Category: Interviews

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Kayane interviews SoulCaibur VI producer Motohiro Okubo

Kayane is an extremely famous French SoulCalibur VI player, and given her web presence and affinity for blogging, it’s not surprising that she’s on the hunt for information on the upcoming Souls fighter. She recently posted an extensive interview with Motohiro Okubo — the producer behind the game — and asked many hard-hitting questions that fans are dying to know… though she didn’t necessarily get all the answers.

In her SoulCalibur VI interview, she opens by asking Okubo about the single-player content, specifically, the Story Mode. Okubo wants to go back to a time that’s “around, but not necessarily between SCI and SCII,” and “back to the concept of the clash of Soul Edge and Soul Calibur” swords. He can’t say yet, however, whether that content will have an overarching story or take the perspective of individual characters. A wildly-debated topic currently is whether Siegfried will be his own character, but Okubo doesn’t leave any hints — but it sure seems likely that the game will have DLC characters.

Tekken fans will definitely appreciate the Noctis discussion, as Kayane is persistent in asking about the Final Fantasy XV guest character. Okubo explains that Square Enix surprised them with their permission, and as the Tekken team is separate, there wasn’t much of a chance to put the prince in SoulCalibur (at least for now!). Kayane is holding out her hope for NieR: Automata‘s 2B, though. Additionally, there’s a revealing discussion about the difficulties of making games cross-platform.

Read the full interview over on Kayane’s blog, and if you’d rather see her in action, check out some SoulCalibur VI Kayane matches.

Source: Kayane.fr

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Jay ‘MrUSuk’ Gary shares how to grow a local scene with FGC Philosophy

How do you grow a local scene? What do you do when there’s no one in your city to play? How do you run a tournament when you’ve never run one before?

These are all questions that with Jay ‘MrUSuk’ Gary had to find answers for on the fly. Now that he’s the tournament organizer of the rapidly growing Michigan Masters major and of the already successful — and chaotic — Youmacon, he’s here on the ‘FGC Philosophy’ podcast to share what it takes to stay sane while starting a scene.

Source: The Philocypher

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Arc System Works stream interviews Ishiwatari and Mori, teases upcoming announcements

Yesterday, Arc System Works streamed for over an hour, showcasing interesting developer interviews with the top developers. The famed Daisuke Ishiwatari of Guilty Gear and Toshimichi Mori of BlazBlue were present, alongside Mike “Ninja Viking,” who translated Japanese into English. James Chen acted as the host, leading the show and asking the two developers questions.

Here’s a breakdown of the show:

  • James Chen first met Daisuke Ishiwatari about twenty years ago at University of California-Los Angeles, where he obtained his first copy of Guilty Gear. Unfortunately, it wasn’t signed as he thought!
  • Mori wanted to make a “dream match-up” of the various fighting game universes, which is how Cross Tag Battle came to be.
  • Mori has always been a fan of Monty Oum and caught wind of RWBY in Japan. Before the show was localized, Mori wanted to collaborate with Rooster Teeth on it. The collaboration happened thanks to a Forbes interview which the Rooster Teeth team saw and then reached out to ASW. The companies first met for a “greet and meet” before actually working together.
  • While Mori is very excited about BBTAG being part of the Evo 2018 lineup, he feels a little sad that BlazBlue: Central Fiction isn’t on the main stage (which is the title that he heavily worked on over the years).
  • When it comes to the release of BBTAG, Mori emphasizes having as much of an even start for players around the world as possible, which is why the release dates are close and there isn’t an arcade release.
  • When asked about their favorite weapons, Mori said that there is a “very high scythe ratio.” Chen asked if there will be any fan weapons, showing Amane’s fan, but the developer points out we already have Yukiko Amagi. Ishiwatari answered: “Azrael’s fists.”
  • Mori’s favorite character from Guilty Gear is Order Sol, and Ishiwatari’s favorite BlazBlue characters include Taokaka and Nine, but lately he’s intrigued by Haku-men.
  • When asked if Mori intends to continue the BlazBlue story after CF, he said he can’t really share anything just yet.
  • Mori presented his game designers with the challenge of integrating the characters from different games into one and making their systems work.
  • When asked which characters were the hardest to design, Ishiwatari feels all of them more or less were very difficult. Mori said Ragna and Litchi. It took a lot of time to capture the “protagonist look” for Ragna, and as for Litchi, well, Mori said it’s best to have male designers work on characters like that. Her design is Chinese-inspired, which is fairly common in Japanese manga/anime. Designing Litchi taught him a lot, but he can’t go into specifics.
  • Ishiwatari simply wanted more people to listen to heavy metal and through naming a lot of attacks in his games; he wanted to share names of songs and bands he likes.
  • Picking characters for BBTAG came down to balancing the game. It’s a combination of selecting which characters from different series should make it and making a balanced game.
  • Ishiwatari would love to feature some Capcom, Tekken, and Virtua Fighter characters in his games as playing their titles inspired him to work on fighting games. Mori brought up Powerpuff Girls.
  • Mori’s favorite Astral Heats are Haku-men and Bang’s.
  • Many fans keep asking whether BBTAG will be fully dubbed in English, but the company has no comment at this time.

