Mighty No. 9 Creator Owns "All the Problems" With the Game

Mighty No. 9 creator Keiji Inafune has taken responsibility for the game's quality and issues. In a launch day stream, he addressed the community with ex-Capcom employee and translator Ben Judd and discussed topics such as the game's reaction, Kickstarter, and developing 10 versions of the game at once.

It's important to note that some of Judd's translations are mixed with his own commentary. This caused some confusion recently, as according to Kotaku, a quote saying Mighty No. 9 is "better than nothing" was incorrectly attributed to Inafune.

Inafune did say, however, that he owns "all the problems that came with this game."

"[A]nd if you want to hurl insults at me, it's totally my fault," he said. "I'm the key creator. I will own that responsibility."

The problems included Kickstarter backer game codes failing to work, visual issues, and the overall quality of the gameplay.

Inafune and Judd explained that Mighty No. 9's Kickstarter funding of more than $4 million wasn't the total budget of the game, which is a "hard thing to estimate" for any project.

"At the end of the day, at the end of a Kickstarter game, don’t look at the final number," Judd said. "Imagine that being 60 percent. But in order to increase the content in a wide variety of ways--stretch goals are largely going to be based around new platforms, etc.--you really need to be able to estimate the amount of financial burden that’s going to occur on the project. Even for someone like [Inafune], who's worked on so many different games, it's a really hard thing to estimate. It's something to keep in mind with Kickstarters."

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The two developers also talked about how creating the game for 10 different platforms at the same time was a mistake. Mighty No. 9 was delayed at the last minute on Xbox 360 due to a certification bug; however, it's now available on the platform.

"In my many years at Capcom, and Capcom was known for their multi-platform strategy," Inafune said. "But never did they ever do 10 SKUs all at the same time, 10 different versions all for one title." Judd added that Capcom traditionally worked with "a lot of different porting houses" to bring games to different platforms, while one team created the base game.

"In [Mighty No. 9's] case, it was do the base game and do the port all at the same time," Judd said. "It ended up being a huge amount of work, more than they actually estimated. Definitely, when they looked at the project, they were wrong about a lot of things. They underestimated how much time, work was going to be necessary. All of those things create a huge amount of pressure."

You can still watch the full stream, which has been archived here.

Mighty No. 9 received a score of 5 in GameSpot's review. Critic Peter Brown concluded, "For a game that's meant to bear the legacy of a classic series, Mighty No. 9 barely succeeds. It may rouse excitement from time to time, but by and large, it lacks a pervading sense of artistry, both in its level design and presentation."

For a wider view of the critical reception, check out GameSpot's Mighty No. 9 review roundup here.