Tecmo Koei Was Seriously Thinking About Making Zombie Warriors

Koei Canada was formed to develop games for Western markets. The studio made Fatal Inertia and later tried to make a Western Warriors game. Before they settled on Warriors: Legends of Troy, Zombie Warriors was being considered.

"Before we made Warriors: Legends of Troy, one of the ideas we had at the time was a zombie warriors game. There were ideas like that on the table," Dynasty Warriors director Akihiro Suzuki said to Siliconera.

As a series, Dynasty Warriors continues to grow in Asia, especially Japan. However, the series seems to have shrunk in the West since some games like Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires were only released as digital downloads.

"Yes, in Asia the series is really big. In the West, there has been a decline, but it isn’t a steep drop. It seems like general users have declined, but core fans are still interested in the series," Suzuki confirmed. I asked how he plans to expand the Dynasty Warriors brand outside Asia. "It’s going to be difficult to gain new users from the story itself. We’re focusing on action elements, adding new weapons to Dynasty Warriors 8 and different attacks each weapon can do. When you think of Chinese history it’s mostly swords and spears, but Dynasty Warriors has many different weapons and I think we can refine the action elements to make the games appeal more to Westerners." Suzuki also said doing collaborations like the 7up armor costume for Dynasty Warriors 8 helps bring attention to the series in Japan.

It seems like there are always more Dynasty Warriors games and Suzuki is always working on an expansion, a port, or the next main title. Since Suzuki worked on other games like Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll and Bladestorm, I asked if he ever gets tired of making Dynasty Warriors games.

"Yeah, like you said I have made different games like Trinity [Souls of Zill O’ll] and Bladestorm. These haven’t been as successful as Dynasty Warriors, though. I do try to new things every once in awhile and I would like to try different things, but I know my strentgths are with Dynasty Warriors," replied Suzuki. I followed up and asked if he would created a new IP for the coming generation of consoles. "I can’t make any official announcements, but it is something I’m considering."