Fist of the North Star: LEGENDS ReVIVE Interview with Kohei Iwamoto at CRX 2019
- Our interview with Kohei Iwamoto is full of details on the newly released mobile game
Fist of the North Star: LEGENDS ReVIVE is an action RPG centered around the famous “Fist of the North Star” franchise. As a player, you will get to relive the original story as you fight alongside the original cast of characters in their journey. Guided by the “Will of Hokuto”, you will encounter many rivals, collect memory shards, and ReVIVE the “Hokuto Shinken” martial arts in a new era.
GamePress representative Ranigad (along with Geekset Podcast and Geek Impulse) sat down with Producer of First of the North Star: LEGENDS ReVIVE Kohei Iwamoto at Crunchyroll Expo 2019 to talk about what we can expect from the soon-to-be-released mobile game.
Content Tie-Ins
Fist of the North Star is a very popular franchise in Japan. How well do you think the game will be received in the United States?
As you may know, Fist of the North Star has had previous game titles released for console. I know about how these previous titles were received and what the world-wide reaction to the titles were. Past Fist of the North Star games were actually very well received in North America. I was very surprised that people knew about this title and how high the pre-registration numbers were for our game.
As you mentioned, Fist of the North Star has had previous game titles for various consoles. Did you take any inspiration from these games when developing this mobile game?
Well, one thing that we wanted to do for Fist of the North Star: Legends ReVIVE is that we wanted to try to add as many characters from the series as we could to the cast of playable characters. In fact, we worked with Tetsuo Hara, the manga artist for the original series, on this game and he was very surprised to see the breadth of the playable cast.
With a lot of anime and manga based games in the mobile game market, what is the niche or selling point that sets this game apart?
I believe that if the market and user appeal don’t match, the mobile game itself will not succeed. Since Fist of the North Star is a very classic manga series, everybody has their own Fist of the North Star memories and what the series means to them. Players will be able to experience the series from the very first episode of the original manga story. We hope that by doing this, we will be able to bring back all of these memories to fans of the series.
On the topic of bringing back memories of fans of the series, is there any input or support from the original voice actors or creators of the series?
In the Key Visual, the original manga artist, Tetsuo Hara, drew Kenshiro and Raou from scratch. That’s one of the involvements from the original contributors. Tetsuo Hara is actually still drawing manga but took some time out of his schedule to help us with this.
Also, as you might know, there are a lot of movie cut scenes in the game. For the narration portion, we actually got the original narrator of the anime series to do the narration voice.
You mentioned being able to experience the original story from the very first episode of the original manga story, how far along the story is the game planning to go and how faithful will it be to the original source material?
On the release of the game, if you know the series, the player will be able to follow along the original manga story from episode 1 to the battle between Rei and Raou. Moving forward, we want to implement all of the manga stories into the game.
Gameplay
A lot of games nowadays have events, what kind of in-game events do you have in store for us?
Unfortunately, I cannot discuss too much about the future events we have planned; however, there is a release-day event that I can talk about. As part of the game, you have to create a six-man team to fight with. During the first week after the game’s release, there will be a login event where in-game characters will be given away. That way you can build your six-man team from the very start.
The Fist of the North Star series is very big in Japan. In Japan, September 13th is recognized as the “Day of Hokuto” - Day of the North Star. This day is the day that the original manga was first released. On this day for the Japan version, there will be a giveaway for an in-game playable character as well.
Who would be the recommended the character to choose, who is the badass?
Not actually for gameplay but in the Fist of the North Star series, there are not that many female characters. There is a character called Mamiya, which is a female character in the cast, that I look forward to see in 3D.
For gameplay, if you can get the playable character Rei, he is the badass. And in the original series, Mamiya and Rei had a close relationship so they would make a good combination.
In a previous interview, you have talked about the possibility of cameos or crossover collaborations with other titles such as Saint Seiya or Dragonball. Can you give us an update on that?
Ahhh, well… My feeling towards the collaboration is that I really wanted to do it. However, I think the first step is to make sure that the game is released and succeeds. Once the game is successful, then this is something that I think we can consider more.
I was previously the producer of the Saint Seiya mobile game so I think it will be easier for me to get a crossover for the Saint Seiya and Fist of the North Star franchises.
How about PVP content? Are there any plans for player versus player or collaborative content?
To put it in simple terms, yes.
Will players from one server be able to play from another server?
We have 3 Servers for this game: Japan, US/Europe, and Chinese Server. There will be no crossover between the servers.
Last Words
What is the question you wished you were asked more in interviews and what is the answer to it?
I would have to say, “What is the release date”. Officially, the release date is September 5th in Japan but we would like to do a simultaneous release worldwide, so it may actually release slightly earlier in North America.
What else would you like fans of this series to know about this game?
Well, if you play games on a console, you have to practice your technique to get stronger and beat the game. However, for mobile games, it’s more casual but we still want to bring that sense of progression to the user.
Also, one of the major concepts in Fist of the North Star: LEGENDS reVIVE will be that, like in the manga, Kenshiro attacks enemies with one finger. We wanted to implement that aspect into the gameplay of the game and hope that fans will find it enjoyable.
Fist of the North Star: LEGENDS ReVIVE is simultaneous released worldwide on September 5th JST. You can pre-register or download the game via the following link.
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