While there were no new announcements, Arc System Works has a press event coming up this week in California, where their American branch is located.

Source: Arc System Works Twitch

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Infiltration answers questions from his fans on Street Fighter V, Evo Japan, and more in this YouTube video

Infiltration has gone from a 2017 that saw him struggle, to being instantly catapulted back to the upper echelons of players early in 2018 with his win at Evo Japan 2018. But with the changes he has experienced, he has remained the same humble and witty guy that always drew fans to him from the start.

He recently put out the call to Twitter for his fans to ask him questions, that he would later answer in a YouTube video interview — and has just recently uploaded his answers to those questions. In the interview, he talks about his feelings about Evo Japan and Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition. He also explained his change in characters against John Takeuchi during the finals of Evo Japan, citing that he felt more confident with Juri than Menat, despite both having disadvantageous match-ups against Rashid. He also expounds why he said he wasn’t “back” after winning Evo Japan, and declared his wish to do well this year — including winning Evo 2018 and Capcom Cup.

Source: 인생은 잠입 INFILTRATION

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– Hunt: Showdown Closed Alpha Impressions

Hunt: Showdown’s concept had me intrigued ever since I first got wind about it last year. You and a partner are Hunters tasked to hunt down a monster in a hauntingly beautiful map by following clues using your Dark Sight (think Arkham Asylum Detective Mode). Along the way, you’ll have to avoid gloriously grotesque creatures who are all trying to kill you. In short, find monster. Kill monster. Banish monster. Evacuate.

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– HyperX ALLOY Elite RGB: HyperX’s Game Changer

Over the last several years, few companies have climbed the ranks like HyperX. They first came to our attention with their excellent line of gaming headsets, but it didn’t take long before their other peripherals caught our notice. Today, we’re taking a look at the company’s very first entry into the RGB world. This is our review of the HyperX Alloy Elite RGB.

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toco toco catches up with famed Street Fighter II animator Akira “Akiman” Yasuda

The character designs of Street Fighter II are iconic — but for many, we forget the people behind the works we continue to enjoy today. But for people who appreciate the art of video games, Akira Yasuda — better known as Akiman — is probably one of the most iconic artists in fighting games, as he is the man behind the designs of characters such as Cammy, Guile, and of course Chun-Li (and many of her Street Fighter V costume additions).

In this interview, he talks of his time at Capcom and his reasons for leaving — which has a bit to do with his time at Rockstar, working on Red Dead Revolver. He also talks about his life since leaving Capcom, which sees him as freelance animator.

Source: toco toco tv

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– PopUp Dungeon: Your Cat (Or Whatever, Really) Can Star in this RPG

PopUp Dungeon was recently announced in partnership with Humble Bundle. The game takes user-generated content to the next level, allowing everyone to bring in their own assets to make their ideal dungeons, play with friends, level up, and run endless content. We caught up with Triple-B-Titles to talk about the game and its design.

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– GGG Teasing Out 3.2.0 & What They Have to Say About It

Over the course of the last couple weeks, Grinding Gear has been teasing out the next major content expansion and that we’ll all know more in a couple of weeks after a press tour. We managed to squeak in a few questions to Chris Wilson to see if we could extract any new information about 3.2.0 and about what else the team has been working on too.