From Game Novice to Tournament Competitor: The Idol Who Got Hooked on Street Fighter 6 and Why

I want you to like the character.

Mob.: First of all, the visuals are my type, cool. I like men with big bodies, men who look super strong!　Even the hair looks completely like our cat, Potee-chan.

Nakayama: They look alike. The color of their fur is also very similar.

Mob.: He is also a type of man and looks like a cat. And although he is strong and overwhelmingly powerful, he also has the delicacy of making his own rice balls. Such a gap is endearing. There is also the charm of his high firepower, which makes it easy to win in the beginning.

Nakayama: He is a character who moves fast but is weak when hit.

Mob.: He lacks physical strength, just like me. I’m overlapping with myself (laughs).

Nakayama：When we created the World Tour, we wanted people to like the characters themselves. Up until now, Gouki has been a “strong old man whose true identity is unknown,” but in fact, there was only a picture of him selling fruit to a child. We thought about how we could make the character more multifaceted and make people like him from various perspectives.

For example, making onigiri (rice balls) yourself gives a sense of life, doesn’t it? People have a hard time getting attached to characters that have no connection to them. They will only like a character when they have a connection with him or her. If an alien suddenly appears, you don’t want to be friends with him, but if the alien is holding an onigiri (rice ball), you will not want to be friends with him. ……

Mob.: Cute!

Nakayama:To make it easier for people to understand the characters, we went through a lot of trial and error with various teams, including the scenario writers.

Mob.: We did as Mr. Nakayama wanted (laughs).

Nakayama: I’m a grateful customer (laughs).

-Who is your favorite character?

Nakayama：The Street Fighter II game I played in elementary school had only eight characters, so we couldn’t play against the same characters. I joined the group later, so I couldn’t use the characters used by others. I could only choose Dhalsim or Guile, and my friend who joined the group with me and I had to fight for it, and I won in rock-paper-scissors-scissors and chose Guile.

Mob.: So if you had lost the game of rock-paper-scissors, you would have chosen Dhalsim?

Nakayama: Actually, Guile and Dhalsim were strong characters, so I was often told, “You’re cheating by using only strong characters. I would say, “No, I just stayed with them. I didn’t choose them because I liked them.

I also used Mariza in Street Fighter 6. She is the “cool girl” character that I wanted to create from the previous game. There is also a gap in that her day job is as a jewelry designer.

Mob.: She’s very strong, but she also puts hearts on the faces of the people she hits. It’s really cute!

Click here for the second installment of this special dialogue.