Interview with Yasuyuki Oda - Producer for SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy

Yes, actually [Oda-san’s] stomach hurts a little bit [laughs]. [Oda-san] had a pretty nice dinner last night, might have been a little too much for [Oda-san].

Onigiri.

Salmon flakes.

Well there’s two things, the battle system is a 2v2 battle system. That’s unlike anything else, obviously unlike anything that’s come out of SNK. But honestly, not a lot like anything else others have come out with. That’s the first thing [Oda-san] would like people to pay attention to. Now the second thing is the customisation people can do, there’s over 130 items people can use to customise their characters. And then you can take like funny pictures in-game with them, and you can share them on social media and things like that, so [Oda-san] really hopes people will really enjoy that feature, and enjoy taking fun and crazy pictures that they can throw up on social media. And you know, have conversations about all that.

You can change the background of the game as well, and in one of the backgrounds you can change is the SNK offices. [Laughs] [Oda-san] really likes that one, there’s ones where you can see people peeking out of it. [Oda-san] thinks that one’s really funny.

Shermie, it’s been a while since Shermie’s come out.

Samurai Shodown. If possible [Laughs]. It’s because it’s so different from other fighting games, where it’s weapon based. Whenever you land an attack, you lose so much of your stamina meter. And it’s one of the only games really, where having that big of a damage is allowed. So for example, [Oda-san] thinks people be really upset and there’d be a lot of complaints from [players] about it.

[Oda-san] there’s a lot of franchises out there, but there’s really nothing [Oda-san] can say, or really wants to say right now, about that kind of stuff. Good question but yeah.

Just a little too early.

Two games, Dragon Ball FighterZ and Fighting EX Layer. And both actually, in terms of EVO it might be a side stage tournament where, you know where more games are allowed. But it’s really a game that lends itself to both, where you can play it casually with yourself at home but it can also be played at a tournament setting as well.

Absolutely, it’s a really good game for beginners to get into fighting games [Oda-san recommends] Leona [Heidern] and Yuri [Sakazaki] for newbies [Chuckles].

Yeah, that’s actually what they’re aiming for, to be on top of that heap again. [Oda-san] says I hopes people will look forward to their work going forward in this arena.

Actually there’s a lot of stuff going on for that, for example King of Fighters has one that’s like a 3D anime. It’s mainly centred, I don’t want to say broadcasted, but it’s like mainly in Asia, particularly in Japan, China, Hong Kong. They’re really big on it, in Japan it’s called a Media Mix.

Yeah, kind of like that. [Oda-san] would love for someone to do that for them, they really don’t have the means to do that. In Japan this series will be released in a Tankobon format. [Tankobon is when chapters of a series, typically from a serialised format, are reprinted as a collection, IE Volume X of Series Y]

Basically, [Oda-san] says it looks like that is because set in a magical world, so that’s how the characters ended up [looking like that]. It’s not so much playing off the superhero genre, it’s more because it’s playing off the magical world setting.

Athena [Asamiya], she’s always kind of been a superhero. Even in her old games.

In the game, there’s a story. If you play the game, you find out who that figure is and what their purpose. So please look forward to that.

There are about two or three CG cutscenes, and between battles there’s a story talking sequences. [And] definitely more on the fun and lighthearted side of things.

[Oda-san] says honestly developing both was difficult, they were both challenging on the development side.

Yeah absolutely, we’d definitely like to see more. Even for example, there’s a game coming called SNK 40th Anniversary Collection which will also be coming out on Switch. At the moment, there’s no further plans specifically for it, but please look forward to future announcements.

[Oda-san] says it’s more a matter of, in Asia, a lot of companies will approach them to do Media Mix stuff. Whereas in the west the idea, it’s like you’ve said, it’s not really caught on as much. [Oda-san] feels that going forward, more companies in the west will be more interested in doing that method of dealing with brand and that it might increase going into the future.

Yeah, as surprising as it may be, it’s pretty much always the opposite with using a company’s character.

Fukaron Setsu two, in Japan. It was extremely success and [Oda-san] would like to see something like that again.

The first season just ended, [Oda-san] has been watching Golden Kamui. [Oda-san] thinks it’s probably in Japan. Golden Kamui, go check it out.

Yeah definitely, [Oda-san] says there’s enough content there. Maybe not one year [Laughs]. It would probably follow the comic, where there’s a tournament setting, there’s a couple matches and something happens, and then they all come together, and solve whatever mystery happens, that’s probably what would happen.

Well that’s what would happen if they were to do it, this is all hypothetical. It’s in the manga too, so unless you read Japanese, that’s pretty much what the manga is all about.

[Oda-san] would definitely like to do an action RPG, if they were to do anything like Tokyo Mirage. Personally, [Oda-san] would like to work with Kamen Rider. That’s because [Oda-san] is personally a fan of the series.

The thing with Kamen Rider is that, every year it changes and they make a new one. Basically there’s a rule where, if they make a game on it, it has to be within the current season. Or else, if it doesn’t come within that season, it stops. So the schedule is incredibly tight [Oda-san] says. But, if [Oda-san] was allowed to make any Kamen Rider on any series in the past, without having to worry about any of that time constraint, [Oda-san] would love to give it a try.

