King of Fighters producer: ‘Arcades are dying down, so events like EVO Japan are great’

Yasuyuki Oda speaks at TGS

There was a massive presentation at TGS yesterday regarding fighting games, and Yasuyuki Oda (King of Fighters XIV producer) was in attendance.

He dropped a ton of information on us, including news of a balance update, a larger rage quit penalty, and bug fixes for XIV in October. More updates are planned beyond that (though no DLC beyond costumes are planned at this time), and he’s very happy with how the game turned out overall. He also shared some insight into the development process, noting that initially his team made everyone “as strong as possible,” then a balanced around that to ensure that every fighter was fun to play.

Oda also muses on the scene in general, saying that a new Samurai Shodown might be on the table (yes! Bring back Hanzo), even though they’re currently understaffed. Sadly, he also reconfirms that even the Japanese arcade scene is in dire straits, so he’s happy that there are events like EVO Japan where people can meet up. He even wanted to remake NeoGeoLand, but the CEO of SNK shot that idea down.

Oda also has an amusing story about beetles that you should totally read over at Mad Man’s Cafe, who translated the whole talk.

TGS Day 2 [YouTube via Mad Man’s Cafe]