5. The Energy of Tekken
What does it feel like to compete with another player on the Nintendo 3DS system rather than the home console?
When you play against someone locally, it’s a lot of fun because you can see your opponent’s facial expressions and talk about the moves you have programmed on the bottom screen. Also, another great point is that you can play against people all over the world over the Internet, just with Nintendo 3DS. Our concept was making “the most accessible Tekken,” and we wanted to offer something really high quality, both in terms of the game and the movie. After all we had to make it live up to the word “prime” in Tekken 3D: Prime Edition.
The word “prime” also means prime quality.
That’s right. We chose the title to signify that we wanted to offer something that was top quality.
Also, I thought of handheld games as something that you play while you’re commuting or have time to kill, but there are people who put aside time to play at home, who play stretched out on their bed or something like that.
A lot of people do play them at home. It’s easier to play on a handheld because they can play it whenever they want at their own pace, whereas the home console is hooked up to the family TV, so they can’t monopolise it for too long. So people do play on their handheld machines in their homes for a long time, for various reasons. Recently, I’ve been playing Mario Kart 7 and getting in a few races against people in other parts of the world over the Internet before I go to sleep.
Is that so? With this game, you can use the Nintendo 3DS system to play against people on the Internet, or use local play to gather together and play that way. I don’t think there’s ever been a Tekken that offered you so much freedom.
As the places and the opportunities to play the game have increased, there will be increased opportunities for a higher number of people to experience it. It’s really opened up all kinds of possibilities.
Right. And if people think the movie seems cool, they can come to it that way, too. I think it’s really turned out to be something with a lot of possibilities.
In other words, it’s twice the flavour than what you would originally expect.
Yes. There are also a lot of combos you can program and a function for programming moves, so you can even have a good fight against people with a higher ranking than you.
Even someone who couldn’t win on their manual dexterity might be able to win by anticipating their opponent’s moves. So that means that people who know the game well but aren’t good at it might suddenly get a lot better.
Exactly.
To close here, I’d like you both to give a message to customers. Could you go first, Ikeda-san?
Sure. Whether you’ve played Tekken before, whether this will be your first time picking it up, or whether you felt that it was a little too hard to get into, please play around with this game for a while. I hope you can see just how much fun it is to use the touch buttons to make aerial combos, and connect with people through the Internet or locally. I hope you’ll see how exciting it is to wonder who it is you’re competing with on the other side of that screen. I also hope you’ll enjoy the movie and that it will make you love Tekken even more. I’ll be happy if you take a look at TEKKEN 3D PRIME EDITION.
And Harada-san.
There’s no other Tekken that has so much packed into it, whether it be the full length movie or the fact that there are forty characters. We made sure to make it 60 FPS, and we have designed the game system that can even affect your play control. What we made is definitely Tekken. I hope you’ll help spread the word with this game, and that it will become that kind of item. When we made this, we wanted to make a game that could be enjoyed not only by the core fans of Tekken but also people who would be picking it up for the first time.
So in other words, it’s really the ultimate version, something to satisfy not only Tekken fans, but also people who used to play the games but haven’t played recently, or people who know the name but have never played the game. The two men here with me now started playing fighting games when they were little and it really changed their lives, and they’ve put some incredible passion into trying to show everyone just how much fun those games can be. And the path they’ve taken as creators, which has led them here, isn’t something they arrived at the ordinary way. In many ways, it’s a path that they forged. The most interesting thing for me during our conversation was realising that the energy that Tekken has comes from the passion of people like these two. Thank you so much for talking with me today.
Thank you.
By the way, Harada-san, you suddenly have some katsu-don (fried pork on rice] in front of you. What’s going on? (laughs)
...I put it here so I won’t get nervous.
(laughs)
No, I’m serious! Even though I don’t look like it I’m really nervous! It’s because I love Balloon Fight20 so much. 20 Balloon Fight: An action game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in January 1985. Satoru Iwata was the programmer.
Oh, is that so?
That’s a competitive game in my book.
That’s true, it does have an aspect of that.
I love its Balloon Trip mode21, too. 21 Balloon Trip mode: One of the modes in the Balloon Fight game, it’s a race where you try to get a high score as you move from the right to the left of the screen breaking balloons and avoiding the harmful lightning.
We made the Balloon Trip mode in the last three days. (laughs)
You did?! (laughs)
I can still sing the whole song that plays during the Balloon Trip mode.
Thank you.
And this katsu-don, I’ve brought it here today so it can become one of the symbols for this and future TEKKEN 3D PRIME EDITION interviews.
I get it. (laughs) Well, the more conversation starters the better. And food samples are one bit of technology Japan is world famous for. (laughs)
Harada-san took a half-day off yesterday just to go and buy that. (laughs)
He did? (laughs)
There were a few different types of samples, and I wanted this one with the mitsuba (Japanese parsley) on top. Most of the samples don’t have it, but I really wanted one with the mitsuba on top. I mean, without it, it doesn’t photograph very well, you know? Also, they don’t sell the bowls with it, so I had to go to different stores to find one, asking “Please give me one that fits this, it should look like those katsu-don bowls that are in those interrogation rooms.”
Oh, they’re sold separately?
Yes. The katsu-don part was 6,860 yen (about $90 US dollars).
That’s so expensive!
So, when my nervousness was at its peak I put the katsu-don out hoping Iwata-san doesn’t get upset by me putting this out in front of him just out of the blue during the interview. Oh, what a relief! I’m glad that I didn’t get scorched. Thank you so much for today!
(laughs really hard)