Inti Creates
"Speed Power Gunbike" was the first game developed by Inti Creates, a company formed in 1996 by 11 ex-Capcom staffers with similar goals and passions. Lacking a publisher for their first project, they turned to Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), which had the PlayStation Club Digital Entertainment Program (DEP) sponsorship for individual game designers or teams. One of the Inti Creates members won an award for "best creation in the professional category" with a 10 million yen prize. After negotiating with the publisher's parent company, Sony Music Entertainment Japan (SME), group members invested 10 million yen apiece to establish the company as a second-party developer to Sony. Yoshihisa Tsuda was the designer and director of "Speed Power Gunbike", while Inti Creates president and CEO Takuya Aizu took on the role of producer. Toru Nakayama designed the characters and did the mechanical designs alongside Keiichi Nabetani. Noboru Honda devised the game's concept. According to Aizu, the team members chose to create "Speed Power Gunbike" based on their own personal interests: "We assumed that whatever game we want to create would be the kind of game that consumers would enjoy. So, we basically just created the game we wanted to create without worrying too much about its appeal". The game's premise was largely inspired by science fiction anime of the 1980s in order to cater to a PlayStation user demographic of young males in their teens or 20s. However, it was structured as to not pay homage to a specific anime property.