tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66485879053944532462024-03-21T12:47:00.597-07:00SFKOFFFUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-9076128489975088102022-06-06T17:58:00.007-07:002022-06-06T18:09:30.979-07:00Roster reviews, Street Fighter series part 1<p>This is just me noodling around with the rosters and discussing how much I like (or don't like) the various characters and why. Not sure how this will play out. I suspect I'll get the first Street Fighter game done. As we get further along, the rosters get significantly bigger, but they also feature significantly more repeat characters that I won't have to redress again and again. Chances are I'll be able to get two games in most posts at some point. When I'm done, I'll switch to either Fatal Fury or King of Fighters and do the same thing.</p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">I</u>. Street Fighter I introduced us to the original playable characters, <b>Ryu </b>and <b>Ken </b>(and for years, we pronounced it RAI yoo like Ryan with a different second syllable, in this and other games that used the same name, before spergy, weeaboo nerds and beta nitpickers had to try and "correct" us by saying REE oo or ree YOO or however exactly they pronounce it. Which is equally incorrect from a Japanese standpoint, I'll note, but I don't care—I don't speak Japanese, nor do I care to. In English, it was always RAI yoo, and it will remain so to me.) In retrospect, they don't seem like the most auspicious of characters, but when you're pioneering an entire genre, you can get away with fairly vanilla designs, because they haven't been done before. When the fourth or fifth game in a row tries to make copycat Ryu and Ken characters, that's lame, but when the <i>first</i> one does it, they become icons.</p><p>None of the other characters were playable, of course, so in some sense they don't count. However, many of them have <i>become</i> playable over time, so they're worth bringing up. When playing you must pick either Japan or the USA as your first country to go to. If you go to Japan, you face <b>Retsu </b>and <b>Geki</b>. Retsu is the iconic cloistered monk martial artist, which is a stereotype that dates back to early Hong Kong cinema movies of the 70s at least, if not even earlier. He's never appeared in anything else, doesn't even have any special moves that I can remember, and is pretty non-memorable, even given the context in which he appeared. They've tried to link him to various characters in the backstory by saying he was friends with Gouken or Oro or Dhalsim, and that he was excommunicated from his temple (which is curious, since that's his stage) but none of those appear in the game, and they feel like much later after the fact desperate attempts to make him interesting. Geki appeared on the shores of a lake or bay with Mt. Fuji in the background at sunset, and was a pretty classic 80s ninja, with throwing stars and everything. Today, the 80s is far enough away that it probably feels like a foreign country to people who didn't live through it, so you'll have to take my word for it that the 80s and ninjas had some major mojo together, which always made Geki mysterious and cool. It's a bit of a shame that he's never really made any other appearance except in non-canonical comic books and mangas, etc. Not only did he throw stars, but he had a claw-like weapon (less dangerous looking than Vega's, though) and could teleport very short distances. All part of the Shinobi mystique of the 80s. And maybe that's why he hasn't reappeared. He's kind of a dated, frozen piece of 80s pop culture, even in Japan, I suspect.</p><p>If you picked the US, on the other hand, you fought <b>Joe </b>and <b>Mike</b>. Joe was extremely anonymous; he's a blond spiky haired guy, like a potato-faced Billy Idol. He's got red pants and sneakers, and is shirtless. It's believed that he's based on Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, who was a popular competitive martial artist. Joe features Benny's real life signature move, a spinning reverse kick, as his only special move. He may also be based on the kickboxing legend Joe Lewis, who was supposed to appear with Bruce Lee instead of Chuck Norris in <i>Way of the Dragon</i>, but couldn't due to a scheduling conflict. (He actually beat Norris in at least one championship. He's considered the father of martial arts in the West.) But all that backstory aside, and we certainly didn't know any of that in 1987, he's just kind of a boring character. Mike was clearly based on Mike Tyson, although he just wears a red t-shirt and faded blue-jeans with tennis shoes. Although his story and appearance are almost identical to that of Balrog, Capcom have always insisted that he is not the same character. However, in SFV, one of the alternate costumes for Balrog is called "Mike-like" and he looks just like him. If you play the SFI version of arcade mode, he's one of the characters you could face as well.