Itagaki's New Project is for HD Systems

The site for Tomonobu Itagaki's new Valhalla Game Studio outfit just went live.

Like Famitsu's interview with the former Team Ninja head this week, the site contains no specific details about the studio's first game. But there is a slight hint about the target platform.

In the recruitment page (viewable in both English and Japanese), text under the heading "Project Outline" reads "Valhalla Game Studios is currently developing a big project for high definition game consoles."

That would definitely imply Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. In his interview with Famitsu, Itagaki wouldn't specify a platform for the new project and, although it was unclear how serious he was being, he didn't even rule out PC or next generation systems.

The recruitment page has listings for game designers, programmers, background artists, visual effects artists, animators, user interface artists, concept artists and assistant producer.

A graphic from the top of the Valhalla page.

A graphic at the top of the recruitment page. Maybe the new game had an sea theme.

Even if you're not interested in employment, the Valhalla site contains a commentary column from Itagaki himself and some dialogues with in-house programmers and game designers. Everything is available in both English and Japanese, so check it out for yourself.

The interviews give us our first look at the staff who will be working on Itagaki's new project. The programmer interview lists Takuro Sasaki and Yasushi Maeda as lead programmers and Yasushi Maeda as programmer. The designer interview lists Katsunori Ehara as game design lead, Kohei Harito as level design lead, and Noboru Matsumoto as game designer. These six worked on most of Team Ninja's games going back to Dead or Alive.

There's a managerial introduction section too. Itagaki is the studio's CTO, or Chief Technical Officer. You can read his bio with a lengthy list of previous titles and awards here. He writes, "In 2010, I will redefine myself. I will lead the charge of mighty warriors who know everything about the art of fighting and will create a brilliant game for the ages. The warriors of Valhalla will shine.

Naoyuki Tsuji is the studio's CFO. According to his bio, he previously worked at Hudson's US branch but left in 2006 to become independent. He worked on establishing the TurboGrafx-16 console business in the US.

As revealed in the Famitsu interview, Valhalla's CEO is Satoshi Kanematsu, producer of Rygar The Legendary Adventure and the Monster Rancher series. He was president of America's Tecmo Inc. in California, but resigned in July 2007. He founded Valhalla in September 2007.