Arms' Creators On Twintelle's Popularity And The Strange Lore Of The Game's World

Arms is the next big title for the Nintendo Switch, and it's right around the corner. Ahead of the game's release on June 16, we spoke with Arms producer Kosuke Yabuki and art director Masaaki Ishikawa about the game. We discussed a number of topics, like what it means to wake up with extendable arms one morning, why everyone is already obsessed with Twintelle before the game even is even out, and whether or not we can ever expect to see a cameo by Luffy of One Piece fame (we won't).

Game Informer: What did the earliest version of Arms look like?

Kosuke Yabuki: Arms is one of the many prototypes of things. We’re always trying to make new things at Nintendo, and this is one of them. Initially it was a much more simple game with shorter characters who had devices attached to the ends of their hands, but even at the beginning, the camera was still behind the back of the character and that hasn’t changed. We were thinking when making a fighting game, it’s really important, the distance you have between you and your opponent, but it might be difficult to see that difference when the camera’s behind the back of the player. So, with these extending arms, we were working hard to see if there’s anything we could do – any sort of new ideas that we could do – to make that easier. And we officially kicked off the development of this project when we were looking at new techniques and strategies we could have with these extending arms.

How long has it been in development? Did it start as a Wii U game?

Yabuki: Well, we were working on it back when the Wii U was out, but we can’t really say how long the development went. All we can say is that we’ve been working really hard on it.

Did Punch-Out!! serve as an inspiration for Arms? Was there any overlap between Nintendo's boxing franchise and Arms? Or did Arms begin as a totally separate idea?

Yabuki: This is a wholly new game. There’s really no connection to Punch-Out!! and actually not even boxing itself.

You don’t consider it a boxing game? Do you consider it a fighting game?

Yabuki: Yeah, that’s right, but we don’t look at it as a 2D fighting game like Street Fighter or Smash Brothers, those genres that already exist. We look it as a totally new kind of fighting game. So, with the extending arms you actually end up with some elements of shooting as well. Both the fighting and shooting elements help to create this totally new fighting genre.

Was using established Nintendo characters ever considered or was it always gonna be brand-new characters from the beginning?

Yabuki: Yeah, we really just thought it would be totally new characters from the beginning. You know, Mario and Link can’t extend their arms in this way, so we thought new characters would be easier for players to get used to for this type of fighting.

What was the goal in the design of these characters?

Masaaki Ishikawa: Since this is a new game, we thought the really important thing would be to express the uniqueness of this game, and the easiest way to convey that to the players is these extendable arms. So, given that this is a fighting game with a couple more realistic character designs for the bodies, we paid close attention to the head-to-body ratio in the character design making it close to that of real people. We worked really hard to make these characters appear solid, muscular-type characters, both male and female. But we also wanted to – for players that are maybe a little more casual – for them to be easy to pick up, and we gave the faces some features that make them more approachable and colors that sort of pop to make this game more approachable for even the casual players.

Why do some people in the world of Arms have extendable arms like this?

Ishikawa: Kosuke Yabuki mentioned earlier, but in the initial prototype, the characters had devices that sort of extended from their elbows, but as we were developing the game, we really thought it felt better for the behind-the-back camera perspective to have the arms extend directly from the base of the shoulder, and that’s how all the characters in this game ended up with arms that extend from there.

In the fiction of Arms, can people elect to have extendable arms? Can they have surgery to do that? Or is just certain people have these arms?

Ishikawa: Some parts of this are still secret. I can’t really tell you everything, but what I can say is it’s not something that they can elect for – not something that you would get surgery for, to replace your arms. It’s possible that some characters have had this since birth and it’s also possible that, for some characters it just suddenly...one day, they woke and were different. So, there are actually, really several different possibilities that could be the cause for this. So, aside from Helix, all the other characters like Spring Man, Ribbon Girl, and Min Min – these are just regular people with extendable arms and not cyborgs or anything like that.

For those characters that wake up and suddenly have extendable arms – is that scary? Do they have to enter these tournaments now? Is that just the direction of their life at that point?

Ishikawa: Well, I’m sure I’d be surprised and I may even be a little panicked, but in the world of Arms, the Arms Fighting League is super popular, and so for them, while they may be surprised, they also would probably be pretty excited that they can now enter that fighting league. So the fact that they would be excited to be able to enter the fighting league just goes to show how popular and how many people – the fans that you see in the stages – how excited they would be to become one of these fighters. It’s a super big honor to be one of those fighters.

