Tekken 3D: Prime Edition development details from Iwata Asks

A new third-party interview has gone live on the Iwata Asks website.

Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada and Tekken 3D producer Kouhei Ikeda discuss how they became interested in the fighting game genre and share their stories about how they got into Namco. Of course, the two also go into detail about Tekken 3D’s development.

Head past the break for a roundup of details!

“I’m Going into the Game Industry No Matter What!”

– Harada’s relatives had a coffee shop, and as a kid, he’d place the Space Invaders game
– Harada’s parents forbid him from playing video games
– Harada: “No. (laughs) They wouldn’t buy me a Nintendo Entertainment System, so I had to play at a friend’s house or sneak into a game arcade to play. So as reaction to that, when it came time to get a job I decided, “I’m going into the game industry no matter what!” My parents cried over it.”
– He was a psychology major in liberal arts, which isn’t video game related
– He happened to get his first job offer from Namco
– Harada started off in sales rather than as a developer
– Harada: “Harada Right. I actually never even thought, “I want to make games.” My thinking was filled with imaginary thoughts like, “How much fun would it be and how much freedom would I have if I could make my living playing games?” (laughs) I thought about what would be the best way to get a big number of people involved in playing games, and I decided to work in sales and do video game events.”
– This was a reaction to his parents not sharing his idea of how much fun video games can be
– Harada worked as an employee in a Namco-ran arcade and gathered customers for tournaments including Street Fighter
– He was able to see the customer’s reactions up close, and that helped him gain experience
– Eventually he started to think “If it were me, I’d do this…” and wound up at R&D where he’d suggest things
– He wasn’t really supposed to do that, but it was his first year out of school and didn’t know anything
– Harada’s second month working there he went to the development building
– He waited outside the bathroom until the security door opened
– Initially, everyone was thinking “Who’s that guy?”, but after he did this for several days a week, they assumed he had permission to be there
– Harada went over to making video games in April of his second year
– Harada received the company president award during his first year in sales
– He told the president in person that he wanted to transfer to anything department, and ended up transferring to R&D in April
– Harada initially concentrated on how there was a limit to what he could do alone in showing people how great games are; it was hard to get the word out without the Internet, etc.
– Harada wanted to do something about how people playing fighting games fought in silence
– He worked on this by wearing a costume and wig at events and became an MC
– People would then start to talk about him and would even cheer during games and events
– Harada’s parents “cried out loud” when they saw him like that
– Upon joining R&D, in his second day, Harada went around to the leaders of each section, without much of an introduction, and said “You should make all the action games the way I tell you to”
– Harada thought everyone would accept him just because he was suddenly a game director
– Ikeda wasn’t around since he was working at another company, but he was shocked when he heard about the story once he joined Namco
– Harada made an effort early on to be the last one to leave the company every day
– Harada wanted to show everyone that he spent over half his life at work
– Harada always cared about the customer’s feedback

“Expedition into Other Towns to Challenge People Better than Us”

– Ikeda discovered video games when he was in the first grade with Super Mario Bros.
– Although his parents bought the game, Ikeda had to buy a two-prong VHF converter himself
– Seeing Mario moving on the screen had a big impact on him
– A friend of Ikeda’s invited him to a store to play Street Fighter II when he was in the sixth grade
– Facing each other/competing was new to him
– Ikeda wanted to get really good because you got to keep playing if you won
– It was a new feeling communicating with a stranger through a video game
– Ikeda really got into fighting games around the launch of Virtua Fighter 2
– His practice allowed him to beat adults who were in their twenties and fourties
– He eventually went on expeditions to other towns to find other players
– Once Ikeda graduated from high school, 3D was becoming important so he went to a vocational school for video games to study 3D graphics and motion
– Ikeda rented a place in Machida as there was a famous game arcade there; he didn’t tell his parents about this
– Ikeda had a part time job at Enterbrain recording combos for Tekken
– Following graduation, he worked at Enterbrain for six years or so as the director of a magazine that came with a DVD called Monthly Famitsu Wave
– Ikeda met Harada while working on Monthly Famitsu Wave
– He made a project called Tekken: Defeat 100 Enemies to stir up interest in Tekken; he’d play against people who just happened to be there
– Namco saw the video; Harada says everyone in the dev team was laughing as they watched it
– One day Namco was looking for mid-career hires for their Tekken project, and Ikeda applied

“What is Tekken?”