</p><p>After beating both of those countries, you have to pick again between China or Britain. If you go to China, you face <b>Lee</b>, a character who's never appeared again. While probably based on Hong Kong cinema characters like Li Shuwen or Beggar So, he comes across as just a generic Chinese guy to Western audiences. Again, Capcom have referred to him obliquely here and there in the backgrounds of almost every other Chinese character (apparently only about half a dozen people live in China, and they all know each other or are related) but this comes across as special pleading. <b>Gen</b> is the other character you fight after him, and this is the same Gen as appears in the Alpha series and Street Fighter IV and a brief cameo in Street Fighter V. His design is based on a very popular martial arts movie character (in turn based on a historical figure, but his interpretation here is much more informed by the movies) from several movies from Hong Kong, Bak Mei. Of course, he's developed more on his own within the Street Fighter franchise, but he's always hewed close to his source material in many ways. His pressure points <i>Fist of the North Star</i> type kung fu is also heavily influenced by cinema and manga, making him a bit of a classic of Oriental entertainment. Granted, you don't see a lot of that in the first game; it comes out more in the Alpha series. In typical "lost in translation" fashion, the fact that he's a serial killer and gang member doesn't mean that he's not a hero to Oriental audiences, something which Udon has occasionally struggled to reconcile in their comic book interpretation of the story, in which he had to be a criminal "in remission" who Chun-Li berates for his criminal past. No such vibe was present in the original, because hey! Surprise, surprise: diversity means <i>actual difference </i>and Oriental audiences have a different moral compass by which to judge his actions than Western audiences.</p><p>If you go to England, on the other hand (or after you've defeated China, when you have to go to England) you'll face <b>Birdie </b>and <b>Eagle </b>(no idea if the avian theme was on purpose or not. Or maybe it's a reference to golf.) Birdie has appeared in three subseries, and changed his appearance drastically in that time. In the first game, he's a white guy; a pretty typical punk from the English punk rocker scene from the late 70s or early 80s; tall, muscular, clad in leather and and with a blond mohawk. For some reason when he appears in the Alpha games, he's been race-swapped and is now a thick-lipped black or maybe high yellow man with a super-exaggerated and physically impossible mohawk with a hole in the middle of it, and bizarre mutton-chops. His signature move gradually becomes throwing out chains and grabbing you with them and slamming you around, while in the first game he only uses them sparingly in a single grab and squeeze move. By the time SFV rolls around, he's become extremely overweight and gross and is played for grotesque comic relief in a way that is typical for Asian entertainment, but which doesn't translate very well to the West. Eagle, on the other hand, is a butler who uses two nightsticks, or side-handled batons. Sometimes they're called escrima or tonfas, but in nitpicky fashion, those are not all exactly the same thing (although very similar) and given his British background in the 80s, I think the nightsticks make the most sense (although given that Capcom is a Japanese company, maybe the tonfas do.) He was originally intended to be an homage to a bodyguard character from <i>Fist of Fury</i>, but he seems to have migrated with his minor appearances in CvS2 and the handheld SFA3 game to being more clearly based on Freddie Mercury. Sort of. His more elegant dress and appearance is supposed to be a counterpoint to Birdie's cockney punk appearance. Either way, the Japanese interpretation of the English doesn't seem particularly flattering.