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Jeaxactu made an interview with King of Fighters XII producer Masaaki Kukino. Heres the Google translation

JeuxActu: The King of Fighters XII will be the first episode to have a realization in HD. Why did you put so much time to take this course?

Masaaki Kukino: After the end of the first Neo Geo, we continued to develop our games on the map Atomiswave Sammy proposing an architecture quite close to our maps MVS. The idea of moving to high-definition is something that we thought very quickly, but it would require starting from scratch. As you know, the development time of a game in 2D is a long and difficult a game in three dimensions. Everything is done by hand, characters sets. That takes a lot of investment and time. It is now more than three years as we work on The King of Fighters XII and the change of support (NDR: map Taito Type X2) has enabled us to start afresh on a new footing.

Exactly why did you choose the difficulty by offering graphics 2D while the 3D enabled you to make your job easier?

You know, KOF franchise is one of the most important for SNK Playmore. With the twelfth episode, we try to bring the pixel as the 2D art is often considered as such. And then, we will also try to prove that 2D is far from having said its last word.

Since the 2D requires a considerable amount of work, is it possible to know the production time of a game like KOF XII?

For the new King of Fighters, we carried out an overhaul of the series. It was therefore necessary to start all over again, redraw all the characters and decorations. For each character, for example, it took 16 months of intensive work. And each has over 450 animations!

Today you have announced 20 playable characters. The cast is it complete or can we expect other fighters?

This is a playable version of the Tokyo Game Show and the cast is therefore not complete. For now, we announced a total of 20 characters, but perhaps we can incorporate other versions on the consoles …

Regarding the gameplay, you have decided to withdraw the system shift introduced in KOF XI and return to a system closer to KOF’98. Why exactly?

When we launched the production of this KOF XII, the development team and myself wanted to go back to the roots of the series. KOF has always been known for its team of three fighters and that is why we have abandoned the concept of shift we found in The King of Fighters XI. The twelfth episode could really be considered as an episode re-birth.

It is perhaps also a way to reconnect with success, attracting a wider audience by offering a combat system less fussy than KOF XI …?

KOF is a series that has many fans in the world and its system based on fighting in 3 vs 3 has always been a very important and appreciated by the players. In reintroducing this concept, we hope to satisfy both the experts of the discipline, but also attract other players who may not know the license and would play a good game baston.

Finally, I’d like to ask the same question I asked Yoshinoro Ono, producer Street Fighter IV. Thinking about developing a Capcom vs. SNK 3?

(laughs) What is the response of Mr Ono?

He told me that it is not on the agenda but why not in the future …

(rires) I hope … (laughs) That would be funny … (laughs)

Mr Masaaki Kukino, thank you!

Interview by Maxime CHAO

Tags: 2D, King of Fighters, King of Fighters XII, KOF, Masaaki Kukino, Playmore, SNK, XII

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 14:59 and is filed under Arcade. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.