To coincide with the official launch of Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus, TRMK was granted the unique opportunity of visiting the offices of Studio Gigante, makers of the Xbox fighting game. During the visit, we were able to spend a good amount of time playing the game and, more importantly, got the chance to sit down with the MK co-creator and Tao Feng project lead, John Tobias. Throughout the 6 page interview, Tobias answers questions as to why he left Midway and the Mortal Kombat franchise, the inner details of his latest project, and his ambitions for the future of Studio Gigante.

With the current lack of online play in most fighting games, fighting games for consoles have been turning to new ways to keep players interested. What did you do with Tao Feng's single player game to keep players coming back for more?

Tobias: Tao Feng single player game is generally the Quest mode. That’s kind of the method of facing your boss in the game. In regards to online play, we would have loved to have had Tao Feng function online. I think when we started and where Xbox Live was at the time, didn’t coincide with us building the engine. I think that all fighting games at some point have to have some kind of online play ability. There are some latency issues that have to be solved for that to work well. I think that with the demise of the arcade the competitive aspect of fighting games has gone away, but I think online can kind of bring that back...

Check out the full 6 paged interview! Don't forget, major video game-specific retailers like GameStop and Electronics Boutique have received their copies of Tao Feng today and are now being sold across the country.