An Interview with Ryota Niitsuma: Producer of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

So back at Gamescom Maikel and I got the exclusive opportunity to have an interview with the producer of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom Ryota Niitsuma, as well as Mao Sugiyama who translated for us and provided us with information regarding the game. We just have to say right now, this interview was awesome. Great experience unlike any we’ve had before, and was a lot of fun.Upon entering the room, we saw Mr. Niitsuma playing the game against another press representative from Gamer.nl, and Mr. Niitsuma couldn’t have had a bigger smile on his face. After the match was finished, Mr. Niitsuma invited me to give the game a whirl, and I hesitantly accepted his proposal. I’ve had terrible experiences with Street Fighter in the past and have never really gotten the hang of the controls, so I was reluctant to get my ass handed to me by the producer of the game in the flesh. To my surprise, it was a close match, and in the end I actually emerged victorious. On top of that, for a non Street Fighter fan like me, it was great fun! There were few close calls and a lot of laughs, and in the end it was a very cool experience. After the fight, we sat down and began our interview.

I began by asking, since I had seen such a look of excitement on Mr. Niitsuma’s face, whether or not he still enjoyed playing his own game after working on it for such a long time. He replied that in a genuine sense, it’s not as fun or exciting as it would be for the players, but at the same time he does enjoy a good fight, and he was definitely more than anxious to show us the ins and outs of the game.

One of my first questions was how long the title has been in production for, and we were told that the original Japanese version of the game took roughly four years to finish, and the Western version has been in production for the past year.

We asked what the whole story of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom was, considering that hardly anybody in the West even knows what Tatsunoko is. We were told that Tatsunoko is highly popular in Japan, as well known as Warner Brothers or Hanna-Barbera are in the West, and, as such, the game was never actually intended for release outside of Japan. The game was made strictly for Japanese release, and once the game was out they were already prepared to move on to the next title. They never predicted that American and European fans would be screaming over forums and sending emails crying for a Western release. Apparently, many fans had been importing the game to the US, or had been watching videos online, and everyone felt they were missing out on something. Everyone was beginning to be intrigued by the latest Capcom vs. game.

Capcom prides itself on catering to the wishes of their fans, and they just couldn’t ignore this call for a Western release. They then made the decision to begin the process of westernizing the game and preparing it for release. It took them about a year, but the game is just about finished and will be out this holiday season in the United States and Europe.

The question was also posed about whether or not the game was actually created with the intention of increasing awareness of the Tatsunoko franchise in areas outside of Japan, but we were told that raising awareness was definitely never their intent, but they agree that it is a very nice side-effect.

Once the Western version of the game is complete, Mr. Niitsuma has told us that the chances of the game being re-released in Japan are highly likely.

Because it has taken them a year to virtually release the same game, in theory, we asked Mr. Niitsuma what has been the biggest cause of the delay. He responded saying that definitely their greatest setback has been implementing proper WiFi functionality, and that they refuse to release the game before they get rid of every last frame of delay. This is their intention, at least.

Speaking of WiFi, that buzzword brought up quite a large discussion during the interview. It was mentioned that online play is not planned to be restricted to regions, so that players from all over the world can fight through the internet. This does bring up the problem of latency and lag, and this is definitely the studio’s biggest concern at the moment. With any wireless internet connection, we were told, there will always be at least one frame of delay. For some games this isn’t necessarily such a big deal, but for a fast-paced fighting game such as this, even a second of lag can be a huge hindrance to gameplay. (Anyone else reminded of SSBB’s horrid online play?) Mr. Niitsuma is definitely trying his hardest to get this game lag-free, but he knows that no matter what, with the current wireless capabilities of the Wii, this will most likely be impossible.

Maikel brought up the fact that if players were to use an internet cable to hardwire the Wii to an internet connection, the lag would no longer be an issue. This is of course a valid point and it would solve most of the problems, but Mr. Niitsuma reminded Maikel that it’s not necessarily plausible for the game to tell players to use an internet cable to make the game work properly. Mr. Niitsuma also stated that if he were to even so much as recommend using a hardwired connection as opposed to the Wii’s wireless capabilities, it would be seen as highly disrespectful to Nintendo, and definitely something Capcom could never actually do. Maikel also suggested that the game be packaged with an internet cable, considering most Wii games nowadays are packaged with some form of peripheral anyway. Mr. Niitsuma laughed and agreed this would be a great idea, but of course again it would be disrespectful and obviously an unrealistic solution. We suggested just hiding the cable in the box; nobody would ever know. Hell, Maikel even figured that if the game would be released with a MadKatz arcade controller peripheral, they could sneakily tape an internet cable to the bottom of the arcade controller and Nintendo would be none the wiser.

