who had worked at Enix and later Climax Entertainment. When creating the concept, Nishigaki was inspired by the movies of Steven Spielberg, Akira Kurosawa, John Carpenter and Joe Dante. A specific inspiration was Carpenter's movie The Thing. He considered Blue Stinger a tribute to Western action movies. To develop the game, he and several staff from Climax Entertainment's CGI division who had worked on Dark Savior (1996) formed Climax Graphics as an independent "brother company". Pre-production of Blue Stinger began in September 1996 following completion of Dark Savior. Originally in development for the Sega Saturn, Blue Stinger was rebooted as a Dreamcast title at Sega's request. The reworked game's design and atmosphere drew additional inspiration from Resident Evil, Enemy Zero, and Alone in the Dark. Full production started following the prototype's approval by Sega in December 1997. Debugging lasted from late January to early March 1999. The staff was split between eighteen people at Climax Graphics in Japan, and ten working from North America on the early design and localization. Nishigaki produced the game and co-wrote the script. Other staff included Ayumu Kojima as director, Kazuaki Yokozawa as lead programmer, Ryosuke Murakami as art director, and Masaki Segawa as character designer and co-writer. The game designer was Atsushi Yamamoto. Through American connections from his university years, Nishigaki brought on Robert Short to create the creature designs and 3D models, and noted storyboard artist Pete von Sholly to be camera supervisor. Sholly also handled the game's storyboards. The Japanese team worked almost 24 hours a day to complete the game, only taking a few days off during its two years in development. The game was classified as a cinematic action-adventure game, though Nishigaki wanted to be classed outside traditional genres. He described one of the game's themes as "wit" or "humor", wanting to set the game apart from the horror-focused titles dominating the Japanese 3D adventure market. The environments were designed to have as few repeated elements as possible, additionally designing the environment to appear lived-in and realistic. The original camera design was directly inspired by his love of movies. Character movements were animated using motion capture. The game engine could not handle two player characters on-screen, though early plans had Dogs tagging along as an AI-driven companion and providing comic relief through environmental interactions. The team also did not have time to make Janine playable. Nishigaki described the plot as