</p><p>Finally, if you beat all eight fighters at all four of the countries, you travel to Thailand, where you face the final two: <b>Adon </b>and <b>Sagat</b>. Both are fairly well known; Adon also appeared in the Alpha games and SFIV, although he looks pretty different, and Sagat appears in every SF series except III (and, as far as we know, VI, although that's not out yet at the time of this writing.) Both are meant to be Thai Muay Thai boxers. However, it's worth noting that neither one of them look very much like an ethnic Thai. Adon would be abnormally large for a Thai; he's bigger than Ryu and has spikey red hair. He dresses like a traditional Muay Thai boxer; shorts, wrapped wrists and ankles, no shirt, and with a headband. In later appearances, this spiky hair turns into a bizarre flattop that looks like an ironing board, but it remains red, or even more orange-ginger like the Weasleys. If Adon is big, red-headed and white-skinned for a Thai, Sagat is even more freakish. At supposedly 7'5" and quite lean, muscular and healthy (i.e., doesn't exhibit the side effects of gigantism), he's a freak of nature for <i>any</i> population group, especially the notoriously short and slight Thais. Although normally bald and somewhat brown-skinned, there are some alternative costumes that show Sagat with reddish-brown hair. I'm not sure what to make of all of that other than that Capcom and/or the Japanese in general don't really care about ethnicity at all, or their art style just kind of ignores it. Sagat also has solid white eyes in most appearances. Or eye, rather; he has a patch over one eye, of course. Sagat's an interesting character; he went from being a pretty one-dimensional "I just want to be the strongest" boss in SF1 to becoming an angry mobster who wants revenge in SF2, to gradually becoming a more honorable rival to Ryu, who felt really pushed by Ryu's own skill to becoming much better himself in later games (even Alpha, which is a later game than SF2, but which takes place earlier.) By SFV he's ended his association entirely with Shadaloo, and his place as one of the three lieutenants to Bison is taken by F.A.N.G. instead. This was good character development for Sagat, but of course, F.A.N.G. is literally one of the worst characters ever developed for SF, so we lose otherwise. The rehabilitation of Sagat is a curious one, because it seems that with Street Fighter in general, over time, they are reluctant to make any character too evil. Even Akuma has some redeeming moments. Bison seems to be the only one immune to this treatment, but a lot of other former villains end up being simply rivals over time. SNK has done something similar with a number of Fatal Fury and King of Fighters characters; Billy Kane being a notable example, or even Iori Yagami.</p><p>For the most part, the characters that never really left the SFI realm: Joe, Mike, Retsu, Geki, Lee, and Eagle <i>belong </i>in that left behind pile and its probably good that they looked for more inspiration elsewhere. Eagle maybe had some potential, and Geki is one that I've always had a little bit of interest in, being a much more iconic shinobi character that anyone else in the series, including even Ibuki and Guy. They could have maybe gone somewhere, but didn't. Sagat is a total winner as a character; there's nothing not to like about him. Adon and Gen are... OK although it really took Gen's strange rivalry with Akuma to make him pop. And, of course, Ryu and Ken are iconic and over time have developed into really interesting characters with the time and attention they've gotten over the years. Birdie started off fairly generic, and actually got <i>worse</i> with time, to the point that I actively dislike the character now, and feel kind of irritated with what they've done to him, especially in the jump from Alpha to V.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-18372587283165852022-06-06T12:43:00.014-07:002022-06-08T05:38:26.863-07:00SF6 reveals and series retrospective<p>Over the last few days, Capcom released a Street Fighter 6 trailer. Almost immediately after, a bunch of character design, and probably the majority of the launch roster was "leaked." I say "leaked" in scare quotes, because both Capcom's and the access media's reaction to the "leaks" don't seem consistent with a leak, but rather with a planned promotional stunt. That's obviously very circumstantial, but I think it's more likely. We'll see. Maybe they'll admit to it down the line. In any case, the leaks have been confirmed, pretty much, by Capcom themselves as being real, and they did so without any hint of regret or even "aw, shucks." I think we can count on them. And the access media would <i>never</i> have posted the details of, or even talked about, the leaks if they were genuine leaks that Capcom wanted to suppress in any way. The only other explanation, and I think it's less likely, is that Capcom just decided to roll with the leak and accept it immediately, and even use it promotionally the best that they could. In my experience, there's hardly a company in existence with judgement that good or that quick, and Capcom themselves have demonstrated repeatedly that they don't have it. I still think the "leak" was a planned promotional supplement to the official trailer is the most likely explanation.