Category: Interviews

Left: Wongnation|LostSoul Center: r/Kappa|Taka Right: r/Kappa|Kedako

CEOtaku 2017 was invaded by a number of strong Japanese players. The anime-centric tournament in Florida proved to be a magnet for talent from all over the world. Taka, sponsored by r/Kappa, is one such player; the reddit subforum helped the famous Slayer player travel to the United States. You can regularly see him on Japanese channels like Joniosan’s.

Taka triumphed in Guilty Gear Xrd REV 2. He also did extremely well in Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R, losing only to fellow Japanese player Kedako. We caught up with Taka right after the Guilty Gear Grand Finals at CEOtaku 2017.

Thanks to Aksys Games for providing a translator for the interview. Edited for clarity.

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Woocash: How was fighting LostSoul in the Grand Finals? You played him twice, actually.

Taka: I’ve been keeping an eye on LostSoul for a while because he’s famous. One of the known points about him is that he learns fast. During the Grand Finals, I was scared that he came up with some way to defeat me. During Winners Finals, I had a plan… I was expecting Kedako to emerge from Losers, but he didn’t. When I first beat LostSoul, he told me “I’ll be back.”

Woocash: How were your other matches with American players? Who were you worried about?

Taka: Aahh.. Foo, MarlinPie, KidViper, Zidane. I lost to MarlinPie last year during Evo’s pools.

Woocash: If you could make any changes in the next version of Guilty Gear, what changes would you make?

Taka: Right now, my playstyle is very aggressive. I’m trying to be more calm and defensive, but not too much, for more of a hybrid style. As for the game, the balance is good enough right now. There are just a few skills that I’d like to iron out that are sort of incomplete. There are things with hitboxes and interactions that are a little weird, sometimes.

Woocash: How much do you play Accent Core still? Thoughts on the tournament?

Taka: There’s a tournament every week at Mikado, I’m there every Friday. I use Anji. I try to stay good with both. As for fighting Kedako, I haven’t played him outside of Japan except for Evo last year. Kedako was much better than me and beat me down that time, but this time, it was much better.

Woocash: Why won’t use you Slayer in Accent Core?

Taka: I’m an old-guard Anji player, but he’s not in Xrd, so I use Slayer.

Woocash: So you prefer Anji over Slayer?

Taka: Currently, Slayer really suits my playstyle. I can’t say who’s better, but my playstyle really matches with his aggressive moves.

Woocash: In the future, do you want to come to more US tournaments?

Taka: I will definitely want to come to Evo next year and to other tournaments if it’s financially feasible.

Woocash: Any other comments, or things you’d like to say?

Taka: I’ve known CEOtaku for a while, and I’m very happy to have finally come and won the GG championship. My next step is Toushinsai in Japan. I’m partnering with T5M7 (Tomo) and Issamu. I also want to do my best there!

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Take a look at our CEOtaku 2017 results page for more information about the tournament, and you can also read our interview with Dora_Bang.

A look into what went into the inception and evolution of the Nidhogg series.

With the kooky and brutal tug-of-war fencing fighter Nidhogg II now out in the wild and available for PlayStation 4 and Steam players, we caught up with MESSHOF co-founder and creative director Mark Essen to talk about the new game — and the design choices behind both the original Nidhogg and its sequel!

Answers have been edited for clarity.

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Zavian “mushin_Z” Sildra: Going back to the original inspiration: what led to the initial choice of a fencing/dueling game? How did the multi-screen tug-of-war system come about?

Mark Essen: I was interested in weapon-based games that dealt with the awkwardness of holding a weapon, and getting it to do what you wanted. Bushido Blade was an inspiration, as was the fencing game, Great Swordsman, which was all about blocking and poking with a fencing foil. I thought that game was super funny! One-touch-kill games are great because you can’t mash buttons; if you miss any attack, chances are you will die to the counterattack. There’s a lot of tension in trying to read your opponent without “playing” the game like you might with a game like Street Fighter, where you can slowly chip away an opponent’s life bar.

I was playing a lot of Great Swordsman with friends, and it’s such a simple game anyone can pick it up; though it frustrated me that the game was single-player against the computer, so I started making my own fencing game with a multiplayer focus. The animation looked a lot better smaller on screen, so it ended up being these little fencers in a very wide frame. That meant they could end up being very far apart, so I added a running mode if you held one direction for a while (instead of tap-tap-tapping to skip around like a fencer), and then if you have someone running in a game, you have to try adding jumping. Pits and high ground/low ground made for interesting levels.

