![]() Koshiro: Hmm, who indeed? We made so many, I can’t remember them all now. Who are your favorites, or the most memorable? Streets of Rage 2 has a large cast of characters. (laughs)īack then if you had an idea you wanted to try it, you just added it. Someone would then code it right there on the spot, and if we liked it, we just went with it. Stuff like that was usually hashed out in random conversations with the developers. There’s this one move, where you hold the kick button down and then release it to do a quick double kick. Concept art of Blaze, Axel, Max, and Sammy. I had to think of ways to bring variety to their movesets, and I drew a lot of inspiration and nuance from the popular vs. Nearly all of their moves were created by me. I created an index for their moves/attacks, and filled it in one-by-one. Since Max was the throw-style character, we went for pro-wrestler moves. We decided on flashy, colorful moves for Sammy. Axel and Blaze were normal characters, so that went smoothly. Once we’d decided on the direction for the characters, their moves came naturally. That roster seemed like a good balance to us: two standard style characters, and two with quirks. You know, the characters who are hard to use, but when you connect, it’s over with just one hit. My brother Yuzo loves throw-based characters. We designed him as a character who experienced players would want to try.Īs for Max…. He was going to be the super-maneuverable, tricky-style character. We thought, since he’s not here anymore, maybe Axel and Blaze have to go rescue him?įrom there we got the idea for his younger brother, Sammy. ![]() ![]() Making a brand new character was just a quicker way to get there. Plus, you always want to do something novel with a sequel, right? The character sprites for SoR2 got bigger, so we wanted them to have more varied attacks and movements. Since it was going to be the same amount of work either way, we might as well add someone new. It probably was more of a simultaneous thing, like, “we don’t really need Adam, do we?” “Nope!” -That way you could add a more distinct character from Axel and Blaze. (laughs) I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but of course I asked Sega for permission first. (laughs) -Ah, you were the one responsible for Adam’s disappearance? but Adam had no real speciality… (laughs) So he was out. But there was also Adam in the first game…. We were also asking, “what would be fun for the sequel?” You had Axel, your standard fighter, then Blaze, the speedy character. A lot of emphasis was placed on that visual impact. Koshiro: Yeah, that was just how things were done back then! -Right, the graphic design took precedence. It seems strange to me that there was no input from the planners on that… Oh, so you designed Max and Sammy from the ground up? For Max and Sammy, they were new characters, so I consulted with my brother Yuzo Koshiro about them. You know, like “jump attack does 1 damage, straight jab does 2, heavy jab does 3”, etc. For setting the actual damage parameters, we had a head planner for that, but the approximate strength of each attack was something I wrote out. Oh, you did the moves/attacks too? Did the planners give you some general guidance about that? I came up with all the special moves and attacks too-in their rough outline/draft form, that is. Nowadays we’d call it something like “art direction” (deciding the overall look of the game). Koshiro: Role? I’d probably say Chief Graphic Designer. To start off, what was your role in the development of Streets of Rage II? 1 New Characters, New Moves -Thank you for doing this interview today.
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