hh yes, Rumble Roses.  We loved it.  You loved it and now it’s back for more.  We take a sit with Akari Uchida, the Producer for the new 360 title, Rumble Roses XX.  All the juicy info is here.

Game Informer:  So first off, are you happy with the way the first title turned out?

Akari Uchida:  Am I satisfied? No.

GI:  No?  Why?

Uchida:  There is so many things I wanted to do that I couldn’t do on the first game.

GI:  For example?

Uchida:  Tag team action.  There are also many things with the expressions of the models I couldn’t do so I wasn’t satisfied.  And also customizing the characters, that’s something we couldn’t do in the first title.

GI:  If I remember correctly, the cinematics were done by Polygon Magic.  Are you working with them again?

Uchida:  Yes, we are working with Polygon Magic again and we are actually working with a lot of other companies too.

GI:  Can you give some examples?

Uchida:  There are a lot of independent CG artists that are popular in the industry that aren’t very popular overseas.  We work with some of these independent designers.  There is a bunch of skilled no name CG artists in Japan.  And we as a company got them together and we have a lot of them working on our game.

GI:  Tag Team is one of the new features in the game.  Can you talk about any of the other new features?

Uchida:  You saw that Tekken style mode there, which is an independent mode.  It’s like a fighting game.  There are a lot of people that play a lot of fighting games but not necessarily wrestling games, so this can server as a tutorial.  They can start out like this and learn the moves.  Then they can play the main wrestling game and the controls are the same.  And obviously you know that the online is a big addition this year.

GI:  New characters?

Uchida:  There are new characters yes, but not many.  What we’re adding is another identity to every single character.  Even in the previous game, we had the baby face side and then the heel.  This time we are adding an identity or new level called Superstar.  Like you saw there, the girl in the mesh, that’s her in her Superstar identity.

Throwing Up Signs!

GI:  There are four versions?

Uchida:  Yes there are four versions, but the thing is when they are in Superstar status, their moves are different, their costumes are different, even their entry demos are different.  It’s like creating a whole other set of characters.

GI:  How many total characters then?

Uchida:  Probably like 40.  And there is some like boss characters too.  So four versions of 10.  I think this game offers a lot of volume because there are many games out there where the appearance is different but they are pretty much doing the same moves.  In this case, that is not the case.  Yes, the characters have four versions, but they will be using different moves.

GI:  The different versions of characters in the last game played very different.  I think it went very well.  I thought that was very successful in making the different versions feel very separate.

Uchida:  We always argue with out developer, they always say there are too many characters this time, too much work.  (Laughs)

GI:  So the story to this game, is it a sequel to the last game?

Uchida:  First of all, it’s not a sequel.  Then people may say well if it is not a sequel, maybe it is a conversion to the Xbox 360 but that is not the case.  The only thing we are using for the previous game is the character setting.  Everything else we are doing, we are doing from scratch.

GI:  So you made the same game again with new features from the bottom up?

Uchida:  This is basically the Rumble Roses that we wanted to do in the first place but we couldn’t do because of time constraints and stuff. 

GI:  So this is the Star Wars special edition?

Uchida:  (laughs then in Yoda voice) Correct, you are.

GI:  With a lot hotter women.

Uchida:  So Yuke’s, the company making the game is pissed because they thought they could reuse a lot of the assets from the previous game but they have to redo everything and they are not happy about it.

GI:  Like textures and things like that?

Uchida:  Well first of all, like the sizes of textures are different.  We don’t want to talk too much about the polygon count because that is not the only thing that makes a model beautiful.  But if you do talk about the polygon count, it is about 5 times as many as the previous title.  That’s why we cannot use anything from the previous game.  You cannot apply textures from the previous game to the ones now that have 5 times as much. 

GI:  Is the fighting engine basically the same or has that been reworked as well?

Uchida:  It served as a foundation but we redid the AI completely.  You probably haven’t seen this in other wrestling games or fighting games, but this time, the AI really shows the different emotions in the characters.  Let’s say that one of the opponents you are facing in the game happens to be a rival, you normally would start out calm but since this is your rival, you start out wild from the very beginning.  You get very excited.  Let’s say you are facing this baby face character, this nice girl and start using say the tickle stick, which has feathers on the end and you keep annoying her, she will lose it.  She will maybe grab a bat and try and hit you.  So I guess one way of enjoying this game is to try and annoy the hell out of your opponent.  And you can use that very strategically.  Let’s say you are a much weaker character than your opponent.  You can use that to your advantage.  You can annoy your opponent and she will get very angry and lose her cool and won’t be fighting properly.

GI:  I loved the countering system in Rumble Roses by the way.  I thought it worked well, the way to reverse moves.

Uchida:  This time, it will be so much better because you will be reversing reversals.  So yeah, the whole offence-defense thing will be very fun and sophisticated.

GI:  Will the reversals work at all with the Tag Team?

Uchida:  We didn’t get to do the Tag Team action so there is some much we wanted to do with that.  It should be interesting.  There are many games out there that say they have Tag Team action but it ends up just being four players in the ring at the same time.  The cool thing about tag matches is that when the partners are like real friends, when they get along well, you know maybe aren’t even that strong.  Their tag team combination makes them a very strong team.  When two people pair off and they don’t like each other, they make a very bad team. So if you mistakenly slap your partner, when one holds the other and dodges and you end up hitting your partner, that partner could leave the ring. So you’ll see these things, a lot of the human drama, the relationships. And we actually have preassigned friendships and rivalries in the game so when you pair up certain players they will actually look like a special team and do some special moves. And when you pair up the wrong people they won’t be functioning properly. Special tag team moves for certain combinations. That’s why, even if you’re not playing with three other people, if you’re just playing it as a standalone game, it’ll feel like you’re playing with other people because the other characters have so much personality.

GI: Can you explain some of the Xbox Live features?

Uchida:  First of all, you can have four people playing together.  And there will also be a ranking system to show how strong you are so you can compete with other people.  And we are also planning to sell icons over the marketplace.

My video game can beat up your dad...and he likes it..

GI:  Well I have to ask.  I know last time you were considering nudity.  Were you thinking about that for this version? (laughs)

Uchida:  The thing is, when you think of erotic games or eroticism, you think “nude”.  Japanese eroticism isn’t about stripping, its more subtle.

GI:  With what we saw in the trailer, the character wearing the thing and all that, does that ever make you nervous as a developer?  America and Japan are very different.  Does that make you nervous to make it more risqué?

Uchida:  I have no plans to tweak the game for other territory, it will be one version.  Yes, the game does feature sexy babes, but it’s a peaceful game.  There’s no blood, no force, no rape.  Its just sexy girls wrestling.  I’m sure there will be people that will get angry.  But we just want people to relax so I am not that worried.

GI:  What has it been like to work with the Xbox 360?

Uchida:  It really feels like technology has advanced.  My programmers are very excited to experiment with this new technology.  I really think this machine has set new standards for graphics.

GI:  Have you had a chance to mess around with the PlayStation 3 yet?

Uchida:  Yes, it’s amazing.  And just because I am working on the Xbox 360, doesn’t mean I will never work on the PS3.  I have not converted.  Its not like the PS3 is an enemy.

GI:  What do you think you could pull off on one system that you could not on another?

Uchida:  I think there are some things you can do with the PS3 than you cannot with the 360.  The processing speed is much quicker.  The rendering variation that the PS3 offers is wider.  But the online of the 360 is amazing and is probably better than the PS3.