Few developers are crazy enough to make a brand-new, original, 2D fighting game in this day and age — and even fewer developers are gutsy enough to release said 2D fighting game in Japanese arcades. But that’s exactly what developer FK Digital did in 2011 with Chaos Code, and now that it’s finally available in the U.S. for PS3 on PlayStation Network, I took the opportunity to chat with director Mickey Lin on what inspired him to make Chaos Code, and how it has done over the last two years in Asia.

Patrick Miller: Is FK Digital a new development studio? How large is your team, and what other games have you worked on?

Mickey Lin: We are originally from Sydney, Australia, we are about 6 years old, and we started working on Chaos Code as our first major project from Sydney for the first 2 years. As you can see, Chaos Code’s art styles are targeted at the Asia region, but we found that it is hard to do it in Australia since the artists’ style are more like those western comics, so we decided to move to Taiwan to continue our project. Also, I was born in Taiwan, so we chose Taiwan as our second base.

When we first started in Sydney, we only had 5 staff members, including me and my 2 brothers, and after we moved to Taiwan we had about 7 employees. For myself, I really feel it is amazing that we only had that many people to make such a big project like Chaos Code! Now we have 13 employees.

Chaos Code was first released in Japanese arcades at end of 2011, and just like other fighting game, we have continued to update it until now. Besides Chaos Code, we also work on 3DS download software, and PlayStation Mobile. We will be starting some new project on the PS Vita and maybe PS4 very soon.

PM: You first launched Chaos Code in arcades two years ago. In the US, practically no one makes new arcade releases — what was it like releasing in arcades in Asia? Did you do better or worse than you expected?

ML: In the beginning, when we were still in Sydney, Chaos Code was a online PC game project; we made all the network-related functions, such as the online shop, in-game message, mail, and even a team-up side-scrolling action modes like the classic “Final Fight”. In 2008, we presented it to some online game publishing company in Taiwan to see if they are interested to release it, but the result was not that good. Fighting games just weren’t suited to Taiwan’s online game market, so we decided to switch to the arcade platform.

In order to start it, I went to the Japanese arcade show AOU to do some research of those upcoming fighting games. That’s when it hit me: “Oh! My god! Chaos Code is going to be placed together with those games in the same game center!”

I felt a lot of pressure, and that made us decide to restructure the whole game, including the art and system, and we were asked (from the release dealer) to add 3 more characters. It was really a tough job; not just the game design, but also the change of the arcade market in Japan also affected us a lot. We were planning to release Chaos Code at the end of 2009, and right when we thought everything was going fine and ready, our publisher AMI suddenly collapsed, and we had to look for other dealers. Finally, we got to release it in 2011 with SEGA.

However, I feel we made the right choice to switch to arcade. The redesign, changes, and players’ expectations are what make it Chaos Code today.

PM: How has your PSN release in the US gone? Have you seen more American players picking up the game?



ML: Before we started Chaos Code, we were making a free PC fighting game called Super Cosplay War Ultra (SCWU), and I believe it has big group of fans from Western countries. There are some fans that realize that Chaos Code is also from us, and after the arcade version release, we kept receiving a lot of requests to release Chaos Code to US region or PC. And finally on September 2013, we made it on PS3 (PlayStation Network). And I am really happy to see that there are still lots of 2D fighting game fans around the world!!

PM: Which games inspired Chaos Code? Why did you decide to make a fighting game? Is it hard to break into fighting game development as a new studio?

ML: Let me start with why I decided to make a fighting game: Street Fighter II. I am very sure that everybody who had gone through the SF2 generation all had the same dream: “I want to design my own fighting game characters.” I especially liked to draw and design characters since I was in junior high school. But what really impacted me was Darkstalkers: The chain combo system and the smooth animation really showed the revolution of 2D fighting games. And a few years later, Guilty Gear X gave me the second impact. The improvement of graphic resolution, and the flexible air combos, and the characters’ animation are all just like the cartoon you watch on TV. “I want my character to move and be controlled by a player like that”, I thought, so I quit drawing CG, and I even skipped school, to spend all my time doing the character pixel art and animations and learning to use the 2D fighting game tools with my brother to start creating our own fighting game.

I would say everything is hard to start, and especially entering this market with an original IP is even harder. But Chaos Code really brings players a “whole new feel of fighting game,” just like its slogan.

As for what really inspired Chaos Code, I want to say it was the “Super Robot War” series, because we were beginning from SCWU and SCWU was inspired by it.

But Chaos Code itself was inspired from Guilty Gear X and Mark of the Wolves; from GGX, the animated character style and flexible combo systems, and from MOTW, the very simple game system and control. A player can learn the game very fast, but it takes a long time to discover the game’s full potential. This is the game I want to present for players.

The first time I heard this question from media was back to the second location test at 2010 in Japan; at that time, my answer was Capcom vs. SNK 2. As I said, our general concept was more close to the Capcom and SNK game styles. But nowadays I see those players’ crazy combos, and I am sure that Chaos Code is inspired by Guilty Gear X series.

PM: How popular has Chaos Code been so far among tournament players? Are people playing the game at a high level? Have you seen players doing anything you didn’t expect?

ML: I feel we are doing well in Japan’s arcade market. Even though Chaos Code is not a very major fighting game like SFIV or BlazBlue, we do have a huge group of fans!

Last year there were more then 10 arcade game shops that organized an all-Japan tournament called the “CHAOS CODE CRAZY CHAOTIC CARNIVAL” together, and it had about 400 players join it!

And players’ levels are actually higher than we expected. Our general concept for Chaos Code was more like a King of Fighter 98 or Street Fighter Alpha 3 gameplay with Guilty Gear X graphics, but you can see those tournament and combo movies on the Internet, and they are nothing like KOF or SFA3. We could never imagine Chaos Code could play like this when we were creating it. But this is what we want to present to players; the real fun of video games is to let player to discover the game themselves. When I go to Japan, I will visit those arcade centers. And if they have Chaos Code tournament running, I will join it, too. But I always get my ass kicked by those players, they are just too good!