Shinji Mikami (born August 11, 1965) is one of the oldest and most well known video game producers, perhaps best known for the creation of Resident Evil. He also made God Hand, and helped create Clover Studio with the help of Hideki Kamiya (of Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Ōkami and Bayonetta fame) and Atsushi Inaba (who helped out on a bunch of other works, and helped out with MadWorld), now known as PlatinumGames. Originally a Capcom member (one of the oldest, actually), he then went to Sega with the rest of his fellow Clover members at Platinum Games. He completed Vanquish and worked with Suda51 and Akira Yamaoka on a comedy-horror game titled Shadows of the Damned.
In 2010 he founded Tango Gameworks
, a subsidiary of Zenimax Media (the same parent company as id Software and Bethesda) along with longtime Suda51 collaborator Masafumi Takada. He would eventually depart the company in 2023.
In 2015, he voiced Takahashi from Fallout 4.
His official English-language twitter is here, while his company's twitter is here.
List of game titles Mikami has worked on as director or producer:
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Game Boy version) — The first game he ever worked on.
- Aladdin (SNES version)
- Goof Troop
- Resident Evil series
- Resident Evil (directed both, the original PS version and the GC remake)
- Resident Evil 2 (team producer)
- Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (producer)
- Resident Evil – Code: Veronica (producer)
- Resident Evil 0 (executive adviser)
- Resident Evil 4 (director)
- Dino Crisis (director)
- Onimusha: Warlords (adviser)
- Devil May Cry (executive producer)
- Ace Attorney series (worked as an executive producer on the original GBA trilogy)
- Steel Battalion (general producer)
- P.N.03 (director)
- Viewtiful Joe (executive producer)
- Killer7 (executive producer, also co-wrote the story with Suda51)
- God Hand (director)
- Vanquish (director) - His first work after departing from Capcom.
- Shadows of the Damned (creative producer)
- The Evil Within (director)
- The Evil Within 2 (producer)
- Ghostwire: Tokyo (producer)
- Hi-Fi RUSH (executive producer)
His works frequently contain examples of the following:
- Creator Backlash:
- He loathes being called the father of Resident Evil, a title he feels more accurately belongs to Tokuro Fujiwara, the first game's producer.
- While he has an overall positive opinion of his Aladdin game, he admitted years later that he thought the Virgin Games version was a superior game to his own in every way, outside of the soundtrack.
- Disowned Adaptation: He quit Capcom after they ported Resident Evil 4 for the PS2 without his permission, wanting it to be a Nintendo GameCube exclusive.note
- Self-Deprecation/Black Comedy: If these comics were written by him
- Zombie Apocalypse: To the point where his company's comics and artwork frequently portray the staff members as zombies
