Inti Creates Discusses Scrapped Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 Ideas, Amiibo Possibility

In a recent interview conducted by Nintendo Everything, the developers at Inti Creates sat down to discuss a bit about their Azure Striker Gunvolt series. Among many other subjects, director Yoshihisa Tsuda and producer Takuya Aizu talked about the original concept of the game, various ideas that were ultimately scrapped from the final product, and also the potential for a Gunvolt amiibo.

Here’s just a few excerpts from the interview.

Nintendo Everything: Going back to the origins of Azure Striker Gunvolt, where did the concept come from? What were you hoping to achieve with that game?

Tsuda: Gunvolt was our contribution to the effort of reviving the 2D action game genre. We’ve had a lot of ideas for action games that built up over the years, so you could say that Gunvolt is a combination of those ideas. I played a lot of games in the past, and when playing these games I would always think “how would I take this one step further to make this even cooler?”. A bunch of those ideas went into the Gunvolt games. So, rather than creating a completely original type of game, you could say that I wanted to take the evolution of action games to the next level.

As for the concept of Gunvolt, on one front, I wanted it to be a side-view style action game that reflects the kind of fun that could be had from those types of games from the 1980s that sent a message to the gamers of today, particularly elementary-school aged kids, based on the worldview that we created for the game. (Although, it seems that our original targeted audience didn’t seem to be fans of the game, hehe…)

NE: Were there any ideas scrapped from Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 that you can share with us?

Tsuda: In the earlier days of Gunvolt 2’s development, we originally going to make Copen the only playable character, with a mask-wearing Gunvolt appearing as the new top dog of the Sumeragi Group (the evil organization from Gunvolt 1). He would be in the game as a boss character, appearing before Copen in mid-air surrounded by 1000 Glaives that he would use to transform. If you beat Gunvolt, he would be unlocked as a playable character, but due to varying circumstances we changed things to what you see in the game now.

There was another big idea that we had that we unfortunately had to scrap. For Copen’s robot companion Lola, we were going to have her completely change her design in her humanoid form (instead of her robo-ball form) whenever she changes the EX Weapon she is using. She could get a ponytail, long hair, completely different outfits, and more; even changes to her voice. Unfortunately, the workload for that was just too much, so we scrapped that idea.

NE: Have you ever considered producing a Gunvolt amiibo?

Tsuda: Even though we begged on our hands and knees (ok, maybe not that much) to make the possibility of being able to include a Gunvolt amiibo with a special edition release of the Guvolt Striker Pack happen, our wishes smacked headfirst into the wall of reality and didn’t end up coming true. I will keep the dream alive of one day being able to put a Gunvolt amiibo inside one of those plasma globes, though.

To read the entire interview with Inti Creates, you can go here.

Azure Striker Gunvolt is available for Nintendo 3DS and Steam on PC.