Fairy Tail Game Producer Reveals How They Chose Which Story Arcs to Adapt

Koei Tecmo will be publishing the very first console game effort for Hiro Mashima's Fairy Tail series, so there's quite a lot of fan anticipation riding on the upcoming title. It's quite a massive franchise with an even more massive story, so it must have been difficult to choose which arcs in particular to bring into the new game. Speaking with ComicBook.com, Koei Tecmo producer Keisuke Kikuchi opened up about how the team chose which arcs to bring into the game and broke down a lot of the elements behind their choices.

Kikuchi explained that looking through the series as a whole, two huge fan-favorite arcs stood out in particular, "We looked through various arcs and storylines and determined that the best place for the game to cover would be the Grand Magic Games and Tartaros arc."

Elaborating further, Kikuchi revealed that playable character choice and fan requests played a huge role in what stories to cover, "...we know there are characters that fans would like to play as in the game, so in essence, the best place to start would be in the middle of the franchise where some of the very popular characters have already made an appearance. That's one side of it."

The story arc choice plays into what fans will be able to do in the new game as well as rebuilding and expanding the Fairy Tail guild will be a major focus of the upcoming title, "...seven years from Tenrou Island, the guild is all rundown with the remaining party, and they need to restore the guild to its former glory. So in this game, one of the core systems is the guild's development and expansion. That works really well as game mechanics for this title."

As for what went into how Koei Tecmo adapted the series, Kikuchi revealed that series creator Hiro Mashima and its publisher Kodansha had a huge say in everything too. From what the stories cover, playable characters, and even fan service scenes. Fairy Tail's first game is hoping to explore as much as possible!

Fairy Tail's big console debut does not have a concrete release date as of this writing, but is currently slated for a release on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch sometime next year. Fairy Tail was originally created by Hiro Mashima for Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine, running from 2006 to 2017 and selling over 60 million copies. The series is set in a fantasy world full of magic following Natsu Dragneel, a fire breathing wizard with the powers of a dragon who is in search of his missing foster father, the dragon Igneel. As he and his wizarding guild Fairy Tail get into adventures, Natsu always tries to find a way to succeed. The series was later adapted into an anime by A-1 Pictures, Dentsu Inc., and Satelight in 2009 and ended its first run in 2013. A second season ran from 2014 to 2016, and the third season brought the anime to its official end.