Level-5 Purchases Mega Man Creator’s Studio
The award-winning Japanese game makers known as Level-5 (Professor Layton, Yo-Kai Watch) will be getting slightly bigger soon — they’ve bought out a small development studio called Comcept. This was the studio founded by Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune after he left Capcom.
Before you say “good job,” think about the one game Comcept produced when they were independent. It was Mighty No. 9, the legally safe Mega Man knockoff that was supposed to bring back the tight gameplay of the NES originals but instead proved to be a massive bore. What will Level-5 gain by taking on Comcept’s 15 members?
Quality control. Inafune had bosses to please when he worked for Capcom. It was a much larger business with producers, beta testers and bug sniffers. When he had nobody but himself to tell him what to do, it was harder to catch his own mistakes. Perhaps now he’ll get the feedback he needs to polish his games properly. Inafune’s studio will now be called Level-5 Comcept.
“Although there are plans to close Comcept as it currently stands in the future, I will take responsibility for the titles I’m working on until the end,” Inafune told Famitsu. Their second game would have been “Dragon Colonies,” a phone game that will now be released by Level-5.