Apparently Street Fighter IV is still hot among the Famitsu editors and they decided to interview Producer Yoshinori Ono to discuss more about the game recently (July issue of Famitsu PSP + PS3) where he talks about the pressure in making the game a reality, why he thinks it’s an alumni, his favorite character and also the reason behind Chun Li’s muscular legs.

The game shipped 2 million copies in its second week and Ono is thankful to players who have always supported the series. Not only they made it possible for the rebirth of the series, they have also sent in plenty of encouraging messages during development. He admits that this is the most tiring project he involved in so far, thanks to the amount of time the series spent in “dormant” and the enormous pressure in touching the characters some consider as the king of Street Fighter II. This kind of pressure come from within the company too, there were many ideas being suggested and some even consider everything there is to be done has been done in Street Fighter III.

Ono described SFIV as “alumni” and Famitsu want to know why. When they are drawing up the basic concept for SFIV, Ono’s thought was for it to be like a high school alumni, where everyone gather on a field called “SFIV”. If everyone can run around the field based on their memories, he feels there is no need for manuals or tutorials. Another example he cited is the gatherings at hometown, where memories of those fun moments will naturally come. He also hopes that words like “Ah~ That’s the guy!” will pop up in the character selection screen. He hopes SFII fans will be together again in discussing about SFIV and it’s something that he always had in mind when developing SFIV.

Is there any particular steps he has taken to attract SFII fans? Although as a creator, he would like to make the graphics, system and control more fresh. Ono says he will never force players to accept a completely new concept, something he feels is the main reason behind the good sale of SFIV. If a gamer watch a trailer of the game and say “is this the new version of SFII?”, they have succeeded in their goals.

Ono’s favorite character is Ryu, who he think is somebody he knows very well but at the same time, has plenty of depth, just like a pencil case with seven levels that even has a hidden level in it. Another reason is he is knows Ryu’s controls very well and since this is an alumni, he feels happy as long as he can control Ryu and watch his actions. As a result, he goes online every night fighting everyone with Ryu.

Apparently Chun Li’s legs are a hot discussion among the editors with some very supportive of her muscular legs but some are not so cool with them. Ono says he get used to question like this (laugh) but he think if her legs are too thin, she won’t looks like Chun Li anymore. He brings up the alumni concept again, saying it just like when you are meeting your first love again, if she looks completely different, nobody will recognize her. In order to prevent players from thinking “is she a new character?“, he decided to used the current design.

Famitsu asks what is the new info that the game’s official blog is teasing for this summer. Ono says the PC version of the game is nearing completion and new downloable contents will comes after this.

Playing this game, which I just got my copy from our reviewer Victor, surely bring back all the memories for me as I remember very well now how this game makes my school results look crappy.

Posted in News on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 12:10 am | Tags capcom fighting ono sfiv
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