According to a recent interview at CFN Portal, Hideaki Itsuno, director of the Rival Schools games, wants to bring the series back. You might remember Rival Schools if you’re ancient like myself. That series was like Street Fighter but with students, and it originally released in the late 90s. It separated itself from previous Capcom fighters by introducing 3D graphics and having some truly outrageous characters.
As for the interview itself, it’s somewhat meandering, but it clearly expresses Itsuno’s enthusiasm, which is always refreshing to see. Some of my favorite quotes are the following:
So I thought, okay let’s base this on something that people have an interest in. If it was set in a school, then everyone would understand it because everyone has had that experience. So I figured, I might as well make it stupid crazy, and had the setting be in a school where 40 characters fought to decide who would be the class representatives!
Then this programmer said to me, “look at my screen, I have three characters on the screen, three!” and showed me three playable characters. And that’s how I came up with the idea of having two-character teams.
I also wanted to make more female characters. It may be normal now, but at the time it was rare to have a
male/female ratio of 2:1, but since we were doing a school-based fighting game we could pull it off.Then, I was really worried about the game not selling, so I asked if I could borrow Sakura for the game, haha. She’s in a school uniform, it works! It was insurance for the game’s success.
And the opening of the game featured the world’s first 256 color animation! It was only three frames though, haha. But people were like, “wow the PlayStation is awesome!”
I want to make a new one even now! Batsu, Hinata and Kyosuke* haven’t graduated yet. They started their third year just when the story finished.
If you’re still invested in seeing a Rival Schools 3, Itsuno asks you tweet hashtag #RivalSchools3 to his Twitter account, @tomqe. I personally hope he is successful!
