As the Mortal Kombat 1 era comes to a close, the wider Mortal Kombat franchise finds itself at a bit of a crossroads for how to proceed after its 2023 reboot. Digital Eclipse, which has handled well-received classic video compilations like Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, has […]
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While the full breadth of the fighting game community came together to celebrate the Evolution Championship Series, more commonly known as Evo, in Las Vegas this August, one developer was particularly prominent and prolific at this year’s event: Arc System Works. The Japanese video game studio had three games represented at the tournament’s main stage competitions – Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, and Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] – and two additional titles as part of the event’s extended lineup – Guilty Gear Xrd REV2 and BlazBlue: Central Fiction. There are more games represented from one company than any other studio at Evo’s marquee competitions this year.
Beyond the main stage and extended competitions at Evo 2025, Arc System Works presence could be felt with its booth on the showfloor, including an early hands-on preview of the upcoming Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, which consistently had the biggest line for curious attendees. The company also announced at Evo 2025 that Guilty Gear Strive, already the franchise’s best-selling title by a significant margin, had achieved a 3.5 million user base worldwide as a testament to its continued popularity. Simply put, Arc System Works absolutely rocked Evo 2025, with company founder, president, and CEO Minoru Kidooka sitting down with Den of Geek at the event for an interview.
“Historically at Arc System Works, we’ve partnered with many different companies and IPs. In the early 2000s, we had Fist of the North Star and Sengoku Basara. We have Dragon Ball FighterZ and Granblue Fantasy Versus,” observes Kidooka-san about his company’s partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment and Marvel Games to develop Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls. “While our flagship titles are Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, [the latter of] which is taking a break right now, those two games being our flagship titles, we still like to do these collaborations with different IPs. We believe that’s part of the continuation of a long process of our efforts to get our name recognition out there and expand our reach globally.”
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That sense of partnership extends to the fourth season of DLC for Guilty Gear Strive, which features the franchise’s first ever outside guest character with Lucy Kushinada as a new playable fighter. Originally from the acclaimed Netflix animated series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, itself based on the CD Projekt Red video game Cyberpunk 2077, Lucy will be added to Guilty Gear on August 21. Lucy’s surprise inclusion in Guilty Gear Strive fulfills a longstanding internal ambition to bring crossover characters to the hit fighting game franchise.
“It’s actually something that we wanted to do since the beginning of the release of Guilty Gear Strive. It was a little bit difficult because Guilty Gear is a big game and its characters have a long history,” Kidooka-san explains. “There are many characters who are not out yet that people really want, but then we need to also introduce new characters. We want to do all those things. We actually wanted to do this much earlier, and we wish that we could’ve done this much earlier, but here we are in Season 4. In the future, if there is another opportunity to bring in other collab characters, we definitely want to look forward to doing that.”
Beyond the wide world of fighting games, Arc System Works has been expanding its library more readily into other genres, including publishing one of the earliest third-party titles on the Nintendo Switch 2, the adventure game Dear Me, I Was…. As part of a fruitful partnership with Technōs Japan, Arc System Works acquired many of the company’s most notable properties, which includes iconic beat ’em ups Double Dragon and River City Ransom. Since this acquisition, Arc System Works is planning for a modern revival of the Double Dragon franchise with Double Dragon Revive, out this October as the company looks to branch further into the action game space.
“We want to put as much effort as we do into these fighting games as we do with these action games, and not just with the legacy titles, but we want to introduce new IPs as well as you might have seen with the June showcase. We want to set up a dual-axis format where, on the one hand, we have the fighting games here, but we’re also pushing action games here as well.”
I’m a self-avowed mega-fan of all things Dragon Ball, including the hit 2018 fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ, developed by Arc System Works and published by longtime Dragon Ball license holder Bandai Namco Entertainment. Arc System Works’ own history with the Dragon Ball franchise stretches as far back as 2004’s Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors. With that in mind, I closed out the interview asking Kidooka-san if he would be open to another Arc System Works-developed Dragon Ball game in any capacity following the success of FighterZ.
“There are a lot of companies out there that are handling the Dragon Ball IP and making games. It’s really hard to find a space within that already congested sphere and find a place for ASW that is not just a fighting game,” Kidooka-san admits. “If Bandai talked to Arc, it would probably be about fighting games, however, as we said earlier, about wanting to expand our brand recognition around the world via action games and less niche genres, our hope is that, one day, they’ll come up and ask us to create an action game or a non-fighting Dragon Ball game. That would be awesome!”
Developed by Arc System Works and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls will be released in 2026 for PlayStation 5 and PC.
Guilty Gear Strive is available now for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Lucy Kushinada will be available to purchase individually or as part of Season 4 on August 21, with a fifth season currently in development.
Double Dragon Revive will be released on October 23 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.
The post Arc System Works Founder Minoru Kidooka Talks Guilty Gear’s Big Addition appeared first on Den of Geek.
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