Marvel vs. Capcom 3’s producer Ryota Niitsuma takes his game very seriously. Not only is he concerned about appealing to fans of the Marvel vs. Capcom (MvC) series, Niitsuma-san also wants to make sure comic book fans are happy with his work. To meet that goal, he’s doing his homework.
In a recent interview, Niitsuma-san talked about how his work is received by potentially his biggest critic: Marvel.
“The fact that they [Marvel] have been really pleased with everything we’ve been doing in the game and understand our vision for the project is a relief to me. Its been a pleasure working with them”
One of the many challenges in a game with the scope and size of MvC3 is adding new characters, such as X-23. In dealing with a character like her without a history in the MvC universe, Niitsuma-san said something that should make comic book fans happy:
So of course, I would check things on the internet, we get the marvel comics themselves, look at them study for different angles, ways to use them…and then when try to put a new character in a fighting game you have to think ‘Alright, what about this character suits a fighting a game? What can you do with this character in a fighting game?’
Even though characters in a game may have similarities, they should be unique, according to Niitsuma-san. When talking about the contrast between Wolverine and X-23 – who shares his DNA – he talked about the approach to developing her character:
So, for example with X-23, we knew she was very similar to Wolverine. So from a development standpoint we want to say ‘Ok, what can we do to make her different from Wolverine?’ So that’s been, kind of the guiding light on how we would incorporate X-23 in the game
MvC3 is set to release early next year. No firm release date has been confirmed.
[Source]
