« Yoshinori Ono Answers Street Fighter Questions »

Yoshinori Ono, producer for Street Fighter 4 and the upcoming Super Street Fighter 4, has answered a few questions taken from the European community recently.  They talk about the game's balance, music, character design, DLC characters, and more.

[Do you] believe that Street Fighter 4 was well balanced? if not what did you feel unbalanced it?

Ono: Capcom has a very strict QA department, with many Street Fighter masters who are not known to public only because they don't compete in competitions being Capcom employees. They were confident that it was well balanced at the time of release. However, once the game is out millions of people play it and discover things even our QA team didn't catch.

Sagat, has a very famous combo that links onto Ultra – and to be honest, we didn't expect this sort of thing to be so thoroughly researched and communicated planet wide. I'm a bit nostalgic thinking about how things used to be for Street Fighter 2. When a new combo was discovered people had to travel to see the person pull it off, and this created rumors about a certain combo that people heard about and they then tried to do it themselves, based on that information.

So time has changed. I am adamant that it is my duty to make a fighting tool for the current era. Super Street Fighter IV, will be a true 2010 style fighting game!!

How many character ideas approximately did the design team work on before deciding to make a new character? And whatever happens to unused designs?

Ono: For SF4 we included various rough sketches to the gallery mode for people to unlock. We've also shown a lot of assets on the Japanese blog site. However, the unused stuff are unused for a reason and each unused asset has a tale to tell. So my stance is, rather than trying to bring back something that was once rejected, to create a better, new thing for you... What do you think?

You have had Fight Clubs recently in the United States is there any chance of the United Kingdom getting one?

[Capcom Europe] We're currently looking into possibilities, it's definitely something we're considering.

Will we be seeing more Street Fighter III characters? Any idea which company you're going to cross over next with for a new fighting game? Any old fighting games getting a remark or a continuation (Rival Schools, Darkstalkers)?

Ono: You'll have to wait and see about these...

Will there be a new stick to go with Super Street Fighter 4?

Ono: We worked with Madcatz for Street Fighter IV and we are thinking of doing the same again. I will be sure to let you know when we are able to show you the new design!

Who chose the theme music for Street Fighter 4 and can I have his address? I can feel it coming over me....

Ono: A Japanese band named Exile, was picked for Street Fighter 4 when I had an opportunity to speak to one of the members when SF4 project just started. Since he was an avid fan of arcade Street Fighter 2, he wanted to be involved in the arcade version of SF4. It went on from there, really.

How many characters do you think we will be seeing at the end of the day?

Ono: You'll see at least 8 new ones (making it 33). That is for sure.

Will some of the obviously over-powered characters be toned down?

Ono: We'll do an extensive re-tuning. Obviously we can't please everyone as there will always be someone complaining about a character. We'd like to hit a good compromise spot with this though.

Why did you decide to add the bonus stages on this version and not on the original game?

Ono: Actually, we wanted to implement bonus stages for the original arcade version but we've been hearing that not many people cared about the scores these days and some arcade venues even turned off the bonus stages in the end… So we decided to spend the time for balancing the game further.

We then wanted to implement them for the console version… but various factors prevented us from doing so. This is our 3rd attempt and we've finally made it.

Will there be remakes of Street Fighter 2 stages?

Ono: There have been some already – no? 

Will Super Street Fighter 4 possibly include new characters as DLC after the release?

Ono: It is highly unlikely that we will release characters as DLC because it will create an unfair ground for those who did not download the new character.

Source: Capcom Unity