Ryo Mito, the producer of Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2, keeps fans, fans from all parts of the world in mind, when developing the Dragon Ball fighting games. What fans in each region want differs and that’s something he is aware of. The topic came up when I brought your questions during a meeting with Mito-san.
What makes Raging Blast 2 the definitive Dragon Ball fighting game?
Ryo Mito, Producer: The characters are going to be a big point because it’s always exciting for Dragon Ball fans to figure out who is in the game.
Can you tell us one unannounced character?
I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m sorry!
Is the GT saga covered in Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2?
No. It goes up the Majin Buu saga, but there are characters from other Dragon Ball side stories.
Since the Dragon Ball series is a completed story how do you keep it fresh?
Of course the story itself is finished, but we can take elements from the Dragon Ball series and put them into new games. And adding things fans want and are looking forward to in the new games.
What do you think fans want?
New stories and new characters.
How do you come up with original side stories for the games?
We look at what the fans want from all the different regions Japan, the US, and Europe. Then including those elements into the story in a fashion that’s along the same lines as Dragon Ball, something that fans wouldn’t look at and think that’s weird. We try to create stories that would add to Dragon Ball, realistic scenarios that Dragon Ball fans may imagine.
Speaking of the different regions, what do you believe the Japanese fans want compared to the North America fans?
GT is popular with fans overseas. In Japan, it’s not as popular. With Japanese fans they like to relive the Dragon Ball story since its such a long and iconic story. What if scenarios and GT are popular for fans in US and Europe, I think that’s what they want to see.
I think you’re right about GT! A lot of my readers asked about the GT series. When do you think we’ll see a the GT characters in a HD game?
If the fans are that interested in it, it’s possible.
What about an all Dragon Ball GT game?
Just a GT game might be difficult due to the popularity in Japan. If the fans are really that interested in GT and it looks that way to the developers and producers, sure anything is possible.
With fighting games are back on the rise, are there any elements that inspired you from the recent wave for the Dragon Ball games?
There are a lot of areas we can consider a reference point for us to use. Where we differ is we try to make the Dragon Ball games as close to what you would see in the story, but experiencing it as a game or interactive medium. We want the battles to be Dragon Ball-esque.
That’s interesting because Burst Limit felt more like a traditional fighting game. Do you think you’ll go back in that direction?
It’s up to the fans too. If people like regular fighting games, we’ll try to take on what the fans want.
Some of my readers felt Dragon Ball: Raging Blast was unbalanced when it came to rush combos. Did you fix this in Raging Blast 2 and how do you balance the Dragon Ball games?
The engine has been revamped a bit and changed it so its a tighter fighting game. We also spent a lot of time working on the camera. That was a big issue a lot of people mentioned with Raging Blast.
Can you elaborate on the camera retuning?
We changed how the camera views the actions in the battle scenes so the game appears more cinematic. Sometimes when you play Raging Blast [1] you run into areas where the camera goes into a weird position. We worked on this so the camera positions itself so you can see the characters on screen.
Speaking of the characters the graphic style looks different. It’s less cel-shaded.
We tried to make the characters look a little bit more realistic. As we move forward with the games, technology gets better and that’s one of the reasons why we changed it.
Are there any characters that you wish you could have added to a Dragon Ball fighting game that you haven’t been able to add before?
With Raging Blast 2, I think we put in all of the characters we can for Dragon Ball maniacs. We are considering GT characters for the next one too.
Who is your favorite character then?
Vegeta.
One of the readers on Siliconera thought of an idea of a create-your-own-character. What do you think about this?
I think it’s kind of a Western thing. Japanese fans like the character the way they are. Yeah, maybe…
What do you think about Kinect and PlayStation Move. Would you make a Dragon Ball game where fans can do the Kahmahma motion?
It’s something we’ll take into consideration after we see how the Kinect and Move are received after launch. Then we’ll see if its something that fits into the Dragon Ball games.
What about the 3DS?
Of course [a Dragon Ball game] is possible.
What about the Wii then? We haven’t seen any Dragon Ball games on the Wii for awhile.
Wii… we have no plans for the Wii.
The Dragon Ball characters have been used in so many different game genres. Fighting, RPG, side-scrolling. Is there a particular genre you’d like to tackle?
I’m looking forward to online where you can play with a lot of characters. Maybe an action-adventure game.
Crossovers are all the rage. Which franchise would you like to see the Dragon Ball characters fight?
[Looks over to the Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 booth.] This isn’t an answer, but we do get a lot of questions and comments about a crossover with the Naruto series.
Would you like to make one?
[Laughs.] If the chance presents itself, it would be something cool to look into. But there aren’t any concrete plans.
