Interview: Marvel Vs Capcom 3′s Ryota Niitsuma

Niitsuma says that before settling on Super-Skull they had the Human Torch up and running but his animation burnt through memory to such an extent, he had to go.

Marvel Vs Capcom 3’s combos system appears to be very open and flexible allowing for huge combo opportunities. Returning to your earlier comments regarding changes based on event showings, can you tell us more about what has been changed since the game’s playable debut at E3?

If you were a hardcore fighting game fan and you played the E3 build and then you played the Comic-Con build you would probably think it’s a different game because we’ve made so many changes based on feedback.

Can you give us some examples?

The E3 build in a way was Tasunoko Vs Capcom 2 in terms of system because in TVC all characters were able to do similar things. The direction we wanted to go in MVC3 is where all characters are unique, for example one character can do a particular thing in the air or on the ground, and the Comic-Con build is a lot closer towards that. Now one character may not be able to do something else that other characters can do, but in return they can do something else, so it’s a lot more specialised with each character.

We have heard that you are planning a huge story drawing on characters from the entire Marvel and Capcom universes. How much input does Marvel have over the direction of the story?

We will be building a big story around this game and we are using Marvel writers for the story, so both Capcom and Marvel character will be written by Marvel.

Amaterasu and Thor were sadly absent from the build we played, though returning characters are stunningly animated and flawlessly realised.

Has there been any talk of the cross-over working in reverse? Will we see a MVC3 comic produced by Marvel or Udon Comics perhaps?

As you can see, MVC3 is heading towards an animated comic style so I can see a good affinity in the two but at the moment I want to finish the complete style of MVC3 first and solidify what it’s going to look like and then perhaps think about a comic.

Is there the possibility that the game’s visual style will undergo further change?

Rather than visual changes it’s more about what the characters can do, so in the comics one character might be able to do a certain more, but we’re not sure that more is going to be in it until we solidify the game a bit more.

Can you elaborate on the available game modes in the final release?

We can’t really tell exactly what kind of modes at the moment because some may not make it and some may, but what a hardcore fighting game fan will expect will be in it for sure.

Do you have any special plans for the game’s online component?

As this title is three on three with over the top action it actually uses a lot of bandwidth so my target for now is to have the online mode playable without any lag and once that’s established we are planning to do more modes.

How have you found using Capcom’s proprietary MT Framework engine for MVC3?

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 is the first MT Framework fighting game and the first impression is that it’s so easy to do anything because everyone in Capcom knows what MT Framework is and it outputs perfectly to PS3 and Xbox 360. We have saved a lot of time more than anything – time has been of the essence and MT Framework has done an amazing job of saving time.

Capcom have teamed up against Marvel, Tatsunoko and more recently Namco’s Tekken characters. If licensing and business issues were no factor, who would you like to see them fight in a Versus game?

That’s a difficult one because my brain is basically engraved with the Marvel logo at the moment but if it’s possible I’d like to do something that’s quite different from Marvel, something perhaps in a different field.

One of the game's two Darkstalkers, the ever-present succubus Morrigan is just as likely to bleed you dry of memory as anything else.

Finally, could you possibly satisfy our curiosity with regard to Marvel gender-reassignment? We have yet to see Darkstalkers’ Demitri appear in TVC or MVC3. Is his infamous Midnight Bliss EX move (where he turns unsuspecting male characters into female versions of themselves before sucking away their souls) something that Marvel would tolerate with their cast?

One, Demitri would probably annoy Marvel for doing that, and the other thing is that we’d have to make a female model for every single character in the game which probably isn’t time well spent. If we did put Demitri in it and he didn’t have Midnight Bliss, fans are going to say ‘that’s not really Demitri – Capcom failed.’ Darkstalkers characters are all complete memory hunger-mad characters because they constantly transform into things. They can’t just walk – they have to change into something when they move and it just uses a lot of data. Even just having these two (Morrigan and Felicia) is a big deal. To put Demitri in we’d have to have time to make a whole other game.

Is that confirmation of Demitri Vs Marvel?

Non-Demitri fans may not be very happy. In that sense Darkstalkers is such a well made game. Doing that in 3D is a big issue. Maybe it was one of those things that we could only do because it was 2D. But fighting games have started to catch on again so perhaps at this rate… you never know.