At PAX East 2012 last weekend, we had the opportunity to go toe-to-toe with Goichi Suda (a.k.a. Suda 51), studio head at Grasshopper in Japan, after our hands-on demo of Lollipop Chainsaw. If you read our preview (coming soon), you’ll know that the game… piqued my curiosity, to say the least.
Naturally, we were curious about what the ideas and influences were behind the game. It’s not every day that you see a blonde, chainsaw-wielding cheerleader fight hordes of zombies with her boyfriend’s head strapped to her waist.
However, Suda 51 is known for his madcap ideas. Titles like Killer 7, No More Heroes, and Shadows of the Damned have all been heralded as some of the zaniest games the industry has to offer. So how does he think up these concepts?
“Almost every factor is in my mind all the time,” said Suda when asked about all the wacky inclusions in Lollipop Chainsaw.
“I wanted to make a game with a cheerleader, and then also, I wanted to make a full zombie game. I got an image of this girl with a chainsaw, and then one night everything just came together in my head,” he said playfully.
For a while now, Suda’s games have felt like playable American grindhouse exploitation genre films. We asked if he was a fan of the grindhouse sub-genre, and more specifically of Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror.
“Yes, yes!” he said excitedly.
"I love those ridiculously violent types of movies. Those movies aren’t scary, but they’re funny!” he added.
We went on to talk about the possibility of PlayStation Move support being featured in his upcoming zombie romp. Grasshopper’s 2011 collaboration with AQ Interactive brought PS3 owners No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise support for Sony’s motion controller; Maybe Lollipop Chainsaw would get surprise Move support like some other games coming out this summer.
“No,” he said. “As a developer, this is not something we decided to do. Of course I’d be interested, but if it were to happen, we’d have to make it really fast.”
Lollipop Chainsaw will be out on June 12, and 15 in North America and Europe respectively.