There was one called Kamen Rider Agito, which is from 2001, which [Oda-san] is a particular fan of. It’s always been a children’s program, but from the early 2000s they decided to switch things up and make it more geared towards adults. However, for the 2000 year, they went way too far with into that direction. And it was actually too scary for kids to watch, so they had to pull it back and that’s when they found a nice balance between the more children’s thing and adult thing.

[Oda-san] says that it’s not so much in the items, or items that could be made into looking like Kamen Rider. But in terms of the special moves, there’s some that look like that, it’s not so much that it’s homage to it, but it just ended up looking like that. [But] Probably not, at least the very least [Oda-san] knows they didn’t intentional set out to do that with any part of the game. Anything in the game is purely incidental.

[Oda-san] says honestly because [Oda-san] has been playing games for so long, and so widely that there’s not necessarily any games that [Oda-san] uses as a set of references. [Oda-san] just loves games overall as a medium, so [Oda-san] just has that background of knowledge playing so many games.

Recently [Oda-san] has been really into open-world games. Most recently Assassin’s Creed Origins for example, [Oda-san] really liked that. I brought it up, and [Oda-san] confirmed that he likes Horizon Zero Dawn, [Oda-san] really liked that as well.

Yeah, generally speaking, those types of games don’t become hits in Japan. He thinks that Japan is a little behind in terms of, you know, appreciating games like that. Infamous Second Son [for Japanese players], and to answer the second part of your question Zelda Breath of the Wild [Oda-san] would probably recommend for the opposite.

Yeah there’s one, it’s being able to cancel your supers. In Fatal Fury 2 and Mark of the Wolves, [Oda-san] said that you can notice that afterwards they implemented that, afterwards [Oda-san] ended up seeing that on a lot of different fighting games. So that’d be the one for [Oda-san].

Probably the biggest thing in the market is that there’s so much free to play, but you can’t just make a game for free. You have to monetize it somehow, developers have to be really careful in terms of how they do end up monetising their game. Because if you do add some kind of gambling system, then it’s honestly not a game. [Oda-san] says it’s just gambling. So that’s something that developers really need to pay attention to.

There’s definitely an awareness for that kind of thing, what made it so noticeable is that, if you do it on console, it’s complete different in terms of reception anywhere. Whereas on mobile, there’s like an acceptance.

Three things [Oda-san] think, one we’ll see is the proliferation of streaming games. The second is that the amount of people who’ll buy digital instead of physical will increase, and the number of people who buy physical will decrease.

[Oda-san] thinks that Japan is definitely behind in terms of the trend because the games market is so small that they need to catch up to everybody else. Or else that market is going to disappear entirely.

[Oda-san] says it’s more that it’s always been small and kept at that same rate without so much decreasing.

Yeah maybe not in the West, but [Oda-san] thinks that in Japan arcade culture will continue. [Oda-san] doesn’t expect it to get bigger but [Oda-san] says that it should be able to maintain what it is right now.

[Oda-san] brings up two examples, one is that people who like competitive games, they want to do it in that setting. You know the screen’s like bigger and a really nice set up for it. So [Oda-san] think’s that’s one reason. Another reason is that, card type games are really popular in Japan. And the only way you can get them, is to go to the arcade to purchase them.

[Oda-san] says there’s one, there’s a new cabinet style, that’s made by Taito, called NESiCAxLive 2 that’s got like King of Fighters 14 too. There’s two things that make it interesting, there’s multiple makers in it so you can switch games. And the second is that you can actually do, there’s almost like online play with other people who play the game.

[Oda-san] remembers when he was elementary school, [Oda-san] couldn’t really get to go into the arcades at the time. There was one small shop near his place that had three different games and he remembers going often and having fun. [Oda-san] says they’d switch out the games often, but one thing [Oda-san] had no cognisant of the time was copies. There was at the time a lot of copies, so you had the real Donkey Kong. But you also had Donkey King, Crazy Kong, and Crazy King [Laughs]. [Oda-san] really enjoyed playing them and beating them.

So there was a SEGA game a long time ago that used like a Ferrari pod, like thing. It had a bunch of screens that were arranged, and [Oda-san] would like to see a more realistic version of that.

[Oda-san] says he worked on something like a long time ago, one that allowed you to simulate a Gundam cockpit and you got to shoot and do things like that. It was like a demo, but [Oda-san] has always liked VR. It was a long time ago, VR is expensive but back then it was really expensive. It was so expensive that it could only be a demo.

Yeah that’d be great, but Gundam is Bandai’s property. So [Oda-san would] like them to do it actually, [Oda-san] would like them to make those types of games.

Yeah if it’s possible, [Oda-san] would like to do that.

Yeah Iron Blooded Orphans is the one [Oda-san] likes. There’s nothing he’d like to remake, honestly the old ones were so heavily based on the anime that they ended up not being great games. But now they’ve finally actually started making good Gundam games.