Hi All. My name is John and I am the resident fighting game nerd at Ubisoft. I have been playing fighting games such as Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Guilty Gear, and many other fighting games since I was a wee lad of eight.
I have been heavily involved in the fighting game scene, going to EVO many years in a row and travelling across the country for major tournaments. I've even gone to Japan to play versions of games we don't yet have here in the states (well not just for that but you get the point). I'm glad to be able to bring you some additional insight on what we at Ubisoft were considering when bringing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up together.
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When we first started, we were obviously looking at Super Smash Brothers as the development team working on this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up worked on Super Smash Bros. Brawl as well as Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, however, a lot of us over here actually have a good deal of experience playing other fighting games as well. So, we also looked at other fighting games that don't really resemble what we wanted to eventually create. We looked at many different fighting games when brainstorming concepts for TMNT: Smash-Up's combat system which ranged from Street Fighter II to Tekken.
One of the first titles that came to mind was Power Stone. I remember playing this game in the arcade back when it first came out, about a year or so before it finally came out on Dreamcast. This game was leagues ahead of the rest at the time in terms of interactive elements and destructible environments. In Power Stone, the player was able to pick up pillars and smash opponents with them, as well as collecting the power stones themselves for awesome power ups to the character. When we were considering how to design our stages in TMNT: Smash-Up, we looked to some of the stages we liked most in Power Stone. There are also ninja magic power-ups which allow the player to perform some pretty impressive ninja moves such as fire-breathing!
Another big influence came from the Soul Calibur series. Now granted TMNT: Smash-Up is pretty different from those titles, they had one major similarity: all of the characters have weapons. Soul Calibur was a weapon-based fighter, and in that way was very different from the other very popular Namco fighting game series, Tekken. Weapon clashes and huge, broad sweeping attacks were the centrepiece of the fun factor in that game.
I remember the first time I did Nightmare's f,f+ B overhead spinning slash. Slamming my opponent into the ground and back at the same time felt so awesome. In that same way all of the characters in TMNT: Smash-Up were designed with weapons in mind as part of their main fighting capacity, so in order to properly design the combat system and its feel, we looked at SC for examples. You'll see that in TMNT: Smash-Up, in comparison to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a lot of the special moves in this game are very broad, have a great deal of range and are fun just to watch.
Donatello obviously can use his bow to reach his enemies with wide sweeping attacks. Raphael can perform very fast sweeping strikes at enemies although he has short range, much like Taki from Soul Calibur. Leonardo is known for his traditional moves and has some surprising long range moves. Even Splinter in his old age can do some pretty impressive sweeping attacks, much like Yoda. He's quite fast for such an old guy.
In the end, you can do much more interesting things with a weapon than you can do with just your body alone. That is definitely clear in TMNT: Smash-Up.
We also looked at the Virtual Fighter series. VF is definitely considered to be a more hardcore fighting game, so there are no environmental hazards that affect the players while they are trying to perform their moves. However, there are small rings with no walls to allow for ring-outs. With this in mind we still wanted to have some interesting environmental hazards. This makes the playing experience very different depending on the stage selected.
As a result, in TMNT: Smash-Up the player knocks other players into the pits between the buildings. They can also use wall jump attacks to shoot across the level and slam the opponent to the ground, and if timed right, they can knock their opponent right into the jaws of an alligator!
