Fairy Tail Game Producer Discusses Lessons Learned From Past Anime Games

Koei Tecmo will finally be giving Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail franchise the console game treatment with a new release on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch sometime next year, and there’s quite a lot of fan anticipation building up for its eventual release. But if there’s any company that knows about adapting anime into video game titles, it’s Koei Tecmo and they have stored up all kinds of knowledge across their staff and production teams as to what really makes an anime game click. This must be especially important for a massive franchise like this one.

Speaking with ComicBook.com, Koei Tecmo producer Keisuke Kikuchi discussed what the team at Koei Tecmo has learned from past anime video game releases and what they will be bringing to the new Fairy Tail game as a result.

As Kikuchi explained, the many examples of anime video game adaptations they had on their hands helped to ease producing this title, “[W]e had a wealth of past examples to refer to. First and foremost, was the technical know how of bringing the 2D characters to 3D models and breathing life into them. Other facets like game progression, and facets of characters we need to concentrate on were other things we took from other titles and proved to be invaluable for this title.”

This even bled into how the game is played, as adapting the many attacks from the anime and manga series had to be worked into the overall balance of the game, “[W]e look at whether [magic attacks] appeared in the original manga or anime to begin with. Those are included in the game, and we also look into whether it was depicted as a powerful magic attack in that. Game balance wise we look into what kind of allocation or selection would work out.”

Series creator Hiro Mashima also proved to be a great asset too as he was heavily involved with much of how the game was developed. From helping to choose which story arcs to adapt, which characters were playable, and even some more surprising bits, Koei Tecmo has taken a lot into account when developing this upcoming game.

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.