At a certain point I just tried panning the camera rather than switching between different screens, and that just kinda naturally made a tug-of-war mechanic. At the time I was thinking it would be like one player was playing a beat-em-up as the hero, and the other player was playing the enemies — and if the hero died, the enemy character would be the new hero going the other direction… or something like that.

mushin_Z: How much of the original concept started with mechanics alone, and how much was the style and setting?

Essen: It was purely mechanics in the concept and prototype, though my prototype basically kept getting upgraded with more and more detail and animation frames as time went on.

mushin_Z: Why the Níðhöggr?

Essen: My roommate at the time, Andy Kopas, suggested that a nidhogg eats you at the end — though I don’t remember why that came up. There was also a rock-climbing section and plans for nidhogg jousting. Originally, fencing was just going to be one part of each battle.

mushin_Z: What design process led to Nidhogg II‘s revamped, cartoonish aesthetic?

Essen: It was mostly to try something new! Kristy [Kristy Norindr, MESSHOF co-founder] and I were also keen to grow the team. I was most interested in the design end, as well as playing around with new tech and visual effects, so that meant that we needed more help with programming and especially art. We found Toby Dixon during our search for a pixel artist and fell in love with his work.

mushin_Z: Was the addition of new weapons driven by the desire to widen the original concept’s scope — or was the original design goal always to have multiple combat options, and the first game simply limited by time and resources?

Essen: I dreamt of adding a couple more weapons to the original game, but just never had time to get very far with any of them. There was too much else to do, and we wanted to release in under a decade.

mushin_Z: What brought about the change from the axe mid-development, to the broadsword?

Essen: The axe didn’t feel like the right shape. It was short, so it only worked at close-range, which felt awkward being both shorter and slower than the rapier. The axe was also unblockable when thrown, which was confusing.

mushin_Z: A number of different — and very talented — musicians provided the soundtrack this time; were the tunes made for the game itself, or borrowed from their existing work?

Essen: Kristy found all the music — some were existing works that were licensed, while others — such as the Doseone track — were made for the game. The general way we created levels was to all talk about what kinds of environments would be cool, then figure out some unique set pieces to go on each screen, build a rough version of that level, and then find a track. If it couldn’t be found, we’d try to find something that had elements of what we were looking for, and then ask for modifications.

 

mushin_Z: There have been a number of patches on PlayStation 4, and the online matchmaking (aside from direct invitation matching) still seems a bit problematic. What are the challenges in setting up the online infrastructure?

Essen: The biggest problem we see right now is that once people find each other on matchmaking, they might play a series of games lasting 10 minutes each, or more. That’s then divided by some searching in Ranked mode, and some searching with other filters set. We are in the process of redesigning the flow of matchmaking to get everyone into the same pool of people, match them based on skill whenever possible, and shorten the standard time limit. We are hoping that with these new settings people will cycle in and out of the matchmaker search more, breathing a little more life into it. You’ll still be able to use all the match modifiers like weapon order, time limit, and cheats in online mode when inviting a friend, just not in matchmaking. We’re also hard at work implementing rollback networking, which your readers are probably familiar with — smoothing out the occasional FPS hit by guessing your opponent’s controller input when the actual inputs are late to arrive. If the guess was wrong, the game backs up, applies the new inputs, and fast forwards to where you were. Pretty neat.

mushin_Z: Tell us what it was like having the game featured in the PAX West Omegathon, and about the creation of the PAX Place stage.

Essen: It was amazing! Ryan Hartman and Travis Eriksen reached out to us to see if we were interested in having the game be a part of the Omegathon. We were trying to think of how to make the event even more one-of-a-kind, and eventually decided on making a new level that had a bunch of Seattle and PAX elements, like the PAX Place sign, booths, gum wall, and space needle. We gave Toby some direction, and he made a bunch of new assets. We had music ready to go from Osborne. It all came together pretty quickly — too quickly it turns out, as I forgot to add in a Sudden Death screen.

mushin_Z: The player customization options are a fun new addition; will we see new accessories added to the game in the future, or a means to “bookmark” our favorite avatar builds?

Essen: Yes, we have a favorite avatar feature in our internal build that will go live with the rest of the matchmaking changes. We have a good amount of new costume pieces nearly ready for you, too!

mushin_Z: Any hints at what new content Nidhogg II fans can look forward to?

