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Suda51 on fan-reaction to Travis Strikes Again, and the infamous recharge gesture of the first two games

by rawmeatcowboy
16 September 2017
GN Version 5.0

A portion of a GameSpot interview with Suda51...

GS: We're actually approaching the tenth anniversary for the game, and even though we've only had two games, along with some ports on PS3 and Xbox 360, there's still a lot of excitement and interest in the series to make a comeback. So what's it like to finally return to this series?

Suda51: It's been really great. Like every time Nintendo puts out a new piece of hardware, and every time I go to an event or something, everyone's always asking "when are you going to put out the next No More Heroes?". Personally, I've been wanting for years to put out another installment in the series. When we were finally able to announce the game recently, everyone at Grasshopper was really surprised. We got a much more huge reaction than we expected to get, and I'm both surprised and really excited. I really kind of hyped myself up. I'm really looking forward to giving the game to everyone, and having everyone play it--it feels really great to know that everyone seems to love this character so much. I'm just ridiculously happy to know that everyone's looking forward to the game so much.

GS: Even though the games have made some appearances on other consoles, it's always felt like a game that, in a weird way, felt most at home on a Nintendo platform. Mostly on account of the motion controls, which made some rather odd and humorous design choices--particularly on having to make some purposely obscene gestures to recharge the beam katana. The Switch is a bit different than the Nintendo Wii, so what made you interested in bringing No More Heroes to this console?

Suda51: Well last year, before it was even called the Switch--when it was still just being called the NX--I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to check out the console before most people even heard of it. I had guys from Nintendo show me the console, you could detach the controllers and put it back together, and here's like the vibrations and all that stuff. I was sitting there like, you know, watching these guys explain the console, and then after getting to touch and feel it for myself, kind of holding it in my hand and just checking out again with the vibrations--everything kind of fit together. I've been wanting to bring Travis back for a while, and I'm sitting here, you know, looking at this new console and checking out the hardware, and it just kind of felt like a fate type thing.

I've just been waiting for the right time. We've been really busy with stuff like Let It Die, and a bunch of other games. But finally--as the director--I've gotten a bit more freedom to do the stuff I wanted to do because work on Let It Die had kind of calmed down a bit. So as I was sitting there like, you know, watching these guys explain this thing called the NX, I decided I'm going to bring Travis back on this. Like this--the Switch--is what Travis needs to come back on. Everything just really sort of fit. The timing, the console, everything. It was like a bunch of puzzle pieces came together and made the full picture. That's when I knew I had to bring Travis back on this console called the NX--now called the Nintendo Switch.

The Switch has gotten like a really big fan base built up. There's a lot of really great games for it, and for one, it's got Zelda--which is an amazing game. It's kind of like the pinnacle of Nintendo games, we also got the new Mario game coming up, which I'm also sure is going to be amazing. The lineup of Switch games is just gradually raising the bar for the standards of video games. So while Travis Strikes Again clearly isn't going to be a huge triple-A title, I definitely want to be able to make the game is going to be able to fit well with the other games in the Switch library. I want to make sure that it's not going to be the kind of game that's gonna let people down. Also, to kind of like give you an idea of how much I love the Switch and Zelda, I managed to collect all 900 seeds in Breath of the Wild.

[Link]