Tekken X SF producer has fireball worries

Shifting Street Fighter's combatants out of their traditional 2D plane and into Tekken's 3D arena is causing Namco a few headaches for its forthcoming cross-IP throw-down.

Tekken X Street Fighter producer Katsuhiro Harada told the PlayStation Blog that his team is currently undecided on how to deal with Ryu and co's projectile attacks.

"Obviously, the Street Fighter characters will have to have their fireballs," he explained. "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 a special move or powered-up version of their techniques. We've not decided on what route we want to take with this yet."

Another problem that will need to be dealt with, Harada added, is how players will be able to dodge projectile attacks.

"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.

"We have a lot of staff, myself included, who grew up liking Street Fighter. I'm really confident that we can come to a good balance between the two worlds," he concluded.

No date has yet been set for Namco's effort, though Capcom's Street Fighter X Tekken should be upon us first, with a release due in March 2012. For more details on that game, take a look at our recent preview.