CH: Thank you for being so kind as to answer our questions today. What is your current position?

IY: Director of Inti Create Co. Ltd. Sound producer, sound designer and composer.

CH: Please explain the circumstances that lead you join the Resident Evil development team, and at which stage did you join? Were you involved with the original first-person shooter version, or did you join afterwards when it was changed to a 3rd-person perspective?

IY: There was no particular reason, Shinji Mikami was putting together his new IP, and he had a sound production studio that required staff, so I applied. I joined the Biohazard team after it became a pseudo 3D-game with a fixed camera.

CH: What was your position on the Resident Evil team?

IY: I was the lead sound designer, responsible for all sound design in the game.

CH: Which particular enemies did you design the sound effects for?

IY: I was responsible for making everything you can hear! Together with Hideaki Utsumi, and two other colleagues were created all the sounds in the game.

CH: What were some of your vision for, and significant contribution to Resident Evil?

IY: Makoto Tomozawa and I talked about making the game atmosphere feel like a horror movie. We modified the background music to have BGM data sound effects mixed in, and we talked about avoiding Japanese voice actors and getting English speaking ones instead.

CH: Rumour has it the sound design team used audio from real gunshots for the game weapons effects. Can you elaborate on this?

IY: In Resident Evil no real gunshot sounds are recorded. However, I designed a basic sound compared to a conventional gunshot effect. I thought it would produce a sense of realism, the non-flashy sound would also produce a sense of anxiety, a fear that the player could not rely on the gun alone, that the gun may be unreliable. I felt the sound of a single gunshot echoing in the quiet, and the sound of the shell casing bouncing on the floor created a sense of dread.

CH: Based on our research, there are 550 sound effects in the first Resident Evil game. What was the most challenging aspect of composing those sounds?

IY: The contrast between the silences and sounds. The Biohazard game contains a range of gunfire and explosions, footsteps and enviromental sounds.

CH: What were your instructions from director Shinji Mikami?

IY: Mikami-san advised me to watch many zombie movies! There were more than a dozen films piled up in the sound room!

CH: Do you remember which zombie movies you watched?

IY: I wathed ‘Versus’, ‘Night of the Zombies’ (Battalion of the Living Dead), ‘Dead & Buried’… and many other zombie movies that were around at that time.

CH: Do you remember which staff members you used for the zombies voices, and did you use your own voice?

IY: The zombie noises were the voices of our development team in the sound room. Mikami-san is actually Mr. Parook on the first floor! I decided which voices would go with which rooms, but I do not remember more specific details, and did not use my own voice.

CH: Who is Mr Parook?

IY: I am sorry, it was a nickname! It is the first zombie that appears on the first floor, with the cut-scene of it looking back at you. ‘Parook’ is a brand name for fluorescent tubes manufactured by Panasonic (Matsushita Electric Industrial). That zombie that appears and turns around is like a light bulb! That is where the nickname originates.

CH: Did you meet Shinji Mikami for the first time when you joined the Resident Evil team? And did you work with any of the other members of the development team, prior to working on Resident Evil?

IY: No, Biohazard was an IP with many rookie designers, and the first time that I worked with Mikami-san, was on Aladdin (Famicom).

CH: Were there any contentious times when the members of the sound team would argue over creative differences?

IY: I do not remember any specific arguments. It’s unfortunate, but it was common for all of us at one point to have our own opinions and argue.

CHE: You conducted a lot of software research for the Sega Saturn. Did you work on the Sega Saturn version of Resident Evil?

IY: No. I was doing this before I was involved with Biohazard. I was doing research un-related to that.

CHE: Did you consequently work on the Sega Saturn version of Resident Evil in any capacity?

IY: No I had already left Capcom when the project started. It is a pity because I was studying the Saturn comprehensively, whilst I was at Capcom.

CH: Did you create the sound effects for the outsourced CG movies?

IY: The opening movie cut-scene was outsourced, I did not work on that. My work was from the opening title screen onward.

CH: Did you leave Capcom before Resident Evil was released?

IY: Let's see. So Biohazard was released on March 22, 1996, and I left the company around that same time.

[Not to be reproduced (c) Crimson Head Elder 2020]