>>94183433I know people shit on Inafune, but he's been a fairly solid producer for the majority of his time, and I think people forget that due to his recent foul-ups.
He diversified MM when it was on the brink of being phased out in the late 90's. We got Legends, Zero, ZX, 9/10, the handheld RPGs, and more. His time on the existing series seemed focused on trying to innovate them. My favorite being the ability to shoot normally and a special weapon without needing to switch.
He also got his dream series about Zero, which is every bit as smooth and practical as the S/NES games, while building on Zero's existing mechanics. It's easily got the fastest paced action of the 2D games, cool as fuck boss fights, and gameplay that is actually a lot more open to personal playstyle and strategies than MM/X's guns/special weapons are.
He was also the series producer on the Onimusha series, which I fucking adore except Dawn of Dreams. The first two Dead Rising games. Even the first Lost Planet which was pretty fun but rough.
It was pretty clear he paid more attention to the finer points of Mega Man sidescrolling with his Zero series.
He's had some flops as his time as a producer, and looking at the sheer volume of his producer credits its not hard to see why. He's usually solid on taking a core concept and just making sure the game around it is fun for the projects he overlooks, even if the majority of his productions aren't classics by any stretch. He also seems to have an eye for developer's specific talents, giving them suited projects.
The biggest gripe I've had about his as a producer is how lax he is with approving scripts. Holy shit, every one of his games has such bad dialog and cutscenes that go on forever and they're NEVER good. Except Onimusha which he actually hired a good writer for (that ended up dying).
His time running his own company tells me more that he's bad at management, not producing. He benefits from having higher-ups being able to say "No"
