Go Tell the Spartans: The Making of SlugFest

"Slugfest is a simple codename, and one we came up with to describe a simple enough idea: Incorporate a character from the Halo universe, in the next iteration of the storied Dead or Alive fighting series.

When Tecmo first approached us with the idea, we were a little taken aback. We've seen a ton of Halo fan projects, everything from Red Vs. Blue to a French side scrolling shooter, but Bungie had never actually undertaken any kind of game-related expansion of the story, characters or universe. But this was Tomunobu Itagaki and Team Ninja, so we listened to their proposal very carefully and with a very open mind.

Initially, team Ninja wanted, and asked very politely, for Master Chief. Well, we balked at that. Master Chief is busy, fictionally speaking. We left him at the end of Halo 2, involved in a very large scale galactic conflict with world-ending repercussions. Fictionally speaking, he just wasn't available for fisticuffs.

But we loved the idea of seeing a Spartan fight, unarmed. You have to figure they'd be pretty serious pugilistic contenders right? Half ton of bio-mechanically enhanced armor-clad uber-trained soldiering nightmare? Has to have at least a decent right hook.

So we created Spartan 458 – Nicole. And she's quite a lady. If you define "lady" as ferociously violent killing machine." [more]