Guilty Gear Creator Thought He Was Done With Fighting Games In 1998

Illustration for article titled iGuilty Gear/i Creator Thought He Was Done With Fighting Games In 1998

Illustration: Arc System Works

Guilty Gear creator Daisuke Ishiwatari has held multiple major roles on every game in the series since its 1998 debut on the original PlayStation. But in a newly surfaced interview, Ishiwatari seemed hesitant to commit to any future fighting games, let alone the multiple Guilty Gear sequels he’s developed since.

Shmuplations recently translated a pair of extensive interviews conducted by the now-defunct PlayStation Magazine and Dengeki PlayStation with Daisuke Ishiwatari and Guilty Gear programmer Hideyuki Anbe as they promoted the then-upcoming game. In the former, Ishiwatari is asked about the potential of Guilty Gear sequels, and his answer is pretty funny in retrospect.

“At the moment, I’m not thinking about [sequels],” Ishiwatari reportedly told PlayStation Magazine. “The backstory we wrote has enough for a trilogy of games, but right now I don’t ever want to make another 2D fighting game! (laughs) If I did, I’d want to make something brand new, with nothing carried over. We may end up using the Guilty Gear world in some other media form, though, I can’t rule that out. Whether that will be a game or not, remains to be seen.”

After the 1998 original, Guilty Gear would grow to be developer Arc System Works’ most prolific franchise. A direct sequel, Guilty Gear X, released to arcades in 2000, followed by Guilty Gear XX (which continued receiving major updates for a decade) in 2002, Guilty Gear Xrd: Sign in 2014, and Guilty Gear Xrd: Revelator in 2015. And that doesn’t even count spin-offs like real-time strategy game Guilty Gear 2: Overture, handheld fighter Guilty Gear Petit, and the four-player Guilty Gear Isuka, all of which Ishiwatari had some part in developing. Guilty Gear Strive, technically the fourth official game in the series, is set to launch in 2021 under his guidance.

Ishiwatari is something of a renaissance man as far as modern game developers go, with experience in both technical programming and artistic contributions like music and character designs. That said, he isn’t very good at predicting the future, even when it comes to something as near and dear to his heart as Guilty Gear obviously is.

source: gamezpot.com