Interviews// Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Producer Ryota Niitsuma

Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds is just around the corner, and to celebrate this fact producer Ryota Niitsuma invited me to a second round of the madcap crossover fighter. But I was prepared.

Since getting back into Marvel vs Capcom 2 on my best friend’s wedding morning (don’t worry - we made it to the altar on time), I trained for some weeks discovering the nuances of the game and the methods of the brawl. Unfortunately, that training did me no favours as Niitsuma-san floored my ill-fated team of Tron Bonne, Arthur and Viewtiful Joe with Dante, Amaterasu and Spiderman.

After cursing several hundred times, then quickly snapping my attitude to politely congratulate my Japanese host for his epic skills, attention turned to the pretty-finalised character roster. From there, we discuss DLC, fan reactions, 3DS and rage-quitters. Read on…


SPOnG: The character roster means a lot to everyone playing the Marvel vs Capcom series, so you must get an awful lot of requests. My big question in this regard is Mega Man. You have Zero, but not the original. Where is he?

Ryota Niitsuma: I assume you’re talking about the original Mega Man. There was a Mega Man slot for this game - we had room for a character from that series. But when it came to the propriety of that character being in a fighting game, Mega Man has some problems.

If we were to adapt the original Mega Man character into a fighting game he would have to have a lot more extra moves and abilities, and that would then create a different Mega Man entirely. You couldn’t retain his original character as he is. So we looked into other Mega Mans, and decided that Zero had the best list of moves already in existence when it comes to fitting into a fighting game.


SPOnG: One surprising addition you’ve made to the character list is Haggar from Final Fight. People were asking for his inclusion in Street Fighter IV, I remember - did you take those requests on board when deciding to add him to Marvel vs Capcom?

Ryota Niitsuma: When considering any of the characters, we first categorise them into four different criteria - power, speed, technical or standard type. We try to balance them all out evenly. So when it comes to power type characters from the Capcom side, for most cases that role has been filled by Zangief. I think that would have been too expected this time around, and for a long time there has been a lot of noise for Haggar to be included in a proper fighting game. It’s probably high time we had him in.


SPOnG: Do you see Haggar’s inclusion as a step towards reintroducing his character in a new Final Fight game or a similar fighting game projects in the future?

Ryota Niitsuma: Yes, well there’s always been a preconception within Capcom that when we talk about Power type characters it had to be Zangeif because he’s just so prominent. But I think with Marvel vs Capcom 3, it’s a chance for Haggar to be recognised as one of the major Capcom Power characters. Once that happens, he’s probably more likely to be under the spotlight for games in the future.


SPOnG: You’ve taken this game on the road to many different public events, including PAX and Eurogamer Expo. What has been the feedback you remember the most?

Ryota Niitsuma: In general, the feedback that will stick with me forever has to be the character selection. It always causes the most reactions from all the fans. One fan might be coming up to me saying, “Thank you so much Niitsuma-san for putting this character in the game,” then the next day someone else is trying to kill me for exactly the same character [laughs]. It’s ongoing as well, this hasn’t stopped, and it probably won’t either, even though the game is almost done.


SPOnG: It’s going to go on into DLC now isn’t it?

Ryota Niitsuma: [Laughs] Yeah!


SPOnG: Speaking of DLC, I remember you saying it won’t just be limited to characters. What sort of things are you looking at? Stages? Costumes?

Ryota Niitsuma: Well, we’ve announced a few characters for DLC already, and in terms of what else we could do… we’re still in the process of thinking about that. It’s a very misty field at the moment, some decisions have to be made yet.