lead=yes is a side scrolling beat 'em up video game franchise created by Japanese game designer Hideki Kamiya. It is primarily developed and published by Capcom and its subsidiary Clover Studio.
Games
Viewtiful Joe (2003)
The first game in the series was directed by
Hideki Kamiya, who had previously directed
Resident Evil 2 and
Devil May Cry. It was the second title to be released under the
Capcom Five, developed by a team of developers within Capcom Production Studio 4 known as
Team Viewtiful. The game was released for the
GameCube on June 26, 2003, in
Japan, and in October 2003 in
North America and
Europe.
Viewtiful Joe centers around the avid movie-goer Joe, who is thrust into Movie Land, transforms into the
superhero "Viewtiful Joe" and sets out to rescue his girlfriend Silvia. The gameplay features traditional 2D
platform game side-scrolling intermixed with 3D cel-shaded graphics. A PlayStation 2 version was developed in 2004 by
Clover Studio featuring Dante from the
Devil May Cry series as a playable character.
Viewtiful Joe 2 (2004)
The second game in the series was directed by Masaaki Yamada, with
Hideki Kamiya writing the story. The game was released for both the
GameCube and PlayStation 2 in 2004 in
North America and
Japan, and in 2005 in
Europe and
Australia. The game would be the first title to be fully developed by
Clover Studio, a new studio within
Capcom that was founded in 2004.
Viewtiful Joe 2 features both Viewtiful Joe and Sexy Silvia as playable characters with similar gameplay elements to the first game.
Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble (2005)
Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble! (2005)
Development and history
Hideki Kamiya has expressed wanting to return to the series since leaving Capcom. In 2017, in an interview with
Dengeki PlayStation, he addressed his former employer that he would want to work on a remake of the first
Viewtiful Joe.
During
PAX East 2020, Kamiya told attendees to "email Capcom" to get sequels to dormant franchises, including
Viewtiful Joe. He later said he would like to finish the series with a third entry, as well as seeing a
Nintendo Switch version of the first game.
Other media
An
anime TV series based on the video game series, simply titled
Viewtiful Joe, was produced by
Group TAC and aired from 2004 to 2005.
A manga series was published concurrently in
V Jump magazine.
Viewtiful Joe appears as a playable character in the Wii version of the 2008 fighting game .
Reception
The first two
Viewtiful Joe games received critical acclaim. However, the games that came after received a mixed-to-positive response and did not sell well.
Sales
In Japan, the GameCube version of
Viewtiful Joe sold through its initial shipment of less than 100,000 copies during the week of its release.
Preorders of the GameCube version sold out on Capcom's North American website prior to its ship date, and
Viewtiful Joe debuted as the tenth best-selling game in the region.
The PlayStation 2 version sold a poor 9,912 units in its first week of release in Japan.
Worldwide, sales of the game reached 275,000 copies on the GameCube and 46,000 on the PlayStation 2.
Sales of the game in both North America and Europe were lower than what Capcom had predicted, but due to its small budget, the game was considered by Inaba to be relatively successful commercially.
