When Namco Bandai and Capcom joined forces to stage a two-day tournament in Japan that would put Soul Calibur V and the highly anticipated Street Fighter X Tekken in the hands of the public, it was only natural that the public faces of the two firms’ fighting divisions should be present. games
TM magazine sat down with the pair to find out more about the developers and the experience of putting together a game like Street Fighter X Tekken.
"Ono sucks. One, two. Ono sucks.” It’s not often that our interview subjects see fit to test our dictaphone is working. But on this occasion, Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada does us just such an honour, using this opportunity to troll his Capcom counterpart. It’s not exactly an uncommon sight – the two are constantly at loggerheads for comic effect and, as Harada orders what we can only assume isn’t the first round of tequilas of the evening, we interrupt the amusing feud to ask just how deep this rivalry really runs.
“I don’t know what the higher management or the board of directors think but, realistically speaking, Tekken and Street Fighter don’t really compete on the same level,” opens Yoshinori Ono, Capcom’s playful producer. “Not in a way that’s negative for either, at least – it’s more a positive kind of competition, and neither really eats into the other’s market share. Just because Street Fighter prevails, it doesn’t mean Tekken will fail. It’s just an increase in the fighting genre as a whole, and that’s good for everyone. We’ve never seen it as a competitive rivalry.” Also putting the staged squabble aside for a moment, Harada concurs. “Yeah, the gameplay mechanics are totally different and the audiences are totally separate. If you compare it to music, they’re classical – the original – while Tekken is something like rock. We’ve been heavily influenced by them, as you’d see in music. Our games are just interpretations of what theirs would be, only rearranged for modern times. They’re two different genres that would never have mixed, so that just makes the fact that they’re crossing over now even more interesting.”
Ever since the announcement of this pair of unlikely crossovers, Ono and Harada have been busier than ever, though their Twitter feeds and frequently posted pictures don’t exactly tell of the hectic lives of two senior development figures. They paint the duo as a pair of guffawing clowns who carry toys everywhere with them and aren’t afraid to cross-dress or take hostages in the name of promotion. It’s a breath of fresh air in what is typically a pretty stuffy industry, and their good spirits (personality-wise, not the tequila) are infectious – between their banter and amusing antics, there’s never a dull moment when these two get together. And this time, we even managed to avoid anyone having to put on a dress.
Result. But how did the two best buds first meet? “I guess I’d have to say it started with Street Fighter reappearing on the scene after quite an absence,” Harada explains. “But Tekken has been going on constantly, and because of that we were able to meet each other at various events. The conversation would always veer towards what would happen after Street Fighter IV, so that’s where it started.” Ono goes on to detail the intentions of this unlikely union. “We wanted to build a bridge between the Street Fighter community and the Tekken community, allowing them to interact freely and experience one another’s territories,” he beams. “We want this to be a festival, for players to be able to enjoy a taste of another world.”
Ono and his team are up first, Street Fighter X Tekken the Capcom leg while Harada’s crew will deliver their rendition some way down the line. “Rather than looking at what Ono is doing and taking influence from that, it’s more about what happens from now. After he releases his game, we’ll see how everyone reacts to it and that’ll give us a better point of reference for ours,” says Harada, with Ono in agreement that this course of action would likely be for the best. “When it comes to fighting games, it’s a tool and it’s all about feedback. The more data we can get, the more accurate and complete a game can become,” he reasons.
The Capcom man then goes on to shed a little more light on his project, which is now just a couple of months out. “We’re making this game as Capcom,” he states, a firm reminder that Namco Bandai has little-to-no involvement in that first of the two fighters. “We’re just borrowing Namco Bandai’s children, borrowing these characters that we’re going to whip into shape at Capcom Academy. But at the same time, when Tekken X Street Fighter is in the making, our characters – our children – will be sent to the Tekken world and they’ll be reformed to fit in there. We don’t want to recreate Tekken. If you want to play Tekken characters as they should be, just play Tekken ! This is really an opportunity to enjoy Capcom and Namco Bandai’s interpretations of each others’ franchises.”
Having now been sensible for the best part of five minutes, Ono slips back into wacky mode, and a question about whether he is looking to balance the roster in terms of different fighting styles is thrown straight back in our faces. “I’m afraid you’re fundamentally wrong,” he laughs. “You’re assuming that we intelligently or logically thought this through at all. No, we basically went with the characters that were most popular or most talked about. It’s all about the festival and the celebration, so we just pick whatever looks good and whatever people think or say is good, stick them all together and see what happens.” Which, as we recall, didn’t end too badly for Street Fighter IV…