Namco × Capcom was developed by
Monolith Soft, then a subsidiary of Namco consisting of former
Square employees who had gained fame through their work on the
Xenosaga series and
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. The game was directed and written by Soichiro Morizumi, a former employee of
Banpresto and veteran of their
Super Robot Wars franchise. The producer was Kouji Ishitani, who had served as an assistant director for
Xenosaga Episode I and
Baten Kaitos. Development began in 2003, and was initially proposed by Monolith Soft as an internal crossover of Namco characters for the company's 50th anniversary. This led to a roster of around 100 characters, but the team wanted a larger roster. To achieve this and create a "more exciting" experience, Namco reached out to Capcom to collaborate on the project. Capcom agreed, breaking the accepted reality of the time for large rival companies not to cooperate on a project. The game was Capcom's second major collaboration with another publisher following the
SNK vs. Capcom series.
Namco × Capcom was Morizumi's first project for Monolith Soft, and he was in charge of writing the game's scenario. The main theme of the story was "Love", a theme common to Morizumi's later writing. The antagonistic Saya was originally written as "brutal and irritating", but the character's interactions with Xiaomu and the input of her voice actress
Ai Orikasa changed Saya into a woman with a big sister persona. This forced multiple rewrites to the script. While he remembered it fondly in later years, Morizumi found the project exhausting. Shinichiro Okamoto, one of the game's executive producers, described the project as difficult for him and credited the rest of the staff with helping the game reach completion. The character redesigns for Namco and Capcom characters were done by Takuji Kawano, an artist from the
Soulcalibur series. The original characters were designed by Kazue Saito, who like Morizumi had worked on the
Super Robot Wars franchise. Saito also designed the sprite graphics, and cut-in graphics for battles. The conversation portraits for characters were designed by veteran artist Kazunori Haruyama. The design of main protagonist Reiji was based on the builds of professional wrestlers. The game's opening animation was produced by
Production I.G, famous for their work on anime and video game series.
Namco × Capcom was announced in January 2005; at this point, the game was 70% complete. When first announced,
Mega Man producer
Keiji Inafune praised the initiative behind the project.
Namco × Capcom was released in Japan on May 26, 2005. The game was never released internationally, with several outlets citing both its large amount of text and a lack of worldwide recognition for many of the represented characters as potential reasons for this. A
fan translation was created by a group called TransGen, made up of ten development team members and thirty beta testers. The translation was completed over two years, releasing in 2008.
Music The soundtrack consists mainly of arrangements of themes from represented series. The only credited arranger is
Yasunori Mitsuda, who worked on his own tracks for
Xenosaga Episode I. The opening and ending themes were composed by
Yuzo Koshiro. The game was Koshiro's first time writing vocal themes. Koshiro was brought in to work on
Namco × Capcom due to Ishitani being a fan of his work, with the vocal themes being the composer's only contribution to the soundtrack. The lyrics were written by Morizumi and both songs were performed by Flair. A special soundtrack album containing selected tracks was released as a first-print bonus with early buyers of the game. A full soundtrack album, which included an extended version of "Brave New World" and karaoke versions of both songs, was released by Capcom's music label
Suleputer on August 31, 2005. == Reception ==