The relevant bits:
Yoshinori Ono on:
. . . development of the fourth game.
“I originally came to join Capcom because I wanted to work on the Street Fighter series. My first work was on the Alpha series, and after that I contributed to Third Strike. After that, Capcom made a decision to stop producing fighting games. This gave me an opportunity to follow my original goal.”
“I searched for possibilities to reboot the Street Fighter series. Five years ago, these games were regarded by Capcom worldwide as ancient relics and company history best forgotten.”
“One reason Street Fighter IV exists is thanks to the press. As I was on a press tour for Onimusha, journalists kept asking me ‘Ono, when will there be a new Street Fighter?’ Or ‘Ono, why aren’t you doing anything more like Third Strike?’”
** . . . on his role as producer.**
“Producer of the Street Fighter series is what I’ve always wanted to be. I enjoy it immensely. It’s been hard getting there, though. Numerous internal problems had to be coordinated and solved.”
“The Street Fighter IV development team used to get told by other Capcom employees that they were breaking a taboo and shouldn’t touch the Street Fighter franchise at any cost.”
“And as soon as the game was in a playable state, those people immediately wanted to get in and play it. Memories of their childhood and youth surged forward. These are moments I especially enjoyed.”
** . . . on a possible Street Fighter Turbo in 2011.**
“Personally, I’ll be taking it easier in 2011. I’ve had my nose to the grindstone in the last four to five years with Street Fighter IV, I couldn’t afford any breaks whatsoever.”
“Since we’ve finished Super Street Fighter IV, we’ve been working on the arcade version. For the next year we might be able to offer a patch that would update the game for a few Euros. This could take the place of a ‘Turbo’ version.”
** . . . on the arcade end boss Seth from SF4 and SSF4.**
“Everybody hates Seth, that’s why he’s back as the end boss in SSF4. I want to torture people with him!” (laughs)
“It would certainly have been possible to replace Seth through DLC, but we’re never going to do that. A new end boss would only be coming in a Street Fighter V.”
“So Seth will remain a target of universal hate.” (laughs)
** . . . on the reason for rival dialogues being shorter and less fleshed out than in the Alpha series.**
“Time and money. That’s why rival dialogues ended up short.” (laughs)
“We’ve tried to flesh out characters by giving them more lines they can say after each battle. That’s more than we had in Alpha.”
“The rival scenes are short. Developing them turned out difficult since they’re in full 3D. It was easier to do these in Alpha with 2D characters. SF4 requires us to animate the 3D models, work on facial expressions and so on, which is far more work and time intensive.”
“We didn’t want to dedicate too much to rival sequences when we had balancing and finetuning to work on.”
** . . . on his next project, a new “Street Fighter” instalment and whether he may be showing a new title at E3.**
“My next project is my tenth anniversary with my wife next month.” (laughs) “My family definitely came up short in the last five years due to SF4, so I’m going to make up for that by going on vacation with them.”
“I’ll be at E3 and expect to enjoy it. It’ll be more relaxation than anything else for me, though. You can interpret that any way you want.” (laughs)
** . . . on the newly announced arcade version of Super Street Fighter IV.**
“The arcade version of SSF4 was announced just a few days ago. The team is now ready to begin work on it. (…) We’ll listen to the feedback from the console crowd and let it influence our development of the arcade version.”