</p><p>In any case, before I talk about the content that we now know of for SF6, let me give a real quick summary of each of the SF subseries, how they were supported, and what they mean in relation to the new material. This will give us some context. I'll even hit SF1, even though it's not very relevant anymore.</p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter [1]</u> The first Street Fighter game, released in 1987, set the stage for what the game series would be in terms of 1x1 martial arts competitions and traveling around the world. It also introduced the main characters, Ryu and Ken--initial main antagonist Sagat, as well as their basic special moves, like dragon punch, fireball and hurricane kick.</p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter II</u> However, it wasn't really until the release of Street Fighter II in 1991 that the series hit high gear. I'll only briefly mention this, because it's kind of obvious by now, but Street Fighter II's building off of the foundation of SF1 is what defined the entire fighting game genre. Multiple characters, with multiple playstyles, an arcade ladder through a progression of characters, and then bosses (or at least <i>a</i> boss. Street Fighter II has three sub bosses, and later in its life-cycle, a secret extra boss too), snappy trash talk between matches, and the brief story endings that actually gave each character some... well, some character development and personality other than just as a collection of moves or as a tactical set of options. SFII was obviously a huge hit; it's credited with, like I said, creating the fighting game genre almost overnight, with saving the arcade business model for at least a few more years, and it sold over 6 million copies on the SNES alone during the 90s. By any standard whatsoever, SFII was a significant success.</p><p>While iterative patches and additions seem to be more closely associated with computer games at the time, which you would buy and then also buy expansion packs and expect patches of broken things, SFII tried to pioneer a similar strategy in arcades, releasing iterative updates to the game, starting with Champion Edition which added a second color so you could play two player matches with the same character, as well as making the four bosses playable, increasing the available character selection count by 50%. I suspect an unintended side effect of this was the paradigm at Capcom that they didn't have to get it right the first time; every Street Fighter subseries afterwards, except IV, seemed to have varying degrees of botchedness to their roll-out. </p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter Alpha</u> You'd expect SFIII to follow SFII, but actually it didn't. The Street Fighter Alpha series followed SFII, on the same hardware as the latest SFII iterations, and in the same style as new (at the time) comic book style or anime-like games such as Darkstalkers and X-Men and Marvel Superheroes, which Capcom also made as SF-like fighting games starting in the mid-90s. The first Alpha game was released in 1995. Although super moves had technically debuted (at least on Capcom games; SNK games had developed them first) in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, the Alpha games made them more integral to the experience and were built around the concept that expected you'd use them. A "cool play budget" of sorts was created wherein you'd charge up your super meter, and then spend it on either alpha counters or super moves, depending on what you thought you needed and what made for a cooler play at the time. The first game in the series was pretty bare-bones, but Street Fighter Alpha 2 was meant to "replace" that in the canon, and it perfected the mechanics as well as bulked out the character select roster to an acceptable level. (It also had greatly improved stages.) Street Fighter Alpha 3 added a number of other characters, and did a fairly radical tear-up of many of the Alpha 2 mechanics. Some fans consider this a step-backwards, as they quite enjoyed the Alpha 2 gameplay, while other fans (myself included) consider Alpha 3 as by far the best of the Alpha subseries and possibly the best of the entire Street Fighter series, at least to date when it was new. (Curiously, many people also consider Capcom vs SNK 2 one of the best games of this general era, and it played very similarly to SFA3.)</p><p>Another interesting aside is that the Alpha series, which was a prequel to Street Fighter II, brought in a number of both Street Fighter I characters and Final Fight characters, as well as a number of stages that represent Final Fights setting of Metro City, clearly establishing that both games take place in the same continuity. It also had a number of unique new characters that were Alpha only characters added, like Karin or R. Mika, for instance.