Capcom producer Daizou Nonaka is back with his thoughts on pro-wrestling
Hi everyone! Capcom producer Daizou Nonaka with you once again.
Finally, we are back! It’s been such a hard wait, but it’s because of all our patience that we are able to have matches once again. We gutted through this long 110 days and our reward is the joy of having matches once again. Taking punishment and not giving up, to keep finding your feet, that’s the very spirit that professional wrestlers embody.
So, let’s get to it! The real thing I want to talk about this time is SHO’s brand new Tshirt! If you read this column, or follow me on social media, you know that I draw quite a lot of pixel art. Drawing SHO in pixel art eventually opened the door to this awesome collaboration tee.
One thing that really hit me doing SHO’s pixel art and helping with the shirt was just how cool his ring gear is. His sprite has a really distinct look, and that’s nothing to do with my artistic ability; it’s all in how distinct SHO’s gear is. So let’s take some time today to think about wrestlers’ costumes and how they connect to video games.
The ring gear of today is very different to what it used to be. When I started watching wrestling, a lot of guys had to express their individuality in the ring while only wearing monochrome costumes; or at the very most, ring gear with two or three colours. Now, wrestlers’ looks are much more diverse, with so many different colours, lettering, logos, and different fabrics on ring gear.
Back in the day, if you had any lettering on costumes, it would be very plain and simple; Shiro Koshinaka would have the one kanji for ‘warrior’, or Big Van Vader had that simple VADER TIME on his singlet. Now, there are different messages, fonts, designs. It’s a whole different world.
Design resolution
Visual design in vieogames and wrestling evolved along similar paths. Back when we were making games for NES, characters wouldn’t have mouths or noses, and you’d have two colours or so to distinguish sprites. Mario was red and blue, Luigi was green and white. With today’s technology, those characters appear an emote in much more realistic, humanlike ways. We’re really not limited by the number of sprites or colours on screen at once, and that’s informed design.
So to bring this back to wrestling, what has pushed costume design forward? Yes, technology and skill in design, but that isn’t the reason. In my view, it’s all down to the fans. Pro wrestling as a medium is about showing fans something. Costume and design have evolved to match the way fans take in the action. Fans take in wrestling mainly through video and photography, and in both aspects, a key word, and a key area of progress is ‘resolution’.
Take the world of video. We now have 4K TV sets, and YouTube displays videos in 60 frames per second. That means that images are sharper, and with smoother frame rates, you can see every detail of a wrestler’s gear, even when they’re moving quickly. Photography has changed in the years since I started watching, too. What used to be shot on film and printed is now digitally captured and displayed on monitors or high definition devices. I really think that this has allowed wrestlers to show the fans more through their ring gear, and it’s pushed the visual design of pro-wrestling greatly.
The next step is just around the corner, in the form of 8K. 8K is four times the resolution of 4K, and a massive 16 times more detailed than 1080p sets. It isn’t science fiction, either; these sets are already being sold, and content produced. Maybe a few people reading this have an 8K display already, and when the Tokyo Olympics finally take place in 2021, they’ll be a huge testing ground for widespread 8K broadcasting.
How will 8K inform ring gear? There’s no end to the ideas I have. You could have so many more different kinds of fabric, different shades of colour. How about having holograms on the ring gear itself? Or colours that change depending on entrance timing, or body temperature. You could even use the wrestler’s costumes as a background for CG imagery that changes in real time! I can’t wait for the brave new world of high res pro wrestling!
Daizo Nonaka is a veteran videogame producer and wrestling fan. He’s been part of the game industry for over 36 years, and has worked extensively at Capcom producing the Mega Man series among others.
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