ecently, Game Informer Online's Chris Cook got a chance to pose a few questions to Kudo Tsunoda, Executive Producer of Fight Night 2004. Here's the entire interview:

Game Informer Online: First of all, what were some of the reasons that EA had in dropping in the Knockout Kings moniker in favor of Fight Night?

Kudo Tsunoda: Fight Night 2004 changes the way boxing games are played. In other boxing games, there was no real skill to landing punches or strategy for winning fights. Both boxers just ran to the middle of the ring and started throwing punches at each other. It always broke down to a complete button mashing slug fest. In Fight Night 2004 you have total control of your fists with our analog control system, Total Punch Control. The skills and tactics you learn with Total Punch Control are essential to winning fights. The gameplay that has developed from our control scheme is really addictive. It is a quantum leap in the quality of gameplay from what you have seen in other boxing or fighting games. This shift warranted a name change, as it’s a whole new game this year.

GIO: Obviously, given the fact that this is a new game, what features will fans of Knockout Kings find different in Fight Night?

KT: Our biggest feature this year is the analog control system, Total Punch Control. In Fight Night 2004, you control your fists with the analog stick. As you move the analog stick to throw punches, your fist is making that exact same motion on the screen. This technology is also used for blocking. Since you have total control over your fists, you can move them around to pick off incoming punches. If you see a punch coming towards your head, use the analog stick to move your fist in the path of the punch to block it with your fist, arms, and elbows.

And all the great gameplay that comes from the controls is build into a deep and rewarding Career Mode. Unlike the simple pyramid tournament career mode of Knockout Kings 2002 and 2003, Fight Night 2004 has 6 different weight divisions each with 50 ranked fighters. You can fight as one of our 32 licensed boxers or build your own character, even one that looks just like you, in our Create a Boxer system.

Once you have your boxer, you start at the bottom of a weight class, ranked 50. You have full control over choosing which fights your boxer takes, against whom, where, and for how much money. Before each fight you can play 1 of 4 training mini-games in order to increase your boxer’s physical ratings. Depending on how well you do in training, you get a certain amount of ratings point to allocate to 8 different boxer ratings. You can customize your boxer’s abilities to how you want to fight.

The boxing world existing in Fight Night 2004’s Career Mode is dynamic. As you schedule fights for yourself, other boxers are doing the same. The rankings are changing based on the results, old fighters are retiring, and new, younger boxer’s climb the rankings. So when you finally win that Title Belt, you will constantly be presented with new challengers trying to take the belt away.

GIO: The analog system of punching is both intuitive and user friendly. What were some of the challenges in getting the system to work and feel as good as it does?

KT: In playing all previous boxing games, there were 2 things that were the same: the way you throw punches (by pressing a button) and the complete lack of defense. This lead to repetitive, button mashing gameplay. You had no control of your fists and no sensation of actually throwing punches. There also was no usable way to defend against punches. Other games have things like blocking in the game, but by the time you tried to use them you got hit in the face 5 times. These are giant voids that have been filled with our analog control system, Total Punch Control.

There is a rhythm to the sport of boxing. A flow that boxers get into where they are using their fists to punch and block combined with moving around the ring and the constant upper body movement boxer’s uses to avoid punches and hide where their punches are coming from. Capturing this flow was our biggest challenge as there is no design formula that can be used to implement the “feel” of boxing.

The first thing we did was get everyone on the design team boxing. This was critical for all of us to understand how these movements worked together for a successful boxer. You can tell playing other boxing titles that the people working on the game had not stepped in to the ring themselves. It would be so hard to capture the skill of boxing in a game if you had not been in the ring yourself….setting up punches and trying not to get hit in the face.

From our boxing training we knew we needed to give gamers total control over their fists and bodies and the only way to do that through a console controller was the analog sticks. The challenge was allowing people playing the game to have total control of their fists and bodies at the same time with the (2) sticks. In Fight Night 2004, you control your fists using the right analog stick. You can move either hand for both punching and blocking. The left analog stick is used for moving around the ring. If you hold in the left trigger, it plants your feet on the ground and the left analog stick becomes an extension of your upper body. You can move your torso in any way you can move the left analog stick. So you can quickly lean out of the way of punches or bob and weave to avoid combinations of punches. This also means you can move your upper body around, confuse your opponent, and land punches with either hand on any part of your opponent’s body.

GIO: The game seems to feature a nice blend of realistic and arcadey boxing action. What were some of the challenges in creating such a delicate balance between the two?

KT: Our design philosophy has been to stay true to real life boxing, while not being afraid to change things that made the game more fun. For example, our combat system emphasizes the skills and tactics that make a boxer successful. This is tied directly to your boxer’s abilities and skills. If you have a fast moving boxer with quick hands, you will be successful by using a stick and move style. But you will not win fights by trying to slug it out with a more powerful opponent. Real boxing strategies work within the game. But one thing you will not see in Fight Night 2004 is the referee stopping the fight. While you see this in boxing a lot because they don’t want people to get hurt, nobody is getting hurt in our game. And knocking somebody out is sooo much more satisfying than having the fight stopped by the referee. Plus, you can get some really dramatic comebacks in our fights. So stopping the fights prematurely based on damage, while certainly a part of boxing, is not in our game.

