Daisuke Ishiwatari

Daisuke Ishiwatari (石渡 太輔, Ishiwatari Daisuke?) is a Japanese video game developer, illustrator, musician, composer and occasional voice actor. Best known for creating the Guilty Gear series, he is responsible for designing the characters and storyline, and composing most of its music.

History

Daisuke Ishiwatari was born in August 14, 1973, in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised in Japan. He conceived the original Guilty Gear before joining Arc System Works while he was in a vocational school. After joining the company circa 1995, he revealed to the president he wanted to make a game in Street Fighter-likeness, which resulted in the first Guilty Gear after a very long interval.

Since then, he has become Chief Creative Officer for the company, as well as a recurring composer. Ishiwatari is noted composing in the metal and rock genres, with his compositions featuring intricate guitar work and, as of late, vocals provided by Naoki Hashimoto from the band Outrage.

Credits

• Virtual Open Tennis (1995) - Assistant designer
• EXECTOR (1995) - Designer
• Guilty Gear series (1998—present) - General director, designer, illustrator, main composer, and Sol Badguy's battle voice (GG—GGXXΛC+R)
• Sangokushi Taisen DS - Original Ba Tai design
• Dimension Zero (2005) - Card illustration
• Battle Fantasia (2008) - Freed Velez's voice
• BlazBlue series (2009—2017) - Main series composer
• Hard Corps: Uprising (2011) - Designer, composer
• CHUNITHM CRYSTAL (2019) - Composer, illustrator ("Surrogate Life")

Trivia

• Queen is known to be his favorite band.^{[source needed]}
• An often-peddled rumor is that Ishiwatari worked on SNK's The Last Blade (due to a credit listing a "Daisuke"). However, The Last Blade was released in 1997 while Ishiwatari was already a designer at Arc System Works by 1995. Hidetaka Suehiro would dismiss the rumor as false when responding to a fan in 2018, stating that it was a different person.
• In Library Mode, Ishiwatari is said to be the "King of Tea". According to the legends, by giving him some tea leaves and a tea pot, one will taste the best tea of ther lives. Unfortunately, Ishiwatari seems to be a coffee person, and takes it black.