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Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix developer Backbone and redrawn art overseers Udon were “worried” that Capcom might cancel the game during the early part of its troubled development, lead designer David Sirlin has revealed.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com in the second part of a mammoth post-mortem interview, due to be published later this week, Sirlin suggested that Capcom continued to support the project because of pressure from the “world of gaming”.
SSF2THDR, which is out on Xbox LIVE Arcade now (it’s still to appear on the PlayStation Store in Europe), suffered a high profile delay earlier in the year when redrawn art based on Udon source material was thrown out of the window and work began with a new set of artists.
Back in March, producer Rey Jimenez explained the reboot, saying: “Without going into the nitty-gritty of it, the art they were producing just wasn’t up to par or schedule of what we needed. To be honest, a lot of their art was looking pretty good, but just not ‘good enough’. It just wouldn’t satisfy the quality bar that both Capcom and Street Fighter fans demand. Once Udon and Capcom agreed to go with that route, we had to essentially reboot the whole art pipeline. The character art pretty much started over from scratch with new reference art from Udon.”
When asked if he ever felt that Capcom might cancel the game, Sirlin told VideoGamer.com: “Yeah that was a possibility. It felt the most possible during that first phase during the art that we had to throw away. It was unspoken but everyone just knew it that if that art wasn’t going to work out then maybe they were going to cancel the whole thing. And turns out they didn’t. I wonder if there was just so much pressure from the outside that kept them going, I mean from the world of gaming. Everyone knew about the project by then.
“We were worried and Udon was worried, too. Actually Udon had a lot of foresight I guess. They were the ones that said, ‘it’s going to take this long and cost this much’. They were pretty correct. If only someone had gone with them from the very beginning and followed their plan. Udon saw what was coming.”
Be sure to check back later this week for the second part of our interview with David Sirlin. If you missed the first part, fear not, it’s right here. Oh, in case you didn’t know, we’re delighted Capcom didn’t cancel the game, since it’s absolutely brilliant.
