Suda’s 2005 GameCube collaboration with Shinji Mikami was a violent action game with heavily stylised cel-shaded visuals and a deep combat system, clearly laying the path that No More Heroes would travel. So everything began with Touchdown – except that perhaps it all started with Killer7. “He’s a very human character, and one that fits within an action game.” If I had been an American otaku, what kind of life would I have led? Of course, I’d have been a top-ranked assassin,” Suda laughs. “I wanted Travis to be like a big schoolboy who sometimes jokes around and is sometimes deeply serious, and who loves to fight,” Suda tells us in the meeting room of Grasshopper’s Tokyo office – itself as cluttered with character figures, DVDs and pop-culture ephemera as Touchdown’s own motel room.