Suda51 on the importance of Killer7 in his career, and finding the direction for No More Heroes 3
Strawberry on the shortcake!
There’s no one else in the game industry quite like Suda51. The man is eccentric, unique, and bold in all the best ways, and he creates games that are undeniably him, for better or worse. It’s an approach to games that a subset of gamers have really connected to, and its helped Suda51 foster a dedicated fanbase that has followed him for decades.
While Suda51 was making games long before the GameCube days, it wasn’t until the release of Killer7 that Suda51 started to break out to the greater gaming space. In an interview with Den Famitsu Gamer, Suda51 opened up about how important of a game that was for him.
Killer7 was definitely the turning point. I think that being able to work with Capcom, and thoroughly create something with Shinji Mikami was a considerable asset to today’s Grasshopper. The reception from around the world was greater than what we were expecting, and when we completed it, there was a sense that we had made a game that no one had ever seen before. I thought that we had made a game that really fit the word ‘new’, and that it was something that would become synonymous with me.
The response was much greater than I expected. While traveling overseas for the promotion of No More Heroes, I heard the praise for Killer7 directly for the first time, and I was a little surprised by it. Also, it was from a different media outlet, but a certain editor-in-chief once said to me, “I was thinking of quitting and giving up on this industry, but when I came across Killer7, I thought that there may still be a future for video games. I’ve decided to keep at it.” That person may have forgotten all about it (laughs), but I was elated to hear those words. I wondered if I had really made a game with such power.
Suda51 also spoke about the development of No More Heroes 3, which seemed to go quite smoothly. Apparently, the main aim of this third installment was decided quite early on, and was only cemented by the prototype that was built.
The fight with Henry was the first one we completed, and since that was essentially a fight between two human characters, we could use it as an extension of the previous No More Heroes games. With that, we had created one of the main loops of combat, and knew quite early on that we wanted to continue in that direction.
From there, we continued to develop the other boss fights, but as the fights were against aliens this time, each fight ended up being completely different. We had to adjust each fight individually, and that took a lot of time. We barely finished prior to the game going gold.
These are just small snippets from a massive interview with Suda51 that pretty much spans his entire career. Make sure to check out the entire interview here.
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