Speaking of MadKatz, Mr. Niitsuma did explicitly state that there were no intentions of releasing a version of the game with an arcade stick peripheral included, and that players would have to order one as an extra if they preferred to play that way. Maikel asked whether or not there might even be a special Tatsunoko vs. Capcom themed joystick peripheral like there was for Street Fighter 4, but Mr. Niitsuma told us that he was not aware of any plans on making them. Hmm.

Off the topic of internet connections and back to the game itself, there were many more things we ended up discussing.  For example, we wondered why there was a selection of normal scaled characters, and then there were two huge mech characters the player can also choose from. They seemed to stand out and clash with the gameplay of the normal characters and, again, Mr. Niitsuma laughed. He told us that the mech characters were actually put in there explicitly for the sake of breaking the mold of the normal gameplay, and mostly were thrown in there just for laughs. Of course the player can only have one character when they choose a mech, as opposed to having two characters when choosing a normal sized one, so this does balance it a little bit. Obviously though, Mr. Niitsuma and the development team were definitely having some fun rather than taking it too seriously, and it’s refreshing to hear about a professional team being so lighthearted.

Considering all of the previous Capcom vs. games were done in a 2D style, we questioned why they decided to go for 3D this time around. Mr. Niitsuma actually stated that in all honesty, creating a game in 2D was actually more difficult than creating one in 3D, so they decided that since they could make the style feel relatively similar to that of a 2D game, and since the Wii could handle what they aimed to achieve, they would just make the game in 3D after all.

Because of the games huge level of success, we wanted to know if Capcom had any intentions of bringing the game out on other consoles in the future, and they explicitly stated they would not. Mr. Niitsuma continued, saying that Capcom actually chose to develop the game on the Wii not because it was easier or required less because of its hardware, but actually because it had some features which would aid in the production and just generally worked in their favor. For once a studio developed a game for the Wii because of the console itself and not for the motion sensitive controller! Wow.

Since I’m such a fan of the Gamecube controller, I just had to ask whether the game would be compatible with it, and Mr. Niitsuma made my day by confirming that it would be Gamecube controller compatible. Awesome! He said that, once again, because Capcom loves to cater to their fans, they wanted to make as many control schemes as possible to cater to everyone’s wishes. You go, Capcom.

We questioned them about a possible sequel or spinoff due to the major success of this title, and Mr. Niitsuma told us that they have no plans for one just yet, but its likelihood will definitely be decided largely by the final reception of the game when it is released in the West.

I personally was very curious as to how they selected the characters to put in the game, considering they all come from different franchises, and they need to have an even and fair balance of characters. Mr. Niitsuma went on to explain to me that they had a very simple system for how they would choose the characters: They would only take one character per game or series (in the case of Tatsunoko.) Now, I called his bluff and mentioned the fact that there are three Street Fighter characters in the game, and he laughed and told me that there’s a very simple explanation for it. Ryu is from Street Fighter 1, Chun Li is from Street Fighter 2, and Alex was from Street Fighter 3. I laughed, but thinking about it I suppose he made complete sense. I also mentioned there were two Mega Man characters in the game, and he said that there had to be at least two Mega Man games out there. Again, I laughed. Did I mention this was a fun interview?

Well unfortunately the interview was almost over, and Maikel’s Capcom friend Ben (seen below) was pushing his way through the door to point to his watch and remind us time was running short, but we pushed the door closed and asked a couple more questions before we were thrown out of the Capcom booth.

Basically, Maikel had one more thing he needed to ask Mr. Niitsuma: he wanted to know whether or not there was the possibility of a Capcom vs. Studio Gibli game coming from Capcom. Mr. Niitsuma laughed and said that they had actually never thought of the possibility, but considering the huge hassle they had with trying to sort out all the character licenses for Tatsunoko, he believed that this was an unlikely scenario. Maikel continued insisting on this suggestion for quite a while, even going so far as to point out characters like Kiki and Gigi, characters from Howls Moving Castle, Spirited Away and my Neighbor Totoro, as well as Princess Mononoke herself and how perfectly they could all combine into another awesome fighter game. In all honesty, Mr. Niitsuma did seem more and more intrigued as the discussion went on, so I’m sure Maikel would like me to tell everyone: If there ever does come a time that the game “Studio Gibli vs. Capcom” is released, you all know that it was Maikel de Bakker that gave Capcom the idea.

We shall see Maikel, we shall see.