The hotel in No More Heroes is also a movie reference.
“It’s modelled after the room Guy Pearce stays in during Memento.”
He loves anime.
“Our publishing company in Japan is Marvelous Entertainment, who do a lot of popular anime shows. I always wanted to do an anime show with them. I finally got to do it when I made No More Heroes 2.”
His in-game anime show is called Bizarre Jelly.
“I wrote the scenario myself. It’s sort of a parody of Pretty Cure, which is an anime about magical schoolgirls. I had to laugh when I saw it for the first time, the characters’ breasts were so big!”
Travis uses Bizarre Jelly catchphrases when he kills someone.
“He’s so obsessed with the show, he steals their lines! ‘Raspberry chocolate sundae!’”
Bizarre Jelly was supposed to be in the first game.
“I didn’t get the idea until near the end of the first game, but they said we’d run out of money. This time we made sure we had the money up front.”
His biggest regret about the No More Heroes series is a musical one.
“I really wanted to include the Stranglers song that inspired the title in this second game, but the rights are just so expensive.”
No More Heroes 3 won’t appear until the next generation of Nintendo console has been released.
“As long as this one sells enough copies!”
He’s an Anglophile.
“I saw England as a magical place. In fact, London was the first place I ever went to visit overseas – it inspires me so much.”
He’d like to set a game in England – but not London.
“To be honest, The Getaway really put me off, so I’d rather set a game in Manchester, in the Factory Records era.”
British music was his first love.
“In high school, my friend was a really big fan of the band Japan [who were, ironically, from Britain]. So I really got into them, and New Romantic bands like Duran Duran, then bands like Joy Division and The Smiths.”
He used to dress like a New Romantic.
“I actually dressed like Duran Duran – I had the hairstyle and everything.”