</p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter EX</u> in 1996, game company Arika, under license from Capcom, created some 3-D polygon games for the arcade, but especially geared towards porting to the PS1, which was the most popular game console in the world at the time (actually, that's still true today.) Frankly, I think the polygon-based fighters from this era are really ugly and haven't aged well, but SFEX never seemed to really catch on at all, when games like Virtua Fighter, Tekken and Soul Edge did. But even those are ugly in their early iterations. This is probably best viewed as a strange dead-end spin-off rather than a part of the series overall. The characters that were unique to the EX series do not belong to Capcom anymore, and have popped up more recently in Arika-produced games like Fighting EX Layer.</p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Crossover Titles</u> In 1996, Capcom also released X-men vs Street Fighter, which combined sprites from the X-men game with those from the Alpha games, but which ramped up "superhero-like" mechanics, including much flashier super moves, super jumps, and character tag-teams. This series, or perhaps family of related series, continued for some time and likely distracted Capcom from its core Street Fighter titles. There were four games in a vs. Marvel crossover titles, and two in a vs SNK series. While the vs SNK titles retained a very Street Fighter like feel, tone and roster of characters, with Capcom vs SNK 2 in particular playing very much like Street Fighter Alpha 3 in many ways but with better graphics and many redrawn sprites, the vs Marvel games always had a very different feel and honestly gradually migrated away from Street Fighter in many ways, instead adding tons of characters from other Capcom games.</p><p>This sub series, after lying fallow for the better part of a decade, was rebooted after the successful launch of SFIV, including three more Marvel games, vs. Tekken games, and more. Of course, by now, character crossovers are pretty commonplace. Ryu appeared in Super Smash Brothers. Terry Bogard seems to be making the rounds all over the place, appearing in Fighting EX Layer, another Super Smash Brothers iteration, and more. There's even a girl version of Terry who popped up in weird spin-off SNK game. </p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter III</u> Talk about a botched launch! In 1997, Capcom put out the first Street Fighter III game. In a YouTube video I made a year or two ago, I pointed out that while Street Fighter II sold over 2 million copies to home consoles, SFIII only sold 100,000 across its home console release (which was limited to the Dreamcast.) It has since, especially in its third iteration, Third Strike, had a bit of a renaissance, selling in decent (although unknown) numbers since in compilations and in other "retro" guises, and it has some fans, certainly. I do <i>not</i> however, believe that it has pulled in casuals; I think the community of fans around Third Strike are more competitive and online players, and I think the numbers are still woefully behind what II and IV sold. There's a number of reasons for III's relative failure: <b>1)</b> crappy characters that nobody liked, and the elimination of almost all classic characters. Even in Third Strike, we only had four legacy characters, and of the III unique characters, only a few have managed to stand out as keepers from all three iterations of the game: Dudley, maybe Yun and Yang, and <i>maybe</i> Elena and Makoto and Ibuki. <b>2)</b> the villain/boss was absurd, and is nothing at all like the classic iconic-ness of M. Bison. True; M. Bison has been used enough that he needs to be retired, but Gill was a joke. <b>3)</b> the game play was quite technical and focused on fundamentals relative to Alpha 3. While I can understand why its fans think this is a good thing, even they, if they're honest, have to admit that that's poison to casuals and broad appeal. One of the greatest features of SFII was that <i>anyone</i> could sit down and play it and do... OK, at least, even with no experience at all. Capcom focusing on the hyper-fan and the competitive "fighting games community" is a major mistake. I've seen guys make the sensible point that using trophies as proxy for data, we can infer that ~85-90% of people who've bought the game do not play any online or competitive content. That was a vast mistake on the part of Capcom to assume that that's where the customers were, and they've made that mistake