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Where did the idea for BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger come from?
Whilst Guilty Gear was successful as a hardcore fighting game, it became too hardcore after 10 years. We wanted to develop a fighting game which appealed to wider audiences. Guilty Gear has strong and loyal community behind it and we need to maintain the world of Guilty Gear which sometimes limits our creativity within the existing title.

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ARC works as a very flat organization, whoever has a good idea and is capable of executing the ideas gets to do it. Executive Producer Toshimichi Mori came up with the idea (he was a director of Guilty Gear).

Why the long wait for BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger to be released in the UK?
Quite a few lessons were learnt from Guilty Gear and we wanted to do things properly, not only for BlazBlue but as a foundation for the longer term. We have started with building the local entity, establishing the right base from which to release the game in Europe, then developed network of partners to maximise the local story in each territory.

Also with huge amount of text in the detailed Adventure story mode, more than 100,000 English words to be translated across our core European languages.

With Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6 currently available on Xbox 360, what will be BlazBlue’s main appeal over those games?
You should not compare apples to pears! Both SFIV and Tekken 6 are great games. Tekken is about spaces, SF is about axis, BB is about combos. Also, BlazBlue has strong focus on the detailed adventure story behind the characters. We are hoping fans of Tekken and Street Fighter enjoy BlazBlue as much. The Online mode, we believe, is one of our strongest suits, if we compare function to function between these titles.

The PAL box art was winning art from a BlazBlue contest and seems to have gotten a mixed reaction thus far – why decide to steer away from ‘traditional’ box art?
Who said ‘mixed reaction’? The primary focus of our initiative was to develop better communication between users in Europe and our development team in Japan. We have heard some feedback from North America but had not really done much in Europe to listen to the voices of the gaming community so far. This is the very first initiatives to ‘listen to the users’. Look at box art of CD, there is no such thing as ‘traditional’ box art and it keeps changing. I really do not see why this become such a big deal… We are being careful not to mix the reaction of business partners (distributors, retail chains) with that of consumers. After all, they are the ones who ultimately buy the games.

More fighting games are missing out on the arcade route to home console, with Soul Calibur IV and Super Street Fighter IV. BlazBlue has a strong arcade presence – what’s the advantage of this when it comes to releasing games on console?
Arcade culture is still going strong in Japan. In Japan the arcade players know the beat-’em-up genre very well. They are like mini celebrities in their local arcade. The same culture doesn’t apply in Western Europe, where Online play is more popular. These arcade experts are definitely the toughest and the best group to test the game. This means we can really tune the game from extensive location tests at various arcade centres. We aimed at bringing the excitement of arcade centres into the home, especially removing the network lag, which has been one of our major successes.

The fighting games genre has seen something of a resurgence recently, why do you think that is?
We have good experience since 1998 in fighting games, perhaps that gives us a bit of expertise and we aim at developing ever better fighting game experiences. However, resurgence of this or any other genre is out of our control! I think it just happened that the last couple of years have seen the return to basics of some of the best titles.

How hard is it to strike a balance between being accessible for newcomers while retaining depth for fighting game veterans?
Very hard. It is something we do not have a final answer to as yet, and we have been and will continue to try to find the right balance. BlazBlue is easy to pick up the basics, but tough to master as there is a depth and complexity worthy of a top fighting game. BlazBlue is not only aimed at ‘newcomer’ fighters, but non fighters as well. Especially in Japan, where we have a strong following of people who loves characters and the adventure story. It’s a fully fleshed out story which start with Calamity Trigger and will continue through the series with new characters, and a developing storyline. We can appeal to RPG adventure gamers as well

We’ve seen more 2D fighting games such as Street Fighter and Battle Fantasia use 3D graphics. Why decide to stick with 2D animation? Did you ever consider the switch to 3D visuals?
With current 3D technology (and realistic budgets), we do not believe you can add the warmth and depth of the characters. 3D looks nice but lack the warmth. For us, it is not 2D vs. 3D, but the best way to express our story. Many exaggerated movement systems and graphic presentations and Japanese anime techniques are used in BlazBlue to make character look alive.

Most of these are not yet possible in 3D. We actually did use 3D model to begin with. Once the character “personality” had been established these were then traced into 2D models then visually edited so the character movement looks most like reality.

Online play has become a bigger part of fighting games in recent years. How big a part will this be of BlazBlue’s future?
A major part. As described before, ‘bringing the excitement of arcade centres into the home’ is one of our mantras and online play is the key to it. Even with quite normal broadband connection speeds, you will not feel any lag. We are hoping to create a global ring, where Europeans fight with Americans and Japanese. Or against them!

You cannot master the fighting game in a true sense unless you go up against a wide variety of fighters. Your technique and strategy depend on your opponents’ so the bigger the ring more fun it gets. To enable this, we intentionally kept the gameplay the same as the Japan/US versions (except for a few details), to keep the compatibility. And not isolate European

See more detail:
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Sony PSP Games
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Xbox 360 Limited Edition
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Xbox 360 Standard Edition

source

http://www.oxm.co.uk

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