Yoshiki Okamoto, one of the guys behind such titles as Street Fighter, Final Fight, 1942 and Resident Evil recently sat down with 1up.com to discuss why he left the company.SK: Not to dwell on the Capcom stuff too much, but since you were one of the people who built the company into what it is today, how did you announce that you were leaving?
YO: When I decided I was going to quit, it was with absolute certainty. I drank so much one night that I don't even remember what happened exactly, but my decision was made. I was carried to my bed with my clothes still on. The reason I did that is because it was almost like dying; that's how difficult it was for me and how strong I felt about it. I wanted to die and then be reborn.
After I made my decision to leave Capcom, I went to the president and kept asking, "Let me quit. Let me quit." But he said, "No, you have to think about this some more. You can't leave." He even offered a huge boost in my salary so I wouldn't go to another company, and that was way more than any other employee in the company was getting. It was probably the most amount of money that he could technically even offer. At that point I didn't want to embarrass him, so I asked to think about it. But, of course, my decision wasn't influenced at all. So after a while I returned to him and said, "I've thought about it, but I can't accept this raise. I have to quit and start my own thing." That's how I left Capcom.
Also 1up has more interviews with Capcom's Keiji Inafune and Ryozo Tsujimoto covering the changes in the Japanese video game development scene.
