Fight Night Round 2 (working title) Q&A

Electronic Arts reinvented its approach to the boxing genre with its newly minted Fight Night franchise earlier this year. The unique and engaging title used an innovative control scheme to put a whole new spin on how you play a boxing game, and it offered you plenty of opportunity to show off your skills with online play on the PlayStation 2. Not content to rest on its laurels, the Fight Night team at EA's Chicago development studios are working on following up that impressive debut with the recently announced but tentatively titled Fight Night Round 2. We caught up with executive producer Kudo Tsunoda and grilled him on what to expect from the upcoming game.

GameSpot: What did you learn from last year's game?

The next Fight Night is coming fully loaded.

Kudo Tsunoda: The first thing was how fun the sport of boxing is to participate in and watch. While I have always been a big boxing fan, we learned so much about the sport working on Fight Night 2004. It is the ultimate head-to-head sport, and the fights have so much more drama than your normal basketball or baseball game. I was also very excited about our ability to give gamers much better control over their in-the-ring character than other boxing or fighting games have delivered in the past. The "total punch control" system was a breakthrough in analog character control. For Fight Night Round 2, we have expanded this system to give you full control of your boxer in the ring using the analog sticks, as opposed to just the control over your punches.

GS: Did you expect such a positive response?

KT: Well, you never really know until you see all the reviews and whether people are excited and picking up the game. But I will say this much: We had a blast playing the game all through development. It is one of the few games I have worked on where we were all avid players even after the game shipped. With the amount of control you have over your character, and the depth of boxing tactics that evolve from the controls, the number of approaches you can develop while playing is endless. Even though we all worked on the game, there were still tons of new things we could learn while playing. This type of evolving, skill-based gameplay is what keeps games fun. So we really hoped people would appreciate the game like we did, but still, you never know for sure.

GS: How did you approach this year's game?

KT: Our approach for Fight Night Round 2 was simple: Do not be satisfied with just iterating on the previous game. Innovate in the areas of boxer control, gameplay, and graphics. Make a game that delivers to fans of the Fight Night franchise software that builds on last year's game, but also delivers innovation and an exponentially higher level of fun. As big a jump as it was from the old Knockout Kings series to Fight Night 2004, we have made an even a bigger jump in quality from Fight Night 2004 to Fight Night Round 2. I am really excited for people to be able to play the game and see all the fun new features we have added since last year.

Fans of Fight Night 2004 will be pleased by what its sequel holds.

GS: The total punch control system worked beautifully. Will you be changing it at all?

KT: Like with most things in the game, we have kept the great parts of Fight Night 2004 and built on them. Total punch control gave you analog control over your punches. But we did not do as good a job of giving you total control over you boxer. There were things that you could not do with last year's control setup that limited the fun factor in the game. First of all, you could not in any way control the power of your punches in Fight Night 2004. This is a critical element of boxing--choosing on each punch whether to throw a quick, light punch or a slower, more-powerful punch. With the new "EA Sports haymaker" system, you can now add extra power to your hooks and uppercuts and try for a one-punch KO. The more power you add to the punch, the easier it is to defend or counter.

You'll also have a lot better analog control over you boxer in Fight Night Round 2. In last year's game, you could not move any of your boxer's body parts simultaneously with others. If you wanted to throw a punch, you had to stop moving. If you wanted to block an incoming punch, you had to plant your feet on the canvas. You could not move your feet and hands at the same time. In actual fights, footwork is used to set up your punches and as your primary means of defense. Boxing tactics like "stick and move" involve punching and moving, which, again, is something we could not do in last year's game. So, in short, you'll still have total control over your punches in Fight Night Round 2, but you'll have a lot more control over your boxer, and the power of your punches, all through the analog sticks.