– In making Tekken, Harada puts all of the focus on the exhilaration you feel when you attack
– Harada feels that the person who is losing gets frustrated, but that’s what makes it so exhilarating when you get in an attack
– Harada describes Tekken as aggressive
– Ikeda got hooked on Tekken due to the fluidity of the motions and the exhilaration; describes the “Phoenix Smasher” shot as being “incredible”
– Harada “Yes. The place where the biggest contradiction happens is the rules. Theoretically, as long as there is a winner and a loser, there needs to be rules, and they must be logical. But at the same time, the rush that comes from the strategy of the battle is directly connected to the animated expressions and the time limit and the way the life bar goes down. No matter how cool an effect is, if the life bar only goes down a tiny bit, there’s no rush there. So there’s a bigger rush if the life bar goes down dramatically, but then you end up negating the tactics, so we always have to fight for a balance there. And one more thing is… oh, is it okay if I say it all?”
– Some consumers say they don’t like it because they get finished off by the Aerial Combo
– There’s no way to fight against the combo, but if they made that happen less, people would say “It’s not Tekken anymore!”
– Harada: ‘…there’s no way to find a balance between the winner and the loser, but we’re fighting day and night with that one big emotional contradiction.”
– The team always has a tough time figuring out how to strike that balance and figuring out how much frustration they can permit the loser while preserving the exhilaration
– They are still trying to figure out how to make Tekken accessible to new players
– There is a handicap option, but Harada feels most players don’t use it
– Harada says it’s important to make people want to practice
– In making Tekken 3D, the staff made it so you can enter and save customized commands on the touch screen before playing a game
– According to Harada, most people panic when they have to do a finishing move
– He feels that for people like this, the customized combos on the touch screen will help
– Even someone who isn’t good at something like air combos can touch a button and get the rush of doing the combo
– After you’ve programmed the combos into the touch screen and have pressed L + R, the buttons you programmed on the touch screen shift to the regular buttons
– Harada believes players should learn to do the finishing attack on their own in the end

“I Won’t Budge on This Condition”

– Harada watched two tournaments; one was for Tekken and one was for Smash Bros.
– The Tekken tournament had a bunch of big, brawny men while the Smash Bros. tournament consisted of all sorts of people including adults, kids, and women
– After watching both tournaments, he was convinced that the participants in both tournaments feel the same things while playing two different games
– Harada wanted the Smash Bros. type of players to play Tekken also, and that was one of the things that led him to making Tekken 3D for the 3DS
– Harada was involved in the making of Tekken: Blood Vengeance, and wanted to include this in Tekken 3D early on
– Harada thought they needed something more than a simple fighting game, and thought the movie could be a big gateway since the movie was being made in 3D
– Harada wants to appeal Tekken 3D to people as being slightly different than any other Tekken by including as many characters as possible and saying the movie is included
– Arika helped make the game
– Ikeda joined the staff late (around July 2011) since he was working on Tekken Tag Tournament 2
– They wanted to retain 60 FPS at all costs
– Harada wasn’t willing to budge on this, even when using 3D
– The team was making the animation under the condition that it had to be 60 FPS
– Harada was nervous as to whether or not they could accomplish this at first
– Since the movie was being included, they also had to fight in terms of capacity
– The 3D movie contains a massive amount of data
– The programmers/Arika people said “You’ve got to be kidding!” at first
– They thought that the movie’s 3D would work well with the 3DS’ stereoscopy
– Tekken 3D is the first game to include a full-length movie on a 3DS card

“The Energy of Tekken”

– Ikeda on competing with another player on 3DS rather than a home console: “Ikeda 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.”
– They chose the “prime” name since they wanted to offer something that is of top quality
– Iwata has recently been playing Mario Kart 7 online in other parts of the world before he goes to sleep
– In Tekken 3D, you can play against people via the Internet or local play
– Harada isn’t sure that there’s even been a Tekken that offered you so much freedom as this game
– Because there are lots of combos you can program and a function for programming moves, you can enjoy yourself even against people with a higher ranking than you
– Ikeda’s message to customers: “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 air 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.”
– Harada’s message to customers: “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 made sure 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.”

You can read the full interview here.