Yabuki: Outside of the Fighting League, it would also be super convenient for your daily life to have those extendable arms.

They can pull their arms in to have them just be normal arms when they’re not fighting each other, right?

Yabuki: The way we think about it is that outside of fighting, they could also extend it for whatever purpose they might have, but they can also pull them back in to be more regular arms.

For more on Arms, like how Yabuki's history with Mario Kart affected development and Twintelle's surprise popularity, head to page two.

You worked extensively on the Mario Kart series. Mario Kart is obviously a lot different from Arms, but I was wondering if there are any surprise lessons you brought over from Mario Kart into arms?

Yabuki: For Mario Kart Wii we had the steering wheel attachment so players could use motion controls, but you could also play with the motion controller and more traditional controls so that really offered players the freedom to play however they wanted to in Mario Kart. For Arms, we kind of carried this lesson over. Motion controls are a big feature of this game, but players can still use pro controllers or traditional controls like in handheld and choose the way that they would like to play. That’s one of the lessons that we learned from Mario Kart.

The motion controls in Arms actually allow for more fine controls; the two gyros allow for some fine adjustment of left and right on the punches that you can kind of use it to curve your punch. So when it really comes down to it, when you really don’t want to lose, we really feel that motion control offers more precise control than traditional controls. So, unlike any game before, we feel that the motion controls in Arms really allow for deeper technique and strategy than really any game before it with motion controls.

What are each of your favorite characters?

Ishikawa: My favorite character in this game is Spring Man, but also I have to throw in a vote for Min Min. For Spring Man, he is kind of the simplest expression of the unique features of this game, of Arms as a whole. But for Min Min, she’s got a kind of a sharp face, you know sharper features, and she wears this badge on her chest protection that is the Japanese character for ramen noodles and so I think just as a Japanese person, she feels the most relatable out of all the characters.

Yabuki: My favorite character is also Spring Man, but somebody went ahead and took that one. I’m gonna go with Twintelle. There’s a lot that’s been said about her lately, but she’s a pretty rare character for Nintendo to put out there. She’s got a really strong build and I think that’s really appealing in the world of arms where these fights get really intense, so the characters are naturally gonna have a more muscly build.

Twintelle has really taken off. What do you think of the fan community latching onto her?

Yabuki: We weren’t really expecting the fans to be so taken with her, so that was a very pleasant surprise! And like I just mentioned, she has that really strong build to her and that seems to be something that the community has picked up on so I’m glad that we were able to create this new character design.

Are you surprised by the amount of fan art that has already appeared for Arms after only one beta?

Ishikawa: As for the fan art, we’ve seen a lot of that come through social media and as a character designer I feel pure joy at seeing what the fans are creating. Looking at the fan art and how the artists draw Twintelle with different poses and how they match her with other characters, there’s a lot of variety and vibrance to that art and I love looking at that. I see a lot of it.

Can you talk about or tease the post-launch plans?

Yabuki: I can say this as it was shared in the Nintendo Direct that we just had: We do plan to add new characters, arms, and stages for free going forward.

Screenshot from One Piece Pirate Warriors 3

Can one of those characters be Luffy from One Piece? He seems like he would fit in that universe.

Yabuki: I guess now that you mention it, Luffy’s arms do extend huh? I didn’t really think of that. But unfortunately, the world of Arms and the world that Luffy lives in are different worlds, so I don’t think he will be in this game.

This is a broader question I have about Nintendo games in general. Mario Kart is an example of it, Breath of the Wild is an example of it – Arms is only 2.2 gigabytes big and it looks great. How does Nintendo make these games so small?

Yabuki: A lot of effort and technique goes into limiting the size of the games and we really think it improves the user experience by shortening the load times and making it quicker to get into a game. And we take into account the animations as well and make those fit into the smaller size to make it more enjoyable for the user’s experience.

Ishikawa: In development, we discuss all sorts of detailed elements, but we also talk about the first things that the players are gonna notice and we focus our resources there, so I’m really happy when people appreciate that and we create good art as a result.

For more on Arms, head here for 17 takeaways from our extensive hands-on with the game.