While players competed for prizes and bought early copies of the game at the Nintendo World Store's launch event for Monster Hunter Tri, Nintendo World Report had a brief interview with Ryozo Tsujimoto and Kaname Fujioka, the producer and director of the game respectively. Tsujimoto worked with the series since the start and worked with online games at Capcom since they took off. Fujioka started as an art designer at Capcom working on fighting games, and soon led the "Monster Hunter team" as a director for the console releases and as a supervisor for the portable ones.

Nintendo World Report (NWR): What makes you confident that Monster Hunter Tri will be a hit with North American gamers? Do you think they will take to it in the same way that Japanese players have?

Ryozo Tsujimoto (RT): After the release in Japan, a half year has passed. We were able to introduce the Wii Speak feature and this game has a very strong co-op mode, which is very popular in America. Also, in addition to the online features, the home game console is very very popular in North America rather than the portable compared to Japan.

In the market, I'd say, considering all that, it's made for the North American audience. Not specifically, but we all thought about the Western audience a lot and then we made changes according to that.

I'm expecting the game to be as successful as it is in Japan.

NWR: Will there be any kind of "International Edition" that will include the changes made in the North American version? Was there anything that didn't make it into the North American version?

Kaname Fujioka (KF): There weren't a lot of changes made between the Japanese and the North American versions. There are some weapons you can get that were originally created based on the tie-up with the Japanese press. Some of those are not in the U.S. version. Instead of having those, we have community weapons, designed by the Capcom Unity people. So, as a substitute, we put those into the North American version.

NWR: One of the parts of the Monster Hunter series that gets maligned is the camera controls. How do you feel the North American audience will respond to that?

RT: The camera control part of the game is a very important part of the Monster Hunter experience. It kind of adds character and fits well with the whole gameplay system. It might be a little bit complicated, but for those people who have trouble controlling the camera and moving at the same time, we have added support for the Classic Controller Pro in Monster Hunter Tri. You can use the analog stick to control the camera, whereas before you had to use the D-pad to change the camera, which makes the gameplay a little complicated. Monster Hunter Tri reflects the opinions and requests from the users, and so we added the Classic Controller Pro to aid that.

NWR: Have you tried the GameStop demo? If so, do you think it is representative of the full game?

RT: The Monster Hunter has a strong feature as an action game, and then you can make original weapons and you can customize your own character. For the demo, we focused mainly on the action part where you actually slay the monsters. For the actual game, there is the customization added, and a lot of people enjoy the game solely for that.

NWR: Where do you think the series is going to go from here?

RT: This is kind of a difficult question to answer because you always have to be aware of where the current market is to release a game like Monster Hunter because it has a strong focus on online play and multiplayer. It really depends on the whole audience. If the gamers are really into it, then you have to put certain features in, and based on that, you have to select a console.

There's not much we can tell you specifically at this point, but we'll continue on with research and how the users like the game and try to reflect their ideas.

Thanks to Tsujimoto-san, Fujioka-san, Capcom, and FortySeven Communications for the interview!