Shortly after the Edinburgh Fight Club we caught up with Capcom’s UK PR Manager, Adam Merrett, to talk about Street Fighter X Tekken.
Firstly I wanted to congratulate Capcom Europe on their Fight Club tour, the Edinburgh event went off really well and the venue was perfect. Will the obvious success see more of this type of thing in the future?
We were thrilled by the positive feedback from fans, and of course we’d love to do more of this kind of event in the future. One of our goals is to help the fighting game community to grow, so you might see some new events appearing around the country inviting new players to give our games a go. With this year commemorating the 25th anniversary of Street Fighter, you can expect to hear lots of exciting news regarding events all around the world.
Marketing and game lore may lead people to believe that the official pairings of characters will be the best way to go; how do you see this panning out?
The pairing of characters is more tailored towards the story element of the game and provides users with unique character introductions, as well as a prologue and ending once you complete the game with one of the official pairs. Street Fighter X Tekken celebrates the art of customising your character, your team, and your own play style using the gem system. The sheer number of character combinations, gem selections, and visual customisations promote a sense of exploration, and I’m sure we will see some unique teams appearing very soon!
What’s the most unlikely pairing you’ve seen put to good use?
One of my first teams was Chun-Li and Hugo, not exactly the most likely team combination. However the differences in characters strength/weaknesses complimented each other, and allowed for a balanced team to form. Chun Li has great agility, long range footsies and combo potential, and a projectile to zone with. Hugo on the other hand has brilliant 50/50 mixups, and one of the strongest damage outputs in the game!
Serious fighting game fans have been know to rally against ‘come back’ mechanics, how would you set their minds at ease regarding the Pandora system?
I think everyone knows now that Pandora is not an easy to use come back mechanic. If anything, players are struggling to win with it! In my opinion this is a good thing, as it promotes skilful, well thought out strategies, and rewards those who take the time to experiment with its uses.
Chun Li’s Hyakuretsukyaku (Lightning Legs) is now a motion input rather than a button mash, can you assure me that this will make her more powerful than ever before?
I would say that it makes the special move easier to perform as a reactionary based attack, but for those who were used to heavily mashing one button might need to learn how to do a quarter-circle forward motion! It’s certainly a good thing for Chun-Li fans – less blisters!
The charging of specials for zero cost EX and Super moves is great system.
I agree, I love this mechanic. It allows for fake special moves, feints, free EX moves from full-screen, and even some extended combos when cancelling a normal into a charge special and dashing straight out of it!
With the whole cast sharing the same basic combos gameplay could become quite rigid, is this where the Gem system will make a difference?
You’re referring to the Cross Rush system. Every character has unique target/link combos that have specific timing/setups involved. The Cross Rush system is a universal mechanic that allows a safe tag out without spending any of your Cross Gauge meter. The damage dealt using the Cross Rush leaves a lot of health to be recovered when your character is tagged out, whereas the unique combos for your character deal more damage and have far less recoverable damage.
The Gem system will definitely help make each character unique to the player. For instance your Ryu might be slightly stronger than mine, but mine might be quicker, or have better defense.
Players also seem worried that the easy input Gems will unbalance the game, my understanding is that using these Gems comes at a high cost; would you say that these Gems are intended to me used as a learning tool rather than to gain an advantage?
Absolutely, the easy input gems, and all assist gems for that matter, are there to help new players enjoy the game. They come with a cost, for instance some will consume your hard earned cross gauge meter, preventing you from any high damage super combos, ex moves, switch cancel combos, etc. Think of them as training wheels for a bike; you’re hardly going to win the Tour de France but you’ll be able to participate without falling over straight away!
This means new players can focus on learning actual gameplay strategies such as fireball zoning, and anti-airing jump in attacks, without the execution barrier than might have prevented them previously. Likewise, the auto-throw tech gem flashes every time it activates, and helps you to understand when you should be teching throws.
The build we played at the Fight Club had a meaty cast of characters, with the final release adding to that again but we’ve been teased with at least a few more; are the best yet to come?
As you may have heard recently, there are certainly more characters in store! 12 new characters will make their debut on the Vita version of the game due for release in Autumn this year. These characters will also become available via DLC on the console versions at a date yet to be confirmed. From the Street Fighter side we have Blanka, Cody, Dudley, Elena, Guy, and Sakura, and from Tekken we have Alisa, Bryan, Christie, Jack, Lars, and Lei Wulong!
Street Fighter X Tekken is released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 9th 2012.
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