Rikiya Nakagawa (中川 力也, Nakagawa Rikiya) is a Japanese game producer and the former manager of SEGA AM1 (formerly known as WOW Entertainment). He served as producer for several titles in the House of the Dead series.
In 2004, Nakagawa moved to Sammy Corporation. He later left in 2008 to became the President of Paon DP Inc., a Japanese video game development company.
Biography
Childhood and employment at SEGA
Nakagawa was born on 24 October 1959. He was actually a baseball fan during his elementary school days, even joined a junior team (possibly on his school as it was never specified where), but by the time of high school, he already lost interest in that, as his body "wasn't getting any thinner", hence limiting him in movement.
He then become sort of rebel during high school time, as he "slipping out during lunch break, meeting up in the park, and going to Mahjong parlors". During this time, he likes to play Arcade games a lot, one of them being Space Invaders. He, however, mentioned that he didn't get hooked to Space Invaders as most of Japanese people during its launch, as he "always looking for new games to play".
At this time, he also bought an electric guitar during second year of high school. This hobby turned him in onto Jazz music during his college on Tokai University, where he studied Electronic Engineering. He mentions that "computers were just beginning to enter society" and his classmates were joining companies like NEC and Fujitsu, which brought him to SEGA around 1983. He actually had a choice to join Namco, which already rose in power due to the release of Pac-Man three years ago. He, however, thought that "it is hard to get into Namco, so why not try this other one (SEGA)?", so he ended up applying for SEGA instead. He told that "there wasn't even an exam or anything", as he "just filled out a one-page form, went home and got a tentative offer later that day". It is believed that this easiness is what made him decided to join SEGA.
The House of the Dead series
During Nakagawa's early days, he programmed several Arcade games such as Ninja Princess, Choplifter (both 1985), and Alien Syndrome (1987).
In September 1993, he was made as Manager of AM1 department, which he gladly accepts as he "didn't have to code [by himself] anymore". He mentions that his most memorable project working on AM1 is Indy 500, which "was the first time [SEGA was] able to do proper color textures", as well as having "good handle on CG graphics". This, per Nakagawa, was what eventually make The House of the Dead possible.
After sister group AM2 released Virtua Cop in 1994, AM1 wants to develop a light gun game as well to rival them. This led to the appointment of Takashi Oda as the Director of the game The House of the Dead, which released on 13 September 1996. This game receive successes and he then went on to be the Producer for its sequels (The House of the Dead 2 and The House of the Dead III) as well. He also become the Producer for its spin-off, The Typing of the Dead.
WOW Entertainment and resignation
In 2000, SEGA restructured and AM1 was combined with the other AM groups to form WOW Entertainment, which based in Shibuya City, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan. Nakagawa chose the name of WOW Entertainment because it was an easy name to say in Japanese and also would work worldwide as a word in the English dictionary.
However, in 2003, Hisao Oguchi was named as President of SEGA. As his first move, he announced his intention to consolidate SEGA's studios into "four or five core operations", which led to WOW Entertainment's merger with Overworks. With this merger, completed in October 2003, WOW Entertainment changed its name to SEGA WOW, which change his status from Manager to President. In addition to that, Sammy Corporation also purchased a large share of SEGA and have it to focused on Arcade games using Sammy's own Arcade system board. Nakagawa was reported not happy with Sammy's demands and resigned weeks after the acquisition. Kazunori Tsukamoto, who worked with him to develop The House of the Dead, took over as President of SEGA WOW and since then, Nakagawa was never again involved with The House of the Dead franchise.