Interview by Brian C. Bessemer
Francois: Before
going to Sega in Japan, I was working for a small 'coin-op' company in
South of France.During my spare time, I developed a new interface between
players and coin-op games. The French company I was working with was too
small to handle this project so I did a videotape, then sent to SEGA in
Japan. They contacted me soon after and arranged for an interview in
Japan. Everything went well, and I began working with them soon after.
Over there I developed the camera system and the collision system for
the coin-op version of Virtua Fighter and did a little work on Virtua
Fighter 2 (ported my collision and camera system to the new board, plus
some stuff they didn't include (weapon...)). After 2 years in Japan, I
joined Atari.
Can you tell us about the progress of the Fight for
Life project, when was the decision made to revamp it, etc.?
I started working on
Fight for Life in May '94 and finished it in December '95. I was
Director, Designer and Lead (only) coder of this game. I know that
some people were kind of thinking that this project was late and slow
to come but I don't. 18 months to handle and code such a project on
a platform you have never work on before is not bad. (I am sure that
it will have been faster for me to have developed a 2D shooter or
whatever.)
...The decision of 'revamping' the product is more a marketing
expression than a real decision.What happened is that some people
in Atari showed this product way too early (less than 6 months into
development) and gave it to some magazine. We recieved a lot of bad
reviews at this time (when we should have just seen
previews...) and the people who made the mistake decided to
say to the press that we were revamping the product, when we were
just WORKING on it. So those people covered their asses by blaming
our work... Just a normal day at Atari...
...I gave Atari the final version of the game a little bit late. I
was supposed to give it to them December 15th, 1995, and receive my
check at the same time. The check wasn't ready so I didn't give them
the game... It took them 4 days to get my check.
What's the storyline behind FFL?
In FFL, the character
you are playing is dead, and stuck between hell and Earth. If you
win the tournament your character will go back to Earth. If not...
directly to hell.
Is the format CD or cartridge?
The game is a
cartridge.
How many megs (please specify megabits or megabytes)?
4 Megabytes (32
Megabits.) The latest count I did, after decompression, had a little
bit more than 14 megs of data in the cartridge.
How many fighters can a player choose from?
The player can choose
between 8 different characters.
What are their names?
Pog, Muhali, Kara,
Jenny, Lun, M.J., Kimura, and Ian.
Do they employ different fighting disciplines? How
many special moves per fighter?
At
the beginning of the game, each character gets basic moves and 5
special attacks.
Are they mainly projectile moves, special kicks,
or what, and what about finishing moves... are there any?
There are projectile
attacks in the game but no finishing moves.
Are there any bosses, non-playable fighters,
or hidden characters?
There is a 'morphing'
boss that you can play.
Presumably, this is one of the first titles to ever
develop the idea of 'stealing' moves. Is this actually in the game
and can you elaborate any?
While some polygon fighters are merely 2D fighters
viewed in 3 dimensions, others actually simulate 3D environments.
What about FFL? Does a player have freedom to move out of the way or
attack from the side?
In FFL the player can
side step, giving him more control in the 3D environment.
I've heard that FFL won't allow 'ring outs.' Instead,
fighters approaching the edge are dealt damage in some fashion. Are
there really no 'ring outs' and how does the fighter receive damage?
There are no ring-outs
in the game, but I'll let you discover what we did instead.
How are the camera views? (I always thought the views
in Toshinden were too far away.) Do the views change often?
You can select your own
camera view and customize it. If it's too close for you, just zoom
out. If you don't like the angle, modify it.
The major 3D fighters currently out there all control
very differently. What about FFL? What type of button configuration
is used and does it support the Pro Controller?
The special moves in
FFL are done via joystick/button combinations: motion, motion, ...,
motion, action. We also do use some of the Pro Controller.
Does FFL include a combo system and, if so, are combos
achieved trough series of well placed attacks or are they pulled off
more like special moves (a-la Killer Instinct)?
Yes, there is a combo
system. In order to pull off a combo, you must do a successful attack,
then link it to another. In easy mode the combos are pulled off by
repeating the same joystick combination after each successful attack
of a combo move (there is a maximum of 3 attacks in a combo). The
joystick combinations change in regular mode.
Some of the most recent screen shots I've seen show off
beautiful texture maps and colors. They're so dramatically different
than what we saw 8-9 months ago that it has become commonplace in the
Atari community to refer to FFL as 'Fight for Life Extreme.' What
kind of color depth and resolution did you work with?
The resolution in FFL
is 320x240 in 65,536 colors.
How polygons per second (or per frame) could you get
out of this title?
It's very difficult to
tell you how many polygons there is per frame, because the polygon
count is different depending on the fighter. Each fighter is between
600 and 800 polygons.
What's the frame rate?
The game runs at up to
25 frames per second.
Is there music during game play? What styles?
Yes. There is, if I
remember well, 19 tunes in the game. You can select the one you like
and change it whenever you feel.
I've heard that the announcer's voice in FFL is
incredibly deep and 'evil' sounding. Any comments?
The 'announcer' is
supposed to be the Gatekeeper... very evil.
When FFL makes it out, it's going to be up against some
tough competition. Toshinden, Virtua Fighter 2, and Tekken currently
rule this genre. What advantages or disadvantages do you think FFL
will have compared to those three?
The main disadvantage
of FFL, when you compare it to the competition, is the platform it's
running on. I think that I really pushed the Jaguar hard with this
title, but after just 1 and a half months on the Playstation, I can
tell you that the Jaguar cannot compare on the 3D side. There is a
lot of cool stuff on the Jaguar, but it's certainly not the 3D.
Anyway, I am happy with FFL. From my point of view, I achieved the
goal I had set at the beginning of development.
In the many years that fighters have been around,
numerous clones (both 2D and 3D) have made into this market. How
much longer do you think fighters will remain popular? Isn't it
time for the industry to move on to something new?
Fighters are always
going to be popular amongst players. I don't know about developers,
though, as I am sick of them right now.
Finally, you had previously mentioned that you're now
with Activision. What kind of games can the industry expect from you
in the near future?
Activision is a great
company. I am working on the PSX, not on a fighter, but still on a
'human being simulation' which is kind of my field now. The game is
looking good so far, and should be out in march 1997. More
information about that later...
- INTERVIEW WITH FRANCOIS BERTRAND -
Brian: First, Francois, a little about you... from what
I understand, you were with Sega at one time. What did you do for
them and what else had you done before working with Atari?
Whenever you beat one
of the computer opponents, you can steal 2 of its special attacks,
improving your character fight after fight. You can then use, via a
password, your own designed character against the computer or any
human player.