Yoshinori Ono Discusses Super SFIV's Hakan

Turkish wrestler Hakan joined the Super Street Fighter IV cast yesterday, complete with lots and lots of screens and videos (see IGN for those). So what's the character all about? For the details, we turn to Famitsu.com, which managed to score an interview with SFIV series producer Yoshinori Ono at a Capcom-hosted Game Developers Conference party in San Francisco on the night of the 10th. In addition to Hakan, the interview included a general discussion about Super SFIV as a whole.

Ono first described Hakan's background story. Apparently, Hakan is the president of an oil company. He's traveling the world in search of the best oil recipe.

I should make a little translator's note here about a kanji character you often encounter in Japanese interviews: "笑". This character is used to indicate that the interviewer laughed when giving the response. Ono's response about Hakan's background story was full of this character, so I'm not sure if he's joking or not.

Hakan was actually playable at the Capcom event, allowing the Famitsu interviewer to get into a gameplay discussion with Ono. Ono explained that they purposely gave the character both Hadoken-like commands and throw-like commands. Their goal was to give Hakan as many "openings" as possible, allowing for a variety of players to use him.

Famitsu noted that the character's "color" is similar to Dan. Ono responded, "Everyone says that. However, and I apologize to Dan, but in terms of character strength, Dan is not at the same level. Hakan is a character of such strength that it wouldn't be odd to use him during tournaments like Tougeki."

[note: I previously mistranslated the above to make it sound like Famitsu thinks Dan and Hakan have similar color schemes -- which is obviously not correct.]

For those who try to master Hakan, Ono said the character is for mid to high level players. One of the goals with Super, he said, was to give players who came to SFIV from SFII a path to climb one rank higher in level. This is one of the reasons the SFIII characters were included. He admitted, however, that the SFIII characters are all aimed at extremely high level players. Hakan is within easier reach than the SFIII characters, and Ono wants those who feel they can't reach the SFIII characters to use Hakan as a stepping stone. He also noted here that Juri is meant for beginners.

Juri and Hakan are the only two completely original characters for Super SFIV. Famitsu asked Ono which of the two is the more popular amongst the staff. He couldn't answer, as the Hakan character had just been completed and he had yet to be used in internal tournaments (Ah hah! I knew that's what they do all day!). Ono explained that the Hakan character's fine tuning is nearly complete, and he's interested in seeing how many staffers select him.

Moving on to Super SFIV in general, Famitsu asked Ono if he felt that, at 35 characters, the Super cast is on the large side. Ono said that he personally doesn't feel "the more playable characters the better." He feels that 35 is the limit for the game as a "fighting tool."

Noting that the 10 additional characters makes for quite a bit of additional volume, Famitsu expressed surprise at Super's low pricing. In Japan, the game will carry a ¥5,040 price point -- the same as a PSP game. Ono's response to this was that even though there's too much volume to make Super's content into SFIV download packs, they worked to keep the price as close to download content as possible. He feels that rather than charging full price, by releasing it at a somewhat impossibly low price they'd be able to give the title longer life.

Ono also added, "By the way, in terms of content, it's pretty close to V, so I personally refer to it by the code name 4.9." Famitsu put one of those "laugh" kanji characters in this statement too, so you probably shouldn't read too far into it.

As a final message, Ono confirmed that Hakan is indeed the final Super Street Fighter IV character. However, he promised more announcements for the game in April and May.

Of course, Super SFIV comes out on April 28, so assuming Ono actually meant to say May, he'd have to be referring to post-release announcements.