During his time at Sega, he worked on the groundbreaking 3D brawler Virtua Fighter, a title which would lay down the blueprint for future entries in the genre. He then joined Namco and was instrumental in the creation of Tekken and Tekken 2, two games which many people consider to be on par with – or even superior to – Virtua Fighter.
After leaving Namco, he helped to establish the Square subsidiarity DreamFactory, which would create the 3D fighters Tobal No. 1 and Ergheiz.
In a new interview with 4Gamer about his career, Ishii reveals that Tobal No. 1 was originally envisaged as a Chrono Trigger fighting game.
As we all know, Tobal No. 1 featured character designs by the late Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball and lead artist on Chrono Trigger. "When we were establishing Dream Factory, in discussions with Square, I said, 'I want to work with Toriyama-san,'" recalls Ishii.
"It was around the time when Trunks was active in Dragon Ball Z, and I wanted to work with a character like that. However, at first, we were planning to make a fighting game using characters from Chrono Trigger. So while we were prototyping, Toriyama showed up and said, 'I'll draw new ones.'"
Would you have liked to have seen a fighting game in the Chrono Trigger universe? Let us know with a comment below.
