Persona 4 Arena might be one of the more unexpected spin-offs of a JRPG series that Atlus has ever made. But it seems the idea wasn’t born from a heated higher-up discussion on how to expand the IP’s player base. We can instead partly thank a couple of developers for spending their lunch breaks throwing hands in fighting games. This was revealed during a Persona 30th anniversary roundtable interview in Famitsu magazine issue 1964.
At the time, the then-Persona 4: Golden chief designer Kazuhisa Wada and character designer Shigenori Soejima would often spend their lunch breaks competing in fighting games at Atlus’s office. Writer and designer Katsura Hashino, who regularly saw the pair playing from the sidelines, eventually asked them, “If you guys like them that much, why not try making a fighting game?” As if the wheel of fate were turning, Wada had been thinking something along the same lines.
Wada added that, in the first place, he felt the Persona property would be ‘wasted’ if it remained confined solely to RPGs. And yes, that reasoning is another answer to why the team ended up experimenting with the also-unexpected Dancing All Night spin-off. “For a series to continue on a long run, we need to expand its possibilities horizontally while at the same time moving forward,” he explained, saying that tackling the challenge would be an important learning experience. “Combining a series’ signature elements with an unexplored genre, what kind of synergy would come out of it…?”
From there, the team began seriously considering the idea and decided that, if they were going to do a proper fighting game, they needed to partner with a developer experienced in the genre. Who else but Marvel Tōkon creator Arc System Works? Hashino recalled that they invited a ‘very select group’ of people from the studio to discuss the project, and everyone involved quickly agreed to do it. “It just so happened that Arc System Works had wrapped up its previous work, so they had an open slot in their schedule,” said Hashino. “The timing was perfect. It was truly a stroke of luck.”
The result was Persona 4 Arena, or Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena in Japan, which first hit Japanese arcades in May 2012 before coming to consoles in July. Wada noted that being able to watch live players’ reactions during events and tournaments was a ‘fresh and stimulating’ experience. “[…] For us game creators, having an opportunity to see how people perceive a game that we ourselves made is extremely valuable,” he reflected.
So, yeah, the next time your boss catches you playing games, just say that you’re doing research for the company’s next big project. For more news and interviews, keep an eye on GameObserver.
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