators, specifically director Kamiya.

Inaba stated, "We wanted to create was a challenging game with stunning visuals and fluid gameplay." As a lifelong fan of superheroes, Inaba's aim was to combine traditional Japanese tokusatsu with American comic books. The character designs created by Kumiko Suekane were inspired specifically by 1960s and 1970s Japanese-costumed tokusatsu television shows such as Kamen Rider and Ultraman. Graphically, the game adopted a 2D side-scrolling style mixed with 3D cel-shaded animation. Despite many games in the then-modern industry shying away from 2D graphical formats, Inaba said, "We have been able to breathe new life into the genre because we are using a new stylistic way that hasn't been seen before." The team chose the GameCube as its platform because of their target audience and because it lent itself well to Viewtiful Joe's gameplay.

The musical score for Viewtiful Joe was co-composed by Masakazu Sugimori and Masami Ueda. It was released alongside the score for Viewtiful Joe 2 on a double album titled Viewtiful Joe + Viewtiful Joe 2 Original Soundtrack in Japan on 22 December 2004 by Suleputer. A music video is played within the game featuring a rap vocal song titled "Viewtiful World" composed by D.A.I. The video features a group of people, including Inaba himself, motion captured as some of the game's characters. On 11 June 2003, Avex released the video on DVD and released the song as a single. Both the North American and Japanese releases of Viewtiful Joe feature English voice acting in order to keep a "western comic book feel to ." Voice-over work in Viewtiful Joe was provided by Soundelux Design Music Group. Voice actors for the game include Dee Bradley Baker, Christina Puccelli, Gregg Berger, Mikey Kelley, Roger Rose, and Kevin Michael Richardson. Director Hideki Kamiya provides the voice for Six Machine.

A budget re-release of the game for the GameCube titled Viewtiful Joe: Revival was released in Japan in late 2003, adding a "Sweet Mode" to decrease the difficulty setting from the original game's "Kids Mode". A PS2 port of Viewtiful Joe was released by Clover Studio in 2004. It was released in Japan with the subtitle A New Hope. The release added the character Dante of Devil May Cry as an unlockable character. The PS2 version does not feature progressive scan seen in the GameCube version. The game was also re-released under Nintendo's GameCube Player's Choice label in 2004 in North America and Europe.