Yoshinori Ono has certainly come a long way. From working as a sound director on various Capcom franchises to playing first-time producer for a hack and slash action game called Chaos Legion, Ono has been fortunate enough to be in a league of respected game designers for both his company and for the entire world. And now that he’s been busy getting a new numerical Street Fighter out for a new generation of home consoles, TAP takes a moment to Hadouken some questions regarding the prospect of downloadable content, thoughts on custom character creation, in-game recording and more. Ono was just too down-right fierce not to answer!

While it’s great to see a huge character line-up from the SFII and Alpha games, why no love for Street Fighter III’s fans? Can we expect to see some further additions in the upcoming months (maybe in the form DLC)?
We had a particular aim in SFIV to achieve and that was a total return to the basics. The intention was to align the starting point for everyone, so those who had played II on SNES and such could just start playing, without having to refer to the manual. Because we thought familiar characters that are well remembered would do the job better we chose not to include characters from SFIII.

DLC wise, there will be no additional characters. This is again to help everyone to be in the same boat and we wanted to avoid just some people who have paid extra to have a wider range of arsenal. However I am not denying the possibility of DLC delivering some fun stuff and I do have some interesting things coming up so keep your wits about you!

Given the decision to make the switch to 3D for the fourth installment, as well as dropping previous mechanics in favor of newer ones (out with SFIII’s Parry, in with the Focus Attack), did peer pressure from both fans and otherwise ever come into the way of molding what Street Fighter IV is today?
The switching of the visual presentation to 3D has not changed the game drastically. The game style and the controls, the overall feeling of the gameplay experience has not changed from the original 2D fighting game. Even the all new focus attack is a system thought through to be an easy adaptation for those who have been playing fighting games. We’ve revised the highly technical parry system in III to simpler focus attack that widens the usage due to its simplicity. All in all the fundamentals have not actually changed.

Rather than a sheer pressure from the fans it was more a realization of our wish that we would like those who enjoyed I, II and Alpha to return to the fighting game scene.

Backbone Entertainment’s David Sirlin, Lead designer on Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, commented on the difficulties of adding future patches to their title – particularly related to costs to the console manufacture and having to test for online compatibility. Does the SFIV team see any similar issues in the months to come? If so, how would you hope to tackle them?
There are pros and cons in updating fighting tools such as SFIV, since whatever happens it alters the game mechanics and many of the rules would change whether people are aware or not. As far as SFIV is concerned, it is a fighting tool where its prequel is over 10 years old. For now at least, we would like people to get used to the current game rules and then we’ll see the response of the users in what sort of adjustments we would have to make.

While games such as Mortal Kombat and Soulcalibur have included features which allow players to craft their own fighters in however way they see fit, Capcom as yet to enter this trend with any of their leading fighting franchises. How do you feel about these particular features? Do they add to the experience or merely detract from what should be primarily focused on, say, the actual game?
If allowing creations of original characters involves individual players rewriting the SFIV rulebook or changing character appearances thus the SF world vastly, this will confuse people to an extent that gives me no incentive to go ahead with the idea.

I agree that [Mortal Kombat] and [Soulcalibur] can be enjoyed that way because they have a different approach to the whole idea and the players probably wanted it too. However, I really cannot justify implementing the same feature for SF series at this moment.

Will Street Fighter IV include in-game screen capturing of match sessions, or maybe even movie recording?
SFIV has no function for this. Perhaps if I have another chance in the future this is definitely a feature to consider.

Will world-wide online matchmaking over consoles ever measure up to the fanatical arcade sensation made still popular in today’s Japan?
The large factor in arcade is the face-to-face part. Because you fight in a virtual reality if you can’t see the opponent’s real face the community tends to get rough. I do think Japan is a rare place where the arcade scene has succeeded in forming a strong community, supported by the owners of arcades. Our challenge is, how would Capcom form a community of a similar calibre online. This obviously requires vast experience and I think it will require some time.

Technology is advancing day by day. Fighting tools are fought over a frame and by having better global infrastructure, specifically fibre optics; many problems would probably be naturally solved.

Special thanks goes out to Capcom and Milestone Interactive for allowing us to conduct this interview!

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• nitesh Says:
  Thursday, January 29th, 2009 12:19 am GMT +5.5 at 12:19 am

  nice interview, looking forward to some old school action