This article is about the first game in the series. For the protagonist of Bayonetta, see Bayonetta (character).
Bayonetta (ベヨネッタ, Beyonetta) is an action game for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (PS3) and Wii U game consoles, directed by Hideki Kamiya, creator of Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami, at Platinum Games in cooperation with publisher Sega. Set in a fictional city in Europe, Vigrid, the game centers on its title character Bayonetta, who can wield four handguns—among other weapons—and perform magical attacks to defeat various enemies. The game has five difficulty settings; its two easiest ones contain a game mode playable with only one button, similar to a mode Kamiya used in Devil May Cry. Its characters were designed with modern style and fashion in mind, while its music is largely upbeat and feminine.
Bayonetta began development around January 2007 and was released on October 29, 2009 in Japan. It has been promoted through a television commercial with music by Japanese pop singer MiChi, look-alike searches, a theme for the Google Chrome Web browser, and a photo book and soundtracks. Critical reviews of pre-release versions praised its easily learned moves, fast pace, boss battles, "Witch Time" slowdown mechanic, and character and stage designs. However, they lamented inconsistent frame rates, duller graphics, and technical issues in its PS3 port, as well as its use of camera angles in both versions.
Kamiya directed Bayonetta at Platinum Games since around January 2007, and the game was "more-or-less complete" by October 21, 2009. The group developed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console, while Sega—with Platinum Games's original data and support—ported the game to Sony's PlayStation 3. Shimazaki designed the game's characters to be "fashionable", with "subdued" features. She designed the titular character to fulfill Kamiya's request for a modern, female witch that wears glasses and wields four guns, and the two settled on her original concept for the character despite her work "over a year" on other concepts. Bayonetta emerged as a long-haired, black-clothed witch with a beehive hairdo (in place of the traditional pointy hat) and glasses (which Kamiya "really pushed for ... to differentiate Bayonetta from other female characters and give her a sense of mystery and intelligence"). Conversely, she "didn't require a huge amount of effort" to design Bayonetta's short-haired, red-clothed rival Jeanne, who merely wears her glasses on her head above her eyes. She added plumes to Jeanne's handguns to add movement to the design, and thick makeup to Jeanne's face to "make [her] feel like something out of the 1960s". Though Shimazaki preferred Bayonetta, Jeanne turned out to be the more popular of the two witches among Kamiya and the development team. Still, in an April 2009 interview, Kamiya called the former "in many ways ... my ideal woman." Though the game's director "deliberately created Bayonetta from scratch" and has called its story "completely original", he has admitted using "some names from Scandinavian mythology" and playing "about half of" Devil May Cry 4 for research. As a fan of folk music, he also named Bayonetta's set of four handguns after the old English ballad "Scarborough Fair", and its individual guns Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Hiroshi Yamaguchi focused on composing music for the game that has a "nice up-tempo beat" and expresses femininity through female choirs, pianos, and other 'beautiful' instruments—though some tracks also use pure orchestra or folk instruments—while Kenichiro Yoshimura transformed Shimazaki's Bayonetta design into a game model and used the digital sculpting tool ZBrush to create normal maps for its details. He worked with Shimazaki on the model's makeup, referred to foreign models with similar bodies, and said "I really wanted to get Bayonetta’s backside perfect. I guess I am into that sort of thing..."
To Kamiya, the core theme of the game and its protagonist's attacks is "sexiness". He said Bayonetta's ability to transform into a panther reflected the developers' desire to "make her a sexy witch". Her giant boot, fist, and monster attacks reveal some of her body—her clothing is composed mainly of her hair—and when the player targets an enemy, red lips mark the enemy's chest; this led IGN to call the developing game a mix of "action and a great big helping of fan service". The game's sexual tone is reflected in its age rating in the United States: the Entertainment Software Rating Board rated the developing game "Mature 17+" for containing "Partial Nudity" and "Suggestive Themes", as well as "Blood and Gore, "Intense Violence," and "Strong Language". (By comparison, Japan's Computer Entertainment Rating Organization rated the game "D", also for those ages; the British Board of Film Classification rated the game "15" for "strong language and bloody violence"; and it is rated "18" under the PEGI system used in the United Kingdom and other European countries for its use of violence, language, and sexual content.)
The game was released on October 29, 2009 in Japan, January 5, 2010 in North America, January 7, 2010 in Australia, and January 8 in Europe. Sega announced on August 26, 2009 that Japanese pop singer MiChi would perform Something Missing, written for the Japanese commercials. The commercial, which has since been shown on the game's official Japanese website, touts the game as "non-stop climax action" and features a model dressed as Bayonetta with a lollipop. Bayonetta: Witch of Vigrid, a book with pictures of the title character and an "interview" with her, was released on October 22, and a 150-song, five-CD soundtrack for the game was scheduled for a November 4 release. Another soundtrack CD, Rodin's Collection, was created for inclusion with pre-ordered copies of the game. Sega of Europe plans to release Bayonetta: Climax Edition in PAL regions, which will include a single-disc soundtrack and artbook along with the game. A Bayonetta theme was made available for the Google Chrome browser. At the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Sega chose Penny Drake to model as Bayonetta after auditioning 100 women. The company then joined men's lifestyle website Maxim.com to run a contest to find women who looked like Bayonetta. One grand prize winner would receive an Xbox 360, a 50-inch plasma television, and a copy of the Xbox 360 version of the game.
