Street Fighter x Tekken: the Killian opinion

We're definitely beginning with those guys in mind. In some ways Tekken controls are a little easier. The bar is lower because it's hitting buttons rather than necessarily a stick input as well, which has always been one of the advantages Tekken's had as a series.

If you mash buttons in a Street Fighter game you look very bad. If you mash buttons in a Tekken game, to an experienced player you might still look bad, but you can do some cool things just out of the gate. We definitely are aiming directly at making a game that's going to have those kinds of competitive chops. No question.

Ken's Hurricane Kick is OK in other games and a worthwhile technique. But in x Tekken it's potentially much more valuable because it keeps the opponent frozen in one place for so long, so you can bring in a team-mate while that's happening and set up other interesting things off of there. It's the same move, but because of the engine changes, it means something else.

In many ways it's looking backwards. It's missing some of that completely immediate impact, but ultimately it's actually much better than it was then, because it's wiser. It's smarter as a scene, and it knows what came before, and it saw the rise and the fall and some of the mistakes that were made. Even though they were great games, it wasn't responsive to the audience and the market.

Another big difference is that now we've got the internet. In some ways these are... They're not connoisseur games, but they give you what you put into them. The more you invest into these games, the more they give you back.

Two people can watch an amazing Street Fighter replay, be it on YouTube or in the game, and have different experiences based on their depth of understanding of the game and what the players are doing and how clever they can be.

But for the people on the inside, they've always known how amazing these games can be. With the way things are right now, companies have an excuse to be back in the fighting game space because they're games that can sell well. So as a business proposition they can be successful.

And then the community has that to rally around, and then has the tools to show off what they're doing. They're just a really smart bunch of players. For the people on the inside, we've always known it's this amazing thing. But it's quite difficult to communicate to people on the outside, and it takes some investment.

Today the games are still challenging, but it's easier to get in, and it's easier to see why you would get in. That's the real difference. What is it that's so exciting about this? When I got into Street Fighter II it was exciting because the game was a box of mysteries and looked like nothing else. That doesn't happen as much today.

Information goes so quickly it's hard to have mysteries. Everyone at this point knows anime. Even though we try and keep a fresh visual style, it's never going to have quite the same impact as it might have been back then.

But at the same time, rather than just looking up to a few guys in the arcade, you see this whole international community of people that aren't just excited, they're smart, they're inventive, and some of them are loud mouths, and some of them are villains, and some of them are heroes. You have something to shoot for.

The brotherhood that is fighting games is clearer and has more of a presence than it ever had. That's part of what bonds you to the game. It's not just the game, it's the people who play it. They invest the meaning into the game.

You can look at any sport and it looks a bit silly from the outside. But when you see the traditions around it, you see all the investment, you see the people struggle and practice, you see the excellence in the sports men. The same thing is happening for fighting games, in the best possible way.

The scene is wiser and more poised for a bright future than it could possibly have been as a new kid back in the early nineties. I feel more optimistic now than ever before. Just the fact that it was able to come back like this points to this untapped well of enthusiasm. We're in good shape.