Speaking of tactics, there’s also Hyper Beast 1 mode: when’s the correct time to go into hyper? Should you stick it out with the regular beast form? Making those reads is part of the fun, I think. Being near-death is dangerous, but it also offers a chance to turn the tables, and I think we came up with a great system that makes beastorizing more of a tactical tool.
Additionally, when you’re low on health in your human form, your Beast Gauge fills much quicker-in this state, Stun can build a full meter off his 3-throw combo. In the last game, the only benefit to the Beast Drives (super attacks) was raw damage, and then you’d reset to human form, but in this game, reverting to human form after landing a Beast Drive will restore some of your red life, so it has a very different utility.
We’ve also added more decision-making to the act of beastorizing. (laughs) Broadening the utility of Beastorization To put it another way, we want players to feel as if they’re projecting their alter-ego onto the screen. Our aim from the first game has been to create something where the player can freely make decisions as they play, and with this game I feel like we’re getting close to that ideal fighting game we envisioned from the beginning. I wanted to make a game where the player’s able to quickly and deliberately make a tactical decision, and that type of thinking also extends to guard attacks, ukemi and all other aspects of Bloody Roar. We broke down and reconstructed all the game’s systems and techniques in this manner, not just Block Evade, with the idea of clarifying the purpose of each specific action and allowing players to immediately identify which action to take in any given circumstance.įor example, the Fast Evade (Girigiri Escape) lets you avoid everything except throws and immediately counterattack-the input window is very tight, but it’s the sort of move that’ll spring to mind when the player’s in a tough spot, and if they’re confident they can pull it off, they’ll immediately try it out. The previous games featured the Block Evade (Guard Escape) system, but having both the timed escape command and the axis shift as part of the same action was detrimental to the game balance, so for this game, we examined the evasive maneuver and the z-axis movement separately: the last-minute evasion was helpful for avoiding certain moves, and the side-step was useful for avoiding getting cornered against a wall, and alternately, for advancing upon the opponent. The goal with this game was to create something that was easy to play, but not simple. “A hard drinker from Hokkaido who develops Bloody Roar in pursuit of the perfect game he’s also a top-class Bloody Roar player who goes by the title ‘Beast King'”.įighting games tend to become more core-focused with every entry, but I don’t think that’s the best way to reach a broad audience, and so I’ve worked to avoid falling into that same trap.
This interview with Hudson director Kenji Fukuya covers the making of the 2000 arcade & PlayStation 2 game Bloody Roar 3, the critical and commercial apex of Hudson & Raizing’s flashy and outlandish series of 3D fighting games centered around the unique gimmick of “beastorization”, with a particular focus on the developers’ efforts to refine the series’ unique traits while straddling the lines of depth and accessibility.Īlso included is an interview with Fukuya concerning the results of an online survey conducted shortly after the release of the PS2 version, in which fans requested the animals they’d most like to see represented in a future game several of the more popular suggestions, as well as Fukuya’s own choice, would appear in subsequent games.Ī quick note: the nomenclature around Bloody Roar’s characters and transformations differs slightly between games and localizations I’ve chosen to stick with the terms “beastorizer” and “beastorizing”, respectively, because my life has been immeasurably enriched by adding these words to my vocabulary and I believe yours will be, too.