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David Sirlin is the man responsible for not only rebalancing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo's gameplay for the recently released Xbox LIVE and PSN title HD Remix, but for getting the feature in the game in the first place. Here, in the first part of a detailed post-mortem interview with lead designer Sirlin, who's now a free agent having left developer Backbone, he details how the project gained approval from the powers that be at Capcom and reveals exactly what went down during the game's development.

VideoGamer.com: Now that you've left Backbone what are you up to?

David Sirlin: Well, I don't know where to begin! So there's my website, I'm writing articles for that. Also I have my own card game, Yomi, I've been developing that and there's something I can't talk about, I really wish I could but I think there's a very small chance that this will go through but if it does it's like a lot of investment and a big new project so I'm working just on the hope that that small chance will pan out.

VideoGamer.com: Can you tell me whether or not it's in the fighting game genre?

DS: Actually no it's not. But I would be willing to take the same kind of shot on a new fighting game, too.

VideoGamer.com: Taking you right back to the start, where did the idea of doing a HD Remix of SSF2T come from?

DS: Well I don't know if I can pinpoint it to a certain moment or anything but it has to do with Capcom Classics Collection. I could go way back there and tell you that Capcom Classics Collection 1 was originally handled by a different company in Japan but they weren't able to get to the end of that project and so Backbone showed that they could do the emulation needed to get to the end, and because I liked Capcom so much that became my project. That's where I started being involved with Capcom.

VideoGamer.com: What year are we looking at?

DS: I think it must have been 2004 or something. So during that time I told Capcom that I would really like to see a new Street Fighter and a new Puzzle Fighter as well. I liked that game too. Actually I wanted to make a completely new puzzle game, like a sequel to Puzzle Fighter and a completely new Street Fighter as well. They knew I wanted to do that for a long time. We kept doing new Capcom Classics Collections.

VideoGamer.com: So the fans have you to thank for HD Remix then?

DS: Yeah, I was only really half done there so I was working for that other project for like a year as well as Capcom Classics Collection. Capcom was talking about a whole big batch of new projects. They was a new Puzzle Fighter, a new art for Street Fighter and an upgrade to, or a new version of 1942 and Commando. Maybe I'm missing something, there might have even been more, but there was at least that many. I can't say that they said, 'oh well Sirlin keeps asking for Puzzle Fighter and Street Fighter so that's why it's there'. I don't know if that's why but I certainly did ask many times. I actually wrote the design proposals for Commando and 1942 and I was trying to do some new things with those games. Capcom liked the proposals a lot and they said that's why they went with Backbone. The actual games that came out, I was not on those projects and they did not use my designs at all!

VideoGamer.com: But you were involved with the HD Remixes of Puzzle Fighter and Street Fighter.

DS: Even when we were beginning Puzzle Fighter we knew that Street Fighter was the next project. The public didn't know but we'd been working on Puzzle Fighter for a long time before anyone knew and had laid the foundation for Street Fighter because both of them come from Dreamcast source code, so just on a technical level we were preparing quite a bit ahead of time.

VideoGamer.com: What kind of reaction were you getting from the powers that be at Capcom when you were pushing for these HD remakes?

DS: I was telling them they should do a completely new Street Fighter. There was very little way to argue with that because there wasn't any, it was one of the biggest licenses in the entire industry and there was nothing. There was, like I said, there was no Street Fighter 4, there was nothing on the horizon at all. They actually said they had a business consultant come in and analyse their company and the consultant told them the same thing. He told them, 'that is one of your most valuable assets and you're doing nothing with it'. I don't know, maybe that stimulated them or something. I said even if you don't make a completely new Street Fighter you should really re-release these old classics with new art. So they had the Hyper Fighting for Xbox LIVE plan.

VideoGamer.com: The one with the broken net code?

DS: Yeah! Backbone had nothing to do with that, I had nothing to do with that! We bid on that and I guess they went to another company that really did extremely well! That whole project, the one I had nothing to do with, was just mystifying to me. Why not go so much farther with it? I think Capcom only wanted to just barely touch the waters. It's just the old game with no differences and no real upgrades. And I kept telling them, 'why not do new art? Why not do new art?', and they said, 'no it's going to be so expensive and Capcom Japan will never go for it'. But then Hyper Fighting became the number one game on Xbox LIVE!

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