Fifty-two floors above the ground in Tokyo's Roppongi district, one man is reaping all the applause. As he soaks it up, the look on his face is difficult to read. It has been over four years since he last received such attention, and he has yet to impart the information he came to relay; has yet to experience the coming vindication.
The 50-odd assembled Western journalists applaud this man not on the grounds of what he is about to unveil, because at this point (save for a rather dull CGI trailer) it is an unknown quantity. No, they applaud because of what he has done in the past. They applaud because he is one of the most eccentric and idiosyncratic developers in the world, back with a brand new game: "Vanquish." They applaud because he is Shinji Mikami.
If you have even a passing interest in video games, you know Mikami. For one thing, in the mid-1990s he created PlayStation game "Biohazard," known in the West as "Resident Evil," and with it invented the whole genre of survival horror — making space for rival games such as "Silent Hill" and "Fatal Frame." The Biohazard series has spawned 20-odd sequels and spin-offs on 12 consoles plus arcade cabinets and mobile phones, generating 40 million sales and a series of Hollywood movies starring Milla Jovovich.