Keiji Inafune

Keiji Inafune
稲船 敬二
Inafune at Japan Expo 2012
Born	(1965-05-08) May 8, 1965 (age 59) Kishiwada, Osaka, Japan
Alma mater	Osaka Designers' College
Occupation(s)	Game producer, character designer, game designer
Years active	1987–present
Employer(s)	Capcom (1987–2010) Level-5 Comcept (2010–present)
Notable work	Mega Man Onimusha Dead Rising

Keiji Inafune (稲船 敬二, Inafune Keiji, born 8 May 1965) is a Japanese video game producer, character designer, game designer, and businessman. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.^[1]

Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original Street Fighter and Mega Man in 1987. He was then a character designer and planner of the Mega Man series during the NES and Super NES era.^[2] For Mega Man X, he created and designed the character Zero.^[3]

Inafune then moved onto the position of producer with his first title being Mega Man 8 in 1996. In addition to being the producer for Mega Man X4, the three Mega Man Legends games, the Mega Man Zero series, the Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force series and Mega Man ZX and Advent, Inafune was also a producer of the Lost Planet, Dead Rising and Onimusha series. In 2006, he was promoted to Senior Corporate Officer of Research & Development. In 2010, he became Global Head of Production at Capcom.^[4]

He left Capcom in late 2010, and later founded his own companies Comcept, and Intercept. He also became Representative Director of DiNG, a mobile game studio.^[5] Intercept worked on the game Kaio: King of Pirates which was announced in 2011 and cancelled in 2015. While at Comcept, Inafune oversaw work on such games as Mighty No. 9, Soul Sacrifice, and the unreleased Red Ash: The Indelible Legend.^[6] In 2017, Comcept was purchased and became a subsidiary of Level-5, becoming Level-5 Comcept.