Hadouken! Teenage Engineering is partnering with game legends Capcom to bring Megaman and Street Fighter to their Pocket Operator instruments.
The Swedish gear maker’s mobile line always had a lineage from classic gaming – think Nintendo’s Game & Watch series. But Teenagers love Capcom, so they cold-called the Japanese giant and resident game audio guru Tomoya Kishi. Tomoya-san has a resume that includes early work on the Onimusha series and Devil May Cry 4, plus Dragon’s Dogma and the Lost Planet franchise; he now heads up audio design and production at Capcom.
So, of course you get some slick artwork from your favorite vintage Capcom games here. But there’s more integration of the Capcom properties, making these Pocket Operators a hybrid of game, toy, instrument, and tool.
Price of each is price 99€/89$/85£.
PO-128 Mega Man is a synth/sequencer – with the signature handheld Pocket Operator parameter locks, glide control, and punch-in effects.
It’s out on December 2.
PO-133 Street Fighter is a micro-sampler with 40 seconds sample memory – pre-loaded with samples and animations based on Street Fighter. This is a bit like the earlier Rick & Morty limited edition from last year (see our inside look at that), but of course – Street Fighter.
You get the PO-133 even sooner – it’s available starting today.
By the way, for more on Tomoya-san, our friends at Designing Sound did two interviews with him (one a cross-interview of sorts with Kenneth Youn of Sony’s Media Molecule):
Audio Interviewing Audio: Tomoya Kishi and Kenneth Young
Capcom Audio Director Tomoya Kishi Interview
Check out the new series:
https://teenage.engineering/products/po/capcom
Of course, also – videos: