Suda 51 Interview

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No More Heroes is the most violent videogame on Wii. Taking on the role of Travis Touchdown, you’re on a mission to become the world’s deadliest assassin and as you cruise around the stylish streets of Santa Destroy you can’t help but be impressed. Here, we speak to Suda 51, the creator of No More Heroes, about his inspirations and his thoughts on violence in videogames.

ONM: No More Heroes has a distinct graphical style. Do you take inspiration from other games, movies or comic books, or do you try to give your games a unique ‘Suda 51′ style?
S51: I use cel-shading because my ideas are based on making something that nobody else does. A lot of action games use a different graphical style and I didn’t want to do that.

ONM: Travis is a huge wrestling fan, his house is basically a geek’s paradise and he’s the ultimate in cool. Would you say he’s a videogame version of you?
S51: All the other characters I’ve created in my other games don’t really reflect how I am but yeah, Travis is probably about 70% me.

ONM: How did you come up with the designs of some of the game characters?
S51: Have you ever seen the Japanese cartoon characters from the anime series Lupin III? Well, there’s Lupin, and then there’s the female character Fujiko Mine. Most of the Japanese like their animations for more adult audiences: they often have a male main character and then female characters who are sexy but aren’t good for him. So Silvia is based on Fujiko Mine from Lupin III. I don’t know how I can translate this in a clean way in English… but I guess I want to make characters that junior high school guys, teenagers, can become “excited” when they see them! (laughs)

ONM: Two of the fights against the assassins end before they begin: Travis doesn’t even get a chance to fight them. Do you make a conscious effort to mess about with structure and throw the rulebook out the window?
S51: Actually, when I make a game, I always want to make something I want to create, rather than adjusting to what the rest of the market is doing, and Wada-san (Yasuhiro Wada – the game’s executive producer) agrees with me. I also think the game stands out especially on Wii because there are very few adult games on it. I was expecting that by the time No More Heroes launched there would have been a lot more games like it.

ONM: Our version and the Japanese one, is censored, unlike the US one. Which of the two versions do you prefer?
S51: When I started making the game, I started off by making the US version, so I created a lot of violence and blood. When I started working on the Japanese version, I created it focusing mainly on action rather than visual gore. So when I went back to the US version, because I was more used to the Japanese one, I was shocked, and thought “is this what I created?” (laughs) I actually like both versions, I don’t have a favourite.

ONM: Obviously, there’s a lot of controversy in the UK just now surrounding censorship of violent games, with even our Prime Minister saying we should control video game content. How do you feel about that?
S51: Well, I believe in the saying, I don’t know if it exists in English, that “when you are in Rome, you should live like the Romans”. Maybe the main game concept doesn’t change, but as a game designer I have to understand which regulations and restrictions are based in each territory and adjust it to suit. So although the game is different, it’s still great fun to play.

ONM: Games are becoming more and more expensive to create. Could this be a problem in the future as many developers might prefer to make ‘safe’ games to ensure they’ll make money back? Will there maybe be fewer original games like No More Heroes in the future?
S51: That’s a very difficult question. I’m always discussing it with other creators and we all think it’s a really difficult issue. If no new games come out, then the market will be dead. The customers are always expecting something new so if we don’t supply them with new titles they may stop wanting to play games. I’m the one who keeps creating something new and original, and Grasshopper has a responsibility to help keep the industry going.

Note from fadecy: Personally I think it is totally unreasonable for the gore to be taken out of the game. It’s a cell shaded very unrealistic world. So I fail to see how this could have affected the rating. It would be understandable if you were ripping bits out of people like in Manhunt. But you’re not. Ah well. American readers consider yourselves lucky. ^_^

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