Suda51 on No More Heroes and love for Travis, Killer7, cancelled Silver Case DS port
The folks over at Anime News Network have published an interview with Suda51. The two sides talked a bunch about No More Heroes, Killer7, and even the Silver Case DS port that never made it to market.
You can find a few excerpts that we’ve picked out below. For the full interview, head on over here.
On Garcian’s appearance (from Killer7) in No More Heroes…
Vague is good, I think. [laughs] Garcian is definitely a good character, so I don’t want him to die! It’s nice to see them fight together, though.
On how Suda51 hasn’t killed off Travis yet…
Well, I definitely want to see Travis again. Not just in the sequel, either. His life is really interesting, so I want to talk about his story again. I want him to grow up as I grow older. I’m not sure when it will be, but I want to talk about his life. So Travis is very important to me. I think he’s the most loved of my characters.
On Killer7’s various themes, including the relationship between the U.S. and Japan…
During the Killer7 project, I imagined what the relationship might be like in the future. So it’s a serious theme. I think Japan is a country where we should never have a war, but I’m afraid there might be some incident where we have to go to war. But the key is definitely the relationship between the U.S. and Japan, and I know the treaty is changing drastically. And that’s probably another reason why Killer7 is kind of important to a lot of people. The theme is not something that a lot of people talk about or use.
On any ideas left out of Killer7…
No, I think most of what I thought of is still in there. But if you want to go into detail, the riddles were originally a little harder to solve. So some of them were cut off.
On what might happen to Travis in No More Heroes 3…
My image is that he’d be living in a place where not many people would reach him, and it would be a peaceful life. And the story starts from there…
On how his original plan for No More Heroes changed…
At the beginning, we had that art direction. But because we decided to release this game on the Wii, the shader that we were thinking of wasn’t possible to achieve. Also, the stage was set in the West Coast, so I figured the shade should be very strong and the weather is very good. So I wanted to use a lot of black shading.
On whether he dislikes sequels…
I don’t really have anything against sequels, especially for Travis. No More Heroes is very much loved. And it was ported before, but it wasn’t really done by us. A small studio under Marvelous did that. That studio is not there anymore, but Konami was the publisher.
On whether he prefers the Wii version or PS3/360 version of No More Heroes…
The Wii version, definitely. One hundred percent.
On the cancelled Silver Case port for DS…
Well, the interface had to change a bit for the DS touchscreen. At the same time, in order to release it, the game needed to be more complete. Because it was our debut title, I really wanted it to be better before shipping, so I figured we needed more time. There was no extra storyline. Ooka created a version of Silver Case, 25 Ward for cell phones, so there wasn’t a need to add anything to the original.
