Did you know? Capcom wanted to do Alpha 3 instead of HD Remix; they scrapped 2,500 animation frames in development
Posted by Jon 'Catalyst' Grey • January 16, 2017 at 5:35 p.m. PST • Comments: 112
Capcom actually wanted to remake Street Fighter Alpha 3, instead of SSF2T, according to the game's lead designer, David Sirlin.
"We eventually did start talking about new version of an old Street Fighter and they weren't really sure even which one.
"I specifically pushed for Super Turbo and I told them that. Super Turbo, there's just several reasons why you should choose that one," Sirlin said back in 2008.
"And also even if you wanted to do Alpha 3 the number of characters are so large that it's an even bigger project," he added.
Sirlin was asked why the company wanted to pursue Alpha 3 instead of SSF2T, at the time.
"[Capcom] just really liked Alpha 3! It has all these different versions, and it's been ported to PSP, and Anniversary Collection, every time they add some new features to it and add some new characters to it," he said.
"I don't know, I guess they think it sells well. Maybe the really casual crowd likes that game but it's mostly rejected by the hardcore crowd," noted Sirlin.
"I said my advice is to start with Super Turbo because it's the first in a progression, it's a good game and I know a lot about it so I'm going to be the most effective on that one. And they did," he concluded.
Scrapping 2,500 frames of animation in HD Remix
Later on in 2012, several years after HD Remix was released, Capcom USA's Senior VP, Christian Svensson, talked a little about the game's development — most notably that they had to scrap 2,500 frames of animation due to quality concerns.
"I can't overstate what a tricky project HDR was," Svensson wrote.
"I'm happy with the outcome (critically, community wise, sales wise) but it was a really hard tightrope to walk and some points in development were really scary (like when we threw away about 2,500 frames of animation in various stages of completion because we weren't happy with them and started again)," he said.
HD Remix had a pretty interesting development process, and we wanted to share these couple tidbits to clue readers in on some of the history that lies behind this franchise.
Sirlin quotes from VideoGamer.