more than once (see below.) <b>4)</b> The look and feel of the game is very dated. Now, personally, I like 2-D animation, and I'm glad to see that it's made a come-back. There's a kind of timeless quality to good animated 2-D games that polygon 3-D games (especially from the mid to late 90s and early 00s) simply do not have. Nowadays Tekken 2 or 3 looks incredibly dated, while Streets of Rage 4, which is even more cartoony than SFIII, admittedly, looks amazing, but Streets of Rage could, with a little bit more pixelation, have been made 25 years ago. I think there's now an appreciation of some of what SFIII did visually, although at the time, I think it was under-rated and under-appreciated. Certainly by games journalists and professional reviewers, if not necessarily by the fans. But the fans probably did too (I think Tekken leapt to the top of the popularity charts for the genre because of its accessibility to new players more than its graphics, though.) But, <b>5)</b> presentation-wise the rest of SFIII isn't very good either. The colors aren't nearly as bright and often look strangely muted or grayed out and the music is absolutely terrible. Not only did it sound terribly dated almost as soon as it was released, but it only appealed to a niche market even in the mid/late 90s.</p><p>To me, the poster child of the mistakes of this sub-series is the parry. While there's nothing wrong with the idea on its face, the reality is that there was a fairly steep learning curve to figuring out how to be any good with a parry, and it was designed to be a move the converted fights of the more traditional mold into something that resembled a fast-paced chess match. Again, I can see why people who love it do so, but I don't know if the people who love it can see how it reduced the gameplay to something that only a relatively tiny niche were ever going to find very intriguing. But it did. And both Capcom and this niche exist sometimes in a bit of an echo chamber, where Capcom caters to that niche, and only hears their voices, and then wonders why the vast majority of their would-be customers are getting turned off and put off. </p><p>I'm very concerned that with SFV and (possibly) SFVI, Capcom seems to be reliving the same mistakes that they made with SFIII. With SFV, they kinda/sorta fixed it, but also not really.</p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter IV</u> After SF3 had a botched launch, the Marvel license expired so the popular Marvel vs games had to end, and SNK went bankrupt so that the SNK vs games also had to end, Capcom seemed to put very little effort or attention into fighting games, which of course meant that their early 00s efforts after those series were poorly received because they were poorly made. The entire genre, at least with Capcom, went dormant for a number of years until one passionate middle management employee's personal crusade came true and he was put in charge of developing a sequel. This was 2008's SFIV, which is widely credited with reigniting the entire genre again. Coming out on the PS3/XBox 360 generation, the games used 3-D models (much improved from the early Tekken or Virtua Fighter days) but with a very traditional 2-D Street Fighter-esque gameplay. SFIV eschewed the overly technical gameplay of SFIII and feels much more like a spiritual successor to the Alpha series, although I don't mean to imply that it played exactly like them, of course. In addition to many other improvements, it had pretty cool remixed "techno" versions of classic musical themes, it had much more colorful and "Streets of Rage 4" like looks to the characters and their stages, there were quite flashy additions to the special and super moves to make them really look like they had some weight, but not the crazy spastic feel of the Marvel vs. games. Some of this was very stylized, like the appearance of brush ink-strokes or splashes in the air briefly when certain moves are performed. And the roster! Admittedly, because I missed the PS3/Xbox 360 generation, I only picked this game up relatively late when it was on Steam with almost the final update already available, so I've <i>only</i> known it with a roster in the mid-40s or more, but even at launch, it had a decent amount of characters available. Many characters were new to this iteration, and while those were pretty hit and miss (El Fuerte and Rufus being the biggest misses; Juri and C. Viper being probably the biggest hits--unless you count the Oni and Evil Ryu versions from this game, which were significantly different than what we'd seen before), and I think every iteration needs to stretch out beyond the classics and try to add something new.