Team Ninja discusses making fighting games more accessible, having a friendly rivalry with Capcom

A portion of an ONM interview with Team Ninja’s Yousuke Hayashi…

ONM: Is there a friendly rivalry between yourselves and Capcom?

YH: You could say Capcom is the father of 2D fighting games, while we were first to move into the area of 3D fighting with 3D spaces. We’re creating fighting games, so of course we want to fight even with them! But both Capcom and Tecmo Koei have the same wish to bring users back into the fighting game genre.

ONM: Do you ever find they’ve been inspired by your titles, and are you inspired by theirs? Is there an exchange of ideas at all or are you quite separate?

YH: There was an interesting situation last year in September at the Nintendo 3DS conference in Tokyo. We have a move list shown on the lower screen, so you can use a complicated move just by one touch, but we didn’t show this during the conference, we only showed the upper screen.

Super Street Fighter IV 3D also had a move list on the lower screen, which they showed. We found it very interesting as we were not openly discussing that fact and we were both heading in the same direction. We both want to make fighting games more accessible.