Blade Arcus director speaks for the first time

Toshinobu Kondo, from Studio Saizensen, spoke for the first time as the director of Blade Arcus last night on the official Blade Arcus stream.

Summary

• He designed the protagonist of Umihara Kawase series (1994, Super Famicom).
• He was into Street Fighter II back then. He even bought a cabinet of SF2 Dash. It cost around 250,000 yen which was a lot of money to him.
• He used to play World Heroes and reached 3rd place in a tournament.
• He was a Ken player in Super Street Fighter IV who used to reach Asia 20th place on Xbox Live (ranking).
• The pace of Blade Arcus was intentional. The damage output is high just like 3D fighting games or old-school 2D fighting games. (Blade Arcus' default format is FT3 which is unusual for a 2D FG) This puts the pressure on the players.