Street Fighter’s legendary artist Akiman addresses Red Dead Revolver’s miraculous revival 

Red Dead Revolver is the prequel to the top-selling, critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption. However, the Wild West action-adventure game had a rough ride prior to its eventual release on PS2 and Xbox 360 in 2004. Red Dead Revolver’s former art director* Akiman, recently alluded to the game’s troubled development on X- expressing his relief that it was saved from cancellation.   

*Note: Akiman was brought in as art director during part of Red Dead Revolver’s development, but ended up being credited as a character designer on the game’s end credits (under his real name Akira Yasuda). 

Akiman (AKA Akira Yasuda) started off his career at Capcom, and is best known for being the legendary designer behind many of Street Fighter’s iconic characters, including Guile and Chun Li. As a freelancer, he has done illustration and design work for many other companies and franchises. 

Angel Studios began working on Red Dead Revolver in 2000, with oversight and financial backing from Capcom- hence Akiman’s involvement. Founded by Columbian entrepreneur Diego Angel and based in the US, Angel Studios’ long and interesting history included making what is considered the first virtual sex scene and creating games for Nintendo (including the N64 port of Resident Evil 2) and Microsoft. Despite Angel Studios’ previous successful collaborations with Japanese companies, direct oversight from Capcom meant that the making of Red Dead Revolver was hampered by differences in culture, development philosophy, work ethic and language, as well as vision for the project. For example, the English title “Red Dead Revolver” was Capcom’s idea, prompting Angel Studios’ employees to put things in the game to try to make the name make sense, such as naming the main character Red and giving him a red burn scar on his hand (source: Polygon). 

Even though the game had been announced in 2002, development was not going smoothly.  Rockstar Games, who had already partnered with Angel Studios on Midnight Club and Smuggler’s Run, expressed interest in Red Dead Redemption. As a result, Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive would end up buying Angel Studios in late 2002. Capcom subsequently stopped sponsoring and then cancelled the Red Dead Revolver project in 2003, putting the almost completed game in limbo. Fortunately, Rockstar was able to buy the rights to Red Dead Revolver and make sure the game saw the light of day (they would go on to do something similar with Studio Bondi’s LA Noire). As Akiman points out, it is very fortunate that Red Dead Revolver was saved by Take-Two’s acquisition of Angel Studios (now Rockstar San Diego), as without it there would be no Red Dead Redemption. 

Red Dead Revolver is available on PS4.