Tekken X Street Fighter hasn't settled on fireballs solution

Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada discusses some of the challenges in merging Street Fighter with Tekken, specifically in how Street Fighter's fireballs are used in a 3D plane.

8

Street Fighter X Tekken and its doppelganger, Tekken X Street Fighter have identical struggles to overcome. Namely, how do you mix the two disparate gameplay styles together into a delicious fighting game cocktail?

Katsuhiro Harada, long-time producer for the Tekken series, recently addressed one of the major issues still facing the team: how to deal with fireballs in a 3D plane.

"Obviously, the Street Fighter characters will have to have their fireballs," Harada told the PlayStation Blog at this weekend's Evo 2011 event. "Ryu without a fireball just wouldn't be... right. Obviously we'll need it.

"When you look at executing a fireball in a 2D setting, it works almost like a jab. It keeps your opponent where you want them. When we bring fireballs into Tekken X Street Fighter, there are two different ways we could go. It could be used as something similar to keep your opponent in the place you want, or it could be some kind of special move or powered-up version of their techniques. We've not decided on what route we want to take with this yet."

Harada also addressed the still-unsolved question of dodging. "Another element to think about implementing fireballs in Tekken is, how do you avoid them? When you play a 2D game like Street Fighter, you obviously can't go back and forth in the screen - you usually jump over it. But in three-dimensional fighting games like Tekken you can sidestep. So do we want players to jump over fireballs? Or is it okay to sidestep them? That's something we're not decided on, we haven't had enough time to look into it."

Despite the challenges, though, Harada says much of the team grew up on a healthy diet of Street Fighter, and he's "really confident" that they can find a proper balance.

Finally, Harada confirmed stereoscopic 3D support for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Prologue, and coyly hinted that he'd be interested in developing a Tekken game for Vita at some point as well.

[Screenshot from Street Fighter X Tekken.]

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 2, 2011 9:00 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Tekken X Street Fighter hasn't settled on fireballs solution.

    Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada discusses some of the challenges in merging Street Fighter with Tekken, specifically in how Street Fighter's fireballs are used in a 3D plane.

    • reply
      August 2, 2011 9:19 AM

      Homing fireballs

      • reply
        August 2, 2011 9:41 AM

        [deleted]

      • reply
        August 2, 2011 11:58 AM

        You just brought back memories of playing hacked chinese sf2 machines back in high school, where there were homing fireballs, chargeless sonic booms, midair spinning lariats that shoot out 6 fireballs, and all sorts of other weird shit

      • reply
        August 2, 2011 3:29 PM

        I've seen this, in Ehrgeiz.

        Don't ask how I know about Ehrgeiz.

    • reply
      August 2, 2011 9:42 AM

      Solution: Stop making Tekken games

    • reply
      August 2, 2011 9:44 AM

      a little bit confusing to lead a TxSF article with a screenshot from SFxT o___o

      that said, my guess is that TxSF will chose to make fireballs somewhat faster. You can jump fireballs in SF and sometimes even duck them depending on the character, so two extra planar avoidance options shouldn't be that big of a deal if the fireball is a little harder to avoid. Also you generally can't duck/jump very significantly in tekken, so there might really only be one more option rather than 2.

      • reply
        August 2, 2011 11:02 AM

        I was thinking that, perhaps combined with the size of the fireball depending on the character. Off the top of my head, maybe Ryu's is wider and a little harder to sidestep, and Sagat's is smaller, but faster.

    • reply
      August 2, 2011 9:52 AM

      Solution: Take the Koryu fireball route.

    • reply
      August 2, 2011 1:53 PM

      Make them useless when thrown out raw and give them juggle properties. Or make them faster, kinda like the laser blasts some of the devil forms have.

Hello, Meet Lola