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You know, when I first heard the news about SNK and NIS America’s plans to release their upcoming 2.5D 2-on-2 tag team fighting game “SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy” for PS4 and the Nintendo Switch I got really excited (SNKH: TTF is said to launch during the summer of this year). Why? Because not only is SNKH: TTF a spiritual successor to “SNK Gals’ Fighters“, but I also truly enjoyed the announcement trailer for the game (think “Marvel Vs Capcom 3” but with wifus, and you got SNKH: TTF) .

So as you might imagine. I got somewhat annyoned when I found out about the recent SNK: TTF interview that Game Informer did with SNK’s producer Yasuyuki Oda (Game Informer’s Senior editor Imran Khan handled the said interview with Oda). You see, Gamer Informer’s Imran Khan appears to have been trying to shame Oda about the ladies and fanservice that exist in SNKH: TTF:

“Culturally, where do you think this game actually fits in with a modern, more broad gaming culture? There has been backlash against games of this type that kind of flirt with sexuality as a driving force. Do you think this game follows in that, do you think it bucks that trend?” – Imran Khan

“There is exposure of female parts, but we don’t feel like it’s overly sexualized. It is there, but we want to push the cute aspect of things, the elegant-ness of the women, and we feel like we are able to cull the people that would bash this game for there being too much exposure.” – Yasuyuki Oda

“Do you feel like that the game, with reference to sexuality, tends to respect the characters? Mai has always been a very sexualized character, but for example Leona hasn’t. She’s been a very stoic character, and yet in this game she’s wearing a catsuit in a thong. What would you say to a fan who has loved that character for years, but sees this and doesn’t jive with what they know of that fighter?“ – Imran Khan

“Oda: There’s a reason they’re wearing these costumes. They’re not just wearing these costumes because we wanted them to. There’s a full story behind it which we can’t really go into details about at this moment, but if you play the story I think our fans would better understand why they were put in this situation. We made an effort to make sure the image of our characters will stay the same, even after people play this game.” – Yasuyuki Oda

I don’t know about you, but that’s what it looks like to me, and I’m not the only one out there that thought like that either. In the matter of fact, Imran Khan got called out on Twitter shortly after that his interview went live via Game Informer. Hell, Khan even had people calling him out in the comment section of his own interview with Yasuyuki Oda as well.

So as expected, people started to send even more tweets and comments to Khan where they had him know that it was a really fishy move to try shaming Yasuyuki Oda just because SNKH: TTF has attractive females who wear revealing outfits. I would also like to point out that the SNKH: TTF costumes are rather tame compared to other fan service games (like “DOA Xtreme 3”, for example). Furthermore, in Game Informer’s interview with Oda, Khan stated the following “There has been backlash against games of this type that kind of flirt with sexuality as a driving force”.



Well, as far as I know, DOAX3 sold pretty darn well outside of Japan (Play-Asia broke their sales records thanks to DOAX3), and games like “Gal*Gun“, “Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni“, “Mary Skelter: Nightmares” and “Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash” has done really great as well. Simply put, Khan has no idea what his talking about (I bet that he just tossed those questions in their for his own San Francisco SJW/Hipster agenda).

That’s also why I’m going to try to get an interview with Yasuyuki Oda myself, as I feel like Oda deserves a much better treatment than he received from Game Informer (from my point of view, GI tried to force their agenda and values onto Oda, and I found that to be very insulting). In other words, I will try my very best to repair any potential damage caused by Game Informer (most of the so-called Western games journalists sure isn’t doing the gamers in the West any favours when they pull off stunts like this with game devs in Japan).

So you guys and girls are most welcome to send over any questions that you might have for Yasuyuki Oda. I will then do my very best to get as many answers as possible from Oda =) Oh! One more thing, the Western release of SNKH: TTF is said to be 100% free from censorship. So that’s at least one thing that we should have to worry about.

And with that said, what’s your take on this matter? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below!

Credit:

Hom-Ru-Beoulve

Source:

Gameinformer via Twitter

Gameinformer (“Yasuyuki Oda on SNK Heroines’ Sexualization, Accessibility, And Competitive Audiences” – archived link)

Imran Khan

Niche Gamer (“SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy Will Not Be Censored”)

NIS America, Inc via Twitter

SNK wikia

***Disclaimer***

This is a personal opinion of the writer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the other writers (nor The Gaming Ground´s) opinions.



Robin “V-Act” Ek

Editor in chief

The Gaming Ground

Twitter: @TheGamingGround

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Tags: NIS America, PS4, SNK, SNK Heroines, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, Switch, Tag Team Frenzy, Yasuyuki Oda