We sat down with Guilty Gear Strive’s 2D artist, Shoichi Kitazono, and environment artist Genki Mamada, to quiz them about what exactly goes into creating the visuals for a fighting game. is the latest installment in the beloved anime fighting game series, hailed throughout the community for its heavy metal soundtrack and eye-popping artwork. Arc System Works, the game’s publisher, is known for crafting gorgeous visuals that blend elements of 2D and 3D animation for a unique look that’s difficult to replicate.
We got the chance to sit down with the minds behind Guilty Gear Strive, who let us in on some of the unexpected work that goes into creating such an intricate-looking game — and one of the most interesting answers came from Strive’s environment artist, Genki Mamada. Mamada told us that one of the biggest challenges in creating stages for fighting games is working with the system’s camera. In 2D fighters, players really only get to move right, left, up, or down in a two-dimensional space, which imposes some interesting limits on the artist making it.
“For fighting games, the biggest thing is camera work, actually,” he said. “It’s in a fixed position, and you can only really slide from one side to the other. That’s a really particular point when making fighting game backgrounds.
Even if you have a 3D background, there’s only so far that you can slide, and only so far that you can show depth and detail with that. “You’ve gotta be able to make it.