We’ve learned that original Power Stone creators want the series to return, and they’ve even decided what platforms they want to release a new Power Stone game on.
Both Hideaki Itsuno (main designer on both original games) and Takeshi Tezuka (producer on the first game) were interviewed by The Guardian, where they talked up the series inspirations, its inception, and how they’d like to see it return someday soon.
“I still get messages from fans about the game. People tweet requests to me to make another Power Stone, which I’d love to do if I got the chance. It would be a particularly great fit for the Nintendo Switch,” Tezuka said.
Tezuka talked up the game’s overall design and aesthetics. “We weren’t just aping current trends or reiterating what had come before, and that has contributed to its lasting appeal.” Power Stone went on to get a sequel, a re-release for the PSP, and even an anime series.
Itsuno talked up the inspirations behind the game, noting the 19th century setting was to offset the boring nature of the modern world.
“I was going to go with a modern-day setting to appeal to as many players as possible,” Itsuno said. “But modern-day technology lacks a certain flair – there’s just no romance to it! So I went with the 19th century, before such technology became ubiquitous.”
Itsuno was heavily influenced by Jackie Chan and Indiana Jones movies he watched when he was a child. “It seemed to me to be the kind of positive setting anyone could feel excited about,” he added. The giant boulder motif in the Tomb Area stage still lingers with me, to this very day.
Itsuno also talked up his pedigree on fighting games prior to conceiving Power Stone, and how he adapted Capcom’s fighting game DNA into a fighting game that more than just hardcore fighting game fans could play.
“Working on 3D fighting games taught me how to retain the satisfying gameplay of a 2D fighter while providing the freedom of moving in a 3D space,” he says. “But one of my aims with Power Stone was to bring my experience to something that would be well received by players other than just hardcore fighting fans. Fighting games had become incredibly niche, and ordinary gamers were no longer able to keep up.”
Would you like to see a new Power Stone game? Or perhaps a collection re-release for Switch? Sound off in the comments below!