</p><p>In short, SFIV was familiar to old hands, and yet fresh and new. It was accessible to new players as well as offering depth to returning players. It was everything a SF game should be, and its sales numbers attest to that. It was a resounding success, it kicked off an entirely new generation of fighting games in its wake, both within and without Capcom. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best SF game of the entire series.</p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter V</u> Even with the best of intentions a launch can be botched. 2016's SFV was a game that seems to have been botched not because Capcom had a bunch of bad ideas (although it did have some) but because they simply weren't able to meet their timeline. SFV launched <i>without any real single player content</i>, with an impoverished roster, and with a gameplay that was more of a spiritual successor to SFIII than to Alpha or IV. Even now, I feel like it gets too caught up in wondering what the "fighting game community" is doing while forgetting that roughly 85-90% of sales go to people who don't belong to any such community. With a defensive "watch your opponent for an opening" flat gameplay that's more technical than IV, while being different yet again from III, it took many iterations and several years before Capcom had a game that would have any appeal to the big market of SFIV players, and by that point, they'd probably already lost most of them. As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and three years later is way beyond that chance.</p><p>In addition to a botched launch with almost no meaningful content and a focus on only a small niche of their potential market, SFV had other problems as well. The migration of console generations should have ushered in a much better-looking product, and yet in most respects, the game is considerably uglier than its predecessor. Some of this is technical; extremely plastic-looking models and really bad clipping and janking issues with hair and clothing in particular, but most of it was simply art direction and style. The characters looked like strange clay-shaped caricatures or cartoon characters rather than the rather attractive and cool looking comic-bookish look at SFIV had had. Some of the designs almost looked like the designers hated the character and hoped to sink him into obscurity (Ken, Alex, Akuma, etc.) They also rolled out, although later than it should have been rolled out, a fairly lengthy story mode, and while the idea was actually a really good one, the dialogue, plots and "acting" were so stupid as to be embarrassing, and the game focused on characters that often were not fan favorites and yet we were subjected to long, <i>long</i> stretches of being exposed to them. I've seen enough of Karin after a few playthroughs to last me a lifetime. </p><p>SFV also significantly tweaked the roster, and some popular characters never made a reappearance, while other new characters were questionable additions, at best (F.A.N.G. being the most absurdly egregious here.)</p><p>While I kinda sorta made my peace with SFV (as I did with SFIII) after a time, it's not my favorite SF by a long shot, and I consider it mostly a very rough and ill-advised step backwards from SFIV.</p><p><u style="font-weight: bold;">Street Fighter VI</u> It's too early to see what Street Fighter VI will be like, although just based on my gut-feel from watching the trailer video, I'd say that it looks more like SFIV, including using stylized "paint" spray which looks a lot like the ink from SFIV. The "drive engine" subsystem may or may not be too complicated, and looks to add a variety of stuff that you can do, including bringing back parrying in a different form. Because of this, some others have thought it looked an awful lot like SFIII, which I hope is not to be the case, because if they can't pull in casuals and make the game accessible to the non-hardcore "fighting game community" then it's going to flop harder than SFV did. </p><p>There seems to be some belief that maybe a good portion of the game takes place within Metro City (instead of all over the world, as they usually have been) although this is kind of speculative and may not be true. It does seem to finally take place chronologically after SFIII, and makes no reference to Gill or any of his ridiculous group, or to Bison and Shadaloo, which has been defeated at least three times now, and it'd be nice if they stayed defeated for a while. Some "leaked" (see above) artwork purports to show most of the launch roster. It is pretty heavy on the original World Warriors—none of the bosses are there, but otherwise the entire group makes a return. Although they have new, improved looks for the most part; reminiscent of their original look in many cases, but improved. Ryu, for example, takes after his popular "hot Ryu" alternate costume, and Ken looks like he's trying to imitate Terry Bogard.