The Japanese Fighting Game Community blog has posted an insightful interview between Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada and Street Fighter II designer Akira Nishitani.
The lengthy exchange is packed full of curious details and tidbits, with Harada taking on the role of question-master to dig into the past, present, and future of fighting game design.
At one point, Harada asks how Nishitani and the Capcom team managed to set a new bar for game design with Street Fighter II. For the veteran game designer, it wasn’t about honing in on a specific mechanic, but rather about fixing some glaring mistakes and dialing up the fun factor.
“This may sound a little rude, but games at that time had a lot of things about them that were ‘not properly made.’ We started by investigating those things, then we began brainstorming about ‘What feels good?’ and ‘What actually makes something fun?,’ explained Nishitani.
“To get specific, [we focused on] things like fixing the way hitboxes worked. If you look closely at action games at the time, it was often the case where if a player hits an enemy with an attack, the attack’s hitbox would disappear.
“By doing this, it made it easier for the game to process, but it created stressful situations for the player when multiple enemies were on the screen and attacks could only hit one enemy at a time.”
The full interview is full of similar anecdotes and thoughts on fighters old and new. Be sure to check it out over at the Japanese Fighting Game Community blog.