It started as a disaster. Honestly, if things had gone according to plan back in 1999, we would be talking about a very strange version of Resident Evil 4 right now instead of a red-coated demon hunter with an attitude problem. When people ask who made Devil May Cry, the short answer is Capcom. But the real story is about a specific group of developers who didn't know when to quit, a director who obsessed over "coolness," and a complete shift in how action games were built.
Hideki Kamiya and the Team Little Devils
The man at the center of the storm was Hideki Kamiya. Before he was known for Bayonetta or Viewtiful Joe, he was a young director at Capcom who had already proven himself by helming Resident Evil 2. Capcom's higher-ups gave him a mission: make the next big entry in the survival horror franchise. He wasn't interested in making another slow-burn horror game. He wanted something fast. Something stylish.
He assembled a crew that eventually called themselves "Team Little Devils."
They traveled to Spain to photograph Gothic architecture and old castles. They were looking for a setting that felt oppressive but grand. But as they started building the mechanics, things got weird. Kamiya wanted a protagonist who didn't look like a normal guy. He wanted a hero who was suave, powerful, and untouchable. This didn't fit the "vulnerable survivor" trope that Resident Evil was built on.
The gameplay changed everything.
During the development of Onimusha: Warlords, a bug was discovered where enemies could be kept in the air by repeatedly hitting them. Most developers would have patched that out immediately. Kamiya saw it and thought it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen. He decided to build an entire combat system around that "glitch." This was the birth of the juggle mechanic.
From Resident Evil to Dante's Inferno
The internal build was getting too far away from the series' roots. Shinji Mikami, the father of Resident Evil and Kamiya’s mentor, looked at the project and realized it just wasn't Resident Evil. It was too action-heavy. The protagonist, Tony (who later became Dante), was basically a superhero. Instead of scrapping the work, Mikami convinced the team to spin it off into its own intellectual property.
That’s how who made Devil May Cry becomes a story of accidental genius.
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They renamed the character Dante, inspired by The Divine Comedy. They leaned into the heavy metal aesthetic. They swapped out slow zombies for puppets and demons that moved with terrifying speed. It was a gamble. Capcom didn't know if players would respond to a game that graded you on how "stylish" you were.
It turns out, they did.
The game launched in 2001 on the PlayStation 2 and basically invented the "Character Action" genre. Without Dante, we don't get God of War, Ninja Gaiden, or Bayonetta. It changed the DNA of 3D combat.
The Disaster of Devil May Cry 2
Success is rarely a straight line. After the first game became a massive hit, Capcom did something strange. They started work on a sequel without Hideki Kamiya. In fact, they started it without much of the original team at all.
This is where the history gets murky.
For a long time, nobody actually knew who was directing Devil May Cry 2 in the early stages. It was being developed by a different division at Capcom. As the deadline approached, the project was a total mess. The combat was slow, the levels were huge and empty, and Dante had lost all his personality. He was moody and quiet, which is the exact opposite of why people liked him.
With only a few months left before ship, Capcom panicked. They brought in Itsuno Hideaki to save the sinking ship.
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Itsuno is a legend now, but back then, he was put in an impossible position. He is officially credited as the director, but he only had a fraction of the development cycle to actually fix the game. He couldn't rewrite the whole thing. He just had to make it functional. The game released to mediocre reviews, and for a while, it looked like the franchise was dead.
Itsuno’s Revenge and the Golden Era
Itsuno wasn't happy. He didn't want his legacy to be "the guy who made the bad Devil May Cry." He begged Capcom to let him make a third game from scratch so he could prove what he was capable of.
He succeeded.
Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening is often cited as the pinnacle of the series. Itsuno and his team took the "Style" system and blew it wide open. They introduced the four-style system—Trickster, Swordmaster, Gunslinger, and Royal Guard. They made the game punishingly difficult. They also went back to the drawing board with Dante's character, making him a cocky teenager to explain how he became the man in the first game.
If Kamiya created the soul of the series, Itsuno created the mechanics that would define it for the next two decades.
Key Figures in the DMC Dynasty
- Hideki Kamiya: The visionary who wanted an action game that felt like a dance.
- Shinji Mikami: The producer who had the foresight to turn a failed Resident Evil into a new IP.
- Hideaki Itsuno: The man who saved the series and directed 3, 4, and 5.
- Bingo Morihashi: The writer responsible for much of the lore and the complicated relationship between Dante and his brother, Vergil.
- Reuben Langdon: The motion capture artist and voice actor who gave Dante his signature "wacky woohoo pizza man" energy starting in the third game.
The Ninja Theory Detour
We have to talk about the "reboot." In 2013, Capcom decided they wanted to appeal more to Western audiences. They handed the keys to a UK-based studio called Ninja Theory. This gave us DmC: Devil May Cry.
The fans hated it at first. Mostly because of the hair.
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Dante went from a white-haired anime protagonist to a dark-haired, grittier punk. While the combat was actually quite good—Ninja Theory knows how to make a fluid game—the tone was a massive departure. It was vulgar and satirical in a way that felt "off" to longtime players.
While Ninja Theory is the answer to who made Devil May Cry during that specific 2013 window, the game remains a bit of an outlier. It’s the "What If?" story of the franchise. It eventually gained a cult following for its incredible art direction and level design, but it wasn't the "true" Dante people wanted.
The Return of the King
Fast forward to 2019. Itsuno returned for Devil May Cry 5. Using the RE Engine (the same tech behind the modern Resident Evil remakes), the team at Capcom Dev 1 created what many consider the best action game ever made.
They brought back the original timeline. They brought back the white hair.
They also introduced Nero and a new character, V, to keep the gameplay from feeling stale. The development of DMC5 proved that there is still a massive market for high-skill, high-style action games. It wasn't just a nostalgia trip; it was a refinement of every lesson learned since that Spanish castle excursion in 1999.
Why Does This History Matter?
Knowing who made Devil May Cry helps you understand why the games feel the way they do. You can see the friction between the Japanese development style and the Western influence. You can see how a single bug in a different game can birth an entire genre.
If you're looking to dive into this series or improve your play, here is how you should actually approach it:
- Skip the second game. Honestly. Life is too short. If you want the history, watch a summary on YouTube. The gameplay is a slog and won't teach you anything useful about the mechanics of the later titles.
- Start with DMC3 or DMC5. If you want the story chronologically, start with 3. If you want the best possible "feel" and modern graphics, start with 5. Both represent Itsuno’s team at the height of their powers.
- Learn the "Jump Cancel." This is the modern evolution of that original juggle bug. By jumping off an enemy's head, you reset your animations, allowing for infinite combos. This is the "pro" level of play that the developers intended for you to discover.
- Don't ignore DmC (2013). If you can get past the different character design, it’s a fantastic action game. Just treat it as a side story.
The series is a patchwork of different directors and conflicting visions. It survived a botched sequel, a controversial reboot, and a decade of silence. It exists because a group of developers at Capcom were obsessed with the idea of "Cool" and refused to let a good combat engine go to waste.
To master the games themselves, you have to embrace that same mentality. Stop worrying about just "beating" the level. Focus on how you look while doing it. The developers didn't build a game; they built a stage. You're just the performer.