Afro Samurai: Huge Namco Bandai Interview

Everything you need to know about this promising slasher in our interview with Namco's Daryle Tumacder and Kevin Chadaine, including cartoon violence censorship, Samuel L Jackson voice acting, and games enhancing source IP.

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Kikizo: What can you tell us about the Surge studio who are working on this?

Tumacder: It's an internal team in California. They're a newly formed team, specifically for this game. A lot of them were from other projects either out of the company or some of them were on, say, Pacman or something like that.

Kikizo: Did you bring any staff over from the Japanese end?

Tumacder: Towards the middle and the end of the project we had some programming help from the Japan side. Everyone's really pulling together for this game because it looks so good, it feels really good to play. A lot of people believe in it, so we got help from everywhere.

Kikizo: Did you give Afro Samurai to a US-based team to make it more western?

Tumacder: I'm not sure why, but I'm glad they did because I got the job on there... [laughs] I'm not sure if there was any reasoning behind where the team was located. But it was more popular in the west when the anime came out, so...

Kikizo: You've played through the game a few times I imagine. How long will it last for the average player?

Tumacder: For a novice player, I'd say it takes about 6-8 hours to play, because there is some learning to do, there are some puzzles in there... It's not difficult to learn how to do the combos, but there are going to be mixes of enemies that are fairly difficult, and we wanted to have that urgency in there. Because towards the end of the game we want to prep them for the Number One headband mode, so we do have to make it slightly harder obviously.

Kikizo: Are there boss battles?

Tumacder: There are bosses in the game - Justice, the guy who killed Afro's father, that's a boss battle. The Sword Master is another one. And each of these boss battles, there are different ways to kill them - they're also teaching you things. When you fight the Sword Master, it's teaching you things you need to use later on in the game as well.

Kikizo: How many different environments are we going to see throughout the game?

Tumacder: There's a desert, a mountainous scene, a snow area, there's a square, there's a town area, there's a forest area... and all of these are here just because they were part of the anime series. Really all of the scenery from the series we're trying to expand to make a level.

Kikizo: Some actors do voice-over work better than others, regardless of the quality of their screen acting, because the energy doesn't always transfer over. But with Samuel...

Tumacder: Oh man, I wish I could have been there for his voice recording sessions. They were telling me that he had a very minimalist script, just the gist of what he wanted to say, and when he reads he just embellishes everything. He loves the game too so he was having fun, really being the Ninja Ninja character.

Kikizo: Is there plenty of swearing in it?

Tumacder: Yes, there's plenty of swearing, plenty of very Samuel-esque swearing. He drops the F-bomb a lot - his way, not just dropping it for the sake of dropping it...

Chadaine: Regarding voice-acting, the Sword Master who teaches Afro is actually voiced by the guy who does Kratos' voice [from God of War]. And we also got Joe DiMaggio from Futurama - Bender's voice.

Kikizo: Thanks for your time.

Afro Samurai hits North America on 27 January, 2009 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Interview by Adam, words by Edwin.

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