Essen: Big items coming up are those matchmaking updates and new cosmetics. We’re also launching on PS4 in Japan soon (published by NIS). We wanted to localize the text for that, but ended up also localizing it to 15 other languages. Oops. Localization will be in the next update for PS4 in other regions, as well as on Steam. Looking forward, we plan to add a couple more levels as well as weapons.

mushin_Z: Any tips on how to use the multiple weapons, for aspiring warriors?

Essen: Try to avoid going on tilt and just throwing whatever you spawn with. You will be much more intimidating if you can stand your ground and turn your opponent’s attacks against them! Bounce arrows, parry swords, disarm with the longsword, and block those high stance knife throws!

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You can read our own review of Nidhogg II here.

Additional source: Nidhogg Official Site

Left: PG|SKD. Center: PNS|Garireo. Right: r/Kappa|Dora_Bang.

CEOtaku 2017, a very important tournament for anime games in the United States, brought a good deal of international competition this time around. Thanks to an r/Kappa sponsorship, Dora_Bang made it to the tournament. For a Japanese player, he’s quite famous in the United States. Dora_Bang not only streams often — lately on Twitch — but he also makes helpful content, often in English. He’s known for his fun personality and a tendency for frequent money matching.

I caught up with Dora right after the BlazBlue: Central Fiction Grand Finals at CEOtaku 2017. Dora_Bang ended up second, right after PNS|Garireo.

Interview conducted through a translator provided by Aksys Games. Edited for clarity.

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Woocash: Talk to us about the Grand Finals in BlazBlue.

Dora_Bang: During the Winners Finals, of course I beat Garireo with ease. But Garireo was in a sort of bad tempo, so it wasn’t his best condition. Even during Evo, Garireo made comebacks just like this. I really wanted to fight him on equal terms when he’s doing his very best. That’s what I want to do in the future too.

Woocash: Tell us more about some of the top 8 matches you were having.

Dora_Bang: One of the top 3 strongest players, other than me and Garireo, SKD. I really felt on edge there throughout the fight, I felt like I couldn’t aim for an Astral Finish or Distortion Finish. He’s really one of the best players among the top. In my first fight against Garireo, I was able to do all my combos correctly. But when he regained his composure, I was having trouble, I was missing my combos sometimes. It’s just that if I’m not fighting a great player, I won’t understand my own weaknesses. That really got to me in the middle of the fight when the reset happened.

When you corner Garireo, he’ll start doing wake-up throws [Dora means that instead of Dragon Punching, Garireo would start throwing Dora while getting up. Bang’s Drive can block and go through Dragon Punches.] I realized that sometimes I don’t think, and I just reflexively jump up-back and Barrier.

Woocash: Why do you think you lost to him?

Dora_Bang: One of the reasons I lost is because I wanted to see him after the reset. It’s not that I let him win, but it’s a mindset. I wanted to see how strong he would be after the reset. That’s something I learned today, too. This big money match, even though I lost it, I wanted to see what would happen. It’s a new mindset I’m looking at right now.

Woocash: You recently made a tier list of BlazBlue characters. Any new thoughts on it? Having played in the States here a bit, any new opinions?

Dora_Bang: I don’t feel there should be any new changes to the tier chart. I noticed that in the US, there aren’t many Arakune players. Since it’s a bit hard to tell with Arakune. So this time, I feel that the balance is really good, because you can’t tell who’s going to win just by looking at characters.

Woocash: Why do you like money-matching so much?

Dora_Bang: In a money match, you’re betting on something. It puts people on the line. They get more nervous and they show more fighting spirit. That’s why I like it, because it puts people on nerve. If you’re just playing casuals, you’re only fighting. You don’t know if the opponent is playing for fun or to improve. But in a money match, most people are going to be on edge. I think it’s good for players to grow.

Woocash: What in the United States has surprised you the most?

Dora_Bang: Game-wise, I’m surprised how strong SKD is. Also, I saw a lot of squirrels yesterday. I saw a lot of wildlife in Florida.

Woocash: How are you liking coming to the States? You’ve recently come to Evolution 2017 as well.

Dora_Bang: It’s super fun! Japanese people are a bit more shy or passive. In the US, people will come talk to you. That’s why I like to come more. The community is more talkative.

Woocash: Any other comments?

Dora_Bang: I stream on Twitch, so please watch it!

 

Garireo played Dora in an epic CEOtaku 2017 BlazBlue Grand Final. Also, check out the CEOtaku 2017 full results page.