Port to PS3
Matt Leone of 1UP.com said of a pre-release version of the game's PS3 port at E3 2009: "The first thing I noticed was that, at the end of a normal combo, you can hold down the final button in the string to continuously fire gunshots—which looks incredibly cool when you kick someone and then keep your leg pointed at their face as your foot pours bullets on it." He added, "I'll be amazed if Bayonetta doesn't end up being one of the best action games this year." Staff at GameSpot UK were also generally impressed with the PS3 port, which they played on June 3. They called the "Witch Time" mechanic a "cool move" and one of the two boss battles they fought "pretty intense", and said "it's easy to see the similarities between the two over-the-top action games [Bayonetta and Devil May Cry]". They added, "Rampant violence and sexism is par for the course" in the game. 1UP.com staff also played a PS3 version for 15 minutes on the weekend of August 31 that year, at Platinum Games's "Feel Bayonetta" event in Tokyo's Roppongi district. They said that it "was very blurry" compared to an Xbox version displayed there, and that its frame rate "was all over the place. ... it was often hard to keep track of the action [in one scene] because of the graphical issues on PS3." Daniel Feit of Wired News played both versions at TGS 2009, and felt the Xbox version was "a little brighter and more colorful ... while the PS3 version cut scenes feel like you’re watching a movie through a sepia filter." He criticized the camera angles sometimes used in the game in both versions: "When Bayonetta runs too close to the edge of a scene, the camera can automatically focus on her and the wall instead of showing the enemies cornering her. Some of her larger hair-based attacks can also obscure the action." Still, he found the game's commands easy to learn and perform. In March 2009, Cam Shea of IGN Australia praised the developing game as "absolutely stunning-looking" and "a balls-out action game set amongst glorious European architecture" and has called its title character their "new favorite videogame character ever ... even cooler than [Devil May Cry's main character] Dante ... she has the playfulness and versatility of Dante, but wrapped up in some of the most visually inventive combat we've seen in a long while".
Similarly, GameSpy's Gerald Villoria praised the game in July that year as highly original to the point that it could end up like the poor-selling Ōkami (another Kamiya-directed game) for it—"[t]he premise, the characters, the action sequences, they're all entirely different from anything else I've ever seen," he wrote—and called its lead a "constantly moving", "remarkably multi-faceted" character "presented in an ultra-stylish way". Other reviewers compared her to former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin for her appearance and her glasses in particular. Kamiya has said of the comparisons, "in the US they say Sarah Palin. In Japan, they always bring up people like [singer-songwriter] Angela Aki. I think they say something similar in every country. That country's famous glasses girl. ... The thing with that impression is, you know, we've put out plenty of trailers now, and when you play the game and see the cutscenes, I think people will recognize Bayonetta as Bayonetta. Then people will look at Sarah Palin and say that she looks like Bayonetta."
Wii U Port
Nintendo Treehouse Event - Bayonetta 1
In an interview with IGN, Hideki stated that he would be interested in porting the first game to the Wii U so that the console could have both the first, and second entries of the series.
As of November 2013, Kamiya has said on Twitter that it would be possible to port the game to the system in time before the sequel is released. Thus, fans have started a campaign named Operation Dead Angels, a campaign dedicated to persuading Platinum and Nintendo into going through with the port.
On June 10th 2014, it was announced during Nintendo's Digital Event at E3 that the original Bayonetta was to be ported to the Wii U and packaged with Bayonetta 2. It was later revealed that when Bayonetta 2 was bought (only in retail), a download code for the Wii U's port of Bayonetta would be given for use on the Wii U eShop. Japanese and US packages of Bayonetta 2 retail include Bayonetta 1 on disc. It's stated where if either Bayonetta or Bayonetta 2 was purchased on the eShop, a discount will be applied on either of the games on the next purchase .The Wii U Bayonetta is a port of the Xbox 360 variation and primarily runs at 60 frames-per-second.
The port of Bayonetta includes exclusive Nintendo crossover content, including costumes based off popular Nintendo franchises such as Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid.
Cast
The original release of the game featured an English dub only, but the Wii U version introduced additional Japanese voice overs as an option, with actors from Bayonetta: Bloody Fate reprising their role. The cast is as follows for English and Japanese versions respectively.
Players have begun referring to the Wii U port of Bayonetta as "Bayonetta Ultimate". It meaning to be a play on the U In the Wii U's system name, and the fact its an enhanced version that won't exist on any other platform.