Figuring out which features you need to keep in the game for authenticity sake versus which ones you take out to make the game more fun is always difficult. Fortunately we get to focus test the game extensively to see how each decision affects gamers and boxing fans both.

GIO: Boxing, although a popular sport, has never been a very high exposure sport in the world of video games. What really sets Fight Night apart from other boxing games and how will it put boxing titles back on the map, so to speak?

KT: As you can probably tell from previous questions, the most revolutionary feature of the game is our Total Punch Control system. It really has an amazing feel when you are playing it. Gamers will also love the level of control and customization offered to them in Fight Night 2004. Most everything in our Career Mode can be determined by the person playing the game. You can build your own character in our Create a Boxer. There is full customization of your boxer’s ratings and abilities in our Training Games. All of your boxer’s clothing and gear can be customized in the Fight Store using money earned in previous fights. Even the Ring Entrances can be scripted by the user. Music, pyrotechnics, and your entourage are all customizable before a fight.

Plus, Fight Night 2004 offers online play meaning you can take your created boxer online and work your way up the online rankings just like in Career Mode!

GIO: The game features some highly realistic (and hilarious) animations and rag doll physics. Were there any special ways in which your team went about capturing them for the game (i.e. motion capture, etc)?

KT: That is one thing that has always bugged me about other boxing and fighting games, all the knockdowns are pre-canned animations. Boxers would fall to the canvas in a very repetitive manner not based at all on how he got hit. If you hit a guy with a left hook, the boxer will fall backwards. If you hit a guy with a right hook, he would fall backwards. Totally unrealistic.

In Fight Night 2004, all of our knockdowns are 100% physics based. There are no pre-canned animations at all! Each of the knockdowns are completely unique based on what punch landed, how hard it hit, what angle it hit from, and how each of the boxer’s bodies were moving at the time of impact. You can knock a boxer down a million times and you will see a million different knockdown reactions. And like you said, they are hilarious!

GIO: EA is usually high up in regards to having unlockable content for all their sports titles. What sort of unlockables have been included in Fight Night and what sort of goodies can gamers expect who have been carefully maintaining their EA Sports Bios all these years?

KT: There are an enormous amount of unlockable items for both the game and EA Sports Bio rewarded to gamers based on in game performance. Venues are unlockable during gameplay. As you move up the rankings in career mode, the venues you fight in grow in size and splendor. You can unlock signature versions of shorts, gloves, shoes, mouthpieces, etc. For instance, beat Roy Jones and you are able to start wearing his signature shorts in your fights. Ring Girls are unlockable as you progress in the game and you can even have them join you for your ring entrances as part of your entourage. There is also a ridiculous amount of hidden characters, trophies, signature punches, signature taunts, ring entrance music tracks and pyrotechnics you can gain access to in the game.

GIO: How much input did you get from real-life boxers like cover man Roy Jones Jr. and even legends like Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier?

KT: Roy Jones Jr. was a great help not only on the boxing parts of the game, but with the overall tone and attitude as well. Roy Jones Jr. is a true larger than life figure. We captured as much of his personality in the presentation of the game as we could. Many real life boxers were instrumental in helping us understand what makes one boxer better than another. What skills were critical to them and essential to being a winning boxer. Unfortunately, we did not get as much time to work with many of the legends.

GIO: Online play was a blast. Do you plan on setting up any special events for the game like online tournaments or special matches for online PS2 gamers?

KT: Certainly we will be supporting the title with things going on within the EA Nation. And you are right, the online play is a blast. Boxing is the perfect sport for online competition. The great thing is that with Fight Night 2004, there are already tons of leagues and tournaments being set up by people waiting for the game to be released. The level of buzz and excitement about the game, and the online play has been phenomenal.

GIO: Being a fan of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004, I got a kick out of the many real time events found in the game. Unfortunately, Fight Night 2004 seems to be lacking them. Was there ever talk of including a mode like that or a mode that perhaps had you playing through key boxing moments from the past?

KT: Being as this is the first year of the Fight Night franchise, we focused our efforts on delivering a genre defining title for boxing. This meant nailing the boxing combat, controls, career mode, and online play in a big way. Fight Night 2004 delivers above and beyond on all these things and the goodies described above that go with them. But including fights from the past is something we really want to add and I am sure you will be seeing an innovated version of this in upcoming versions of the game.

GIO: What sort of features are you currently kicking around for Fight Night 2005?

KT: The dev team, having just finished Fight Night 2004 has been mostly been taking some down time. Crazily enough, we spend a lot of our time around the office right now just playing each other in the game and talking a lot of trash. You would think after working on the game so long that is the last thing we would want to do. But we have a ton of fun playing each other here at work and even have a giant team ranking system going for our fights.  

GIO: Any parting words to gamers out there who may be considering buying the game?

KT: Besides the incredibly deep 1 player experience, our multiplayer gameplay is unbelievably fun and addictive. Boxing is the ultimate head to head competition and Fight Night 2004 is no different. The level of yelling, screaming, and trash talking generated by people playing the game is off the hook. If you at all like the multiplayer experience provided by other sports or fighting games, you will love Fight Night 2004.

Thanks so much for letting me do this interview! I love Game Informer magazine and GI online as it is a great place to keep current with game industry news and trends.

The game is EA Sports Fight Night 2004. I hope you have as much fun playing it as we had making it. Check it out!!!