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSazPn4_1VdQewchPBWNjCjP_EV-jvPoT--ffBHvCkmUjOPJg_Y7IqWDf60gLrtuZ-elB4YCgudIL_j1gvAzJi37qtENw1_TZOtmChm8vRFKKmMk4Vs_6YbTMsWZ25hvFe_Zrx1YJpb235ufGdgqiGKv2oOt9G8qUsgd8IJM6v_NulYsSCOVxoPz-Irw/s3520/SF6-Leak_06-03-22_001.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1150" data-original-width="3520" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSazPn4_1VdQewchPBWNjCjP_EV-jvPoT--ffBHvCkmUjOPJg_Y7IqWDf60gLrtuZ-elB4YCgudIL_j1gvAzJi37qtENw1_TZOtmChm8vRFKKmMk4Vs_6YbTMsWZ25hvFe_Zrx1YJpb235ufGdgqiGKv2oOt9G8qUsgd8IJM6v_NulYsSCOVxoPz-Irw/w640-h210/SF6-Leak_06-03-22_001.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>Dhalsim also looks older (although he did in SFV too) and Chun-Li looks... maybe not <i>older</i>, but more mature, if that makes sense, while the rest of them seem to mostly just be sporting costume changes. Given that starting with IV, alternate costumes have been commonplace, that's not so shocking anymore at this point.</p><p>The next wave is a collection of classic characters, but not <i>quite</i> as classic as the original eight world warriors as well as some newer characters that seem to have been among the possible keepers from IV and V. As you can see, it includes Cammy, Dee Jay, Rashid, Juri, Ed and Akuma. Cammy's redesign is pretty cool, while Akuma's seems to undo the damage done by "dandelion" SFV Akuma while still keeping true to the spirit of that hairier redesign. I don't know how popular Rashid really is, but I think because the Middle East is a growing market for this kind of game, they probably feel they need him for regional appeal. I'm sure he's popular in Arabian countries, at least, even if I don't really see the appeal in him.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg27gXNrd2Mja-Z5dml9EIiY9wQSDRNo7HJdLe8Kl0VcOeG31Ngg37ip9XrfW-dkAeDFtp1RxwrzFvLRmKFA7rSA0G-yjbk7-uX3oTrxMtzS-FRS3lLAUHl4bzZ5p0z5LvMYd-jhZBbAUGqn-F3OuWOHw3mSGM-m7AYW5aVFrnbHrMITWNDgqOwoZA1HA/s2159/SF6-Leak_06-03-22_002.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="2159" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg27gXNrd2Mja-Z5dml9EIiY9wQSDRNo7HJdLe8Kl0VcOeG31Ngg37ip9XrfW-dkAeDFtp1RxwrzFvLRmKFA7rSA0G-yjbk7-uX3oTrxMtzS-FRS3lLAUHl4bzZ5p0z5LvMYd-jhZBbAUGqn-F3OuWOHw3mSGM-m7AYW5aVFrnbHrMITWNDgqOwoZA1HA/w640-h286/SF6-Leak_06-03-22_002.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>Dee Jay looks a little bit insane, but otherwise, this isn't a bad collection of redesigns. </p><p>This last group is the collection (so far) of new characters, although the first one, Luke, was actually released recently as a season 6 character for SFV, although it was clear even then that it was a "pull-ahead" sneak peak at SFVI character.</p><p>After Luke we have the absolutely masculine unit Marisa, from Italy, which might be an OK design if it were a man, but is super off-putting as a woman, Jamie from Hong Kong, which looks like a slightly "streeted up" remix of the <i>Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves</i> character Gato, Mimi from France, who has very strange pink hair with a short cut but insane sideburns, who looks like a modern bizarre King of Fighters character more than a more down-to-earth Street Fighter character. Lilly is a little Mexican girl, and for some reason, going back to T. Hawk, Capcom thinks that Mexicans are identical to American Injuns. Mysterious and aristocratic-looking JP is from Russia (as well as somewhere else based on the mystery flag), Kimberly, the little black girl with an old-fashioned Walkman, who on first glance looks like she's likely to be very annoying, but I'll withhold final judgement for the time being. If Capcom were an American company, I'd suggest that she's the super annoying "diversity" inclusion that they'll really drop the ball on designing and then call the fans racist when they don't like her, but being a Japanese company, I have no idea what to make of her. Probably a Japanese interpretation of what American "street" culture is like, so highly caricaturized. A.K.I. is the last one, and allegedly she's Chinese. If so, the best thing I can say about her so far is that at least she's not F.A.N.G.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO4u6ePIYXjMIVkYCwmEXzb9AjbGYJPZYmQUeOhdeAZpjcLu1l9LIA-MjILl-E-siG7oGDZyOSzxBk5y5eSp1LAdIMwGdA5EBBSQd3KVsjsbwM6tXj1M-fj0UsP_SWc-ycQ9YkuDx-m28SSttaCBluq1jJTb8phc0slqqORCRMSymPmGleSzwmV_VBRw/s2433/SF6-Leak_06-03-22_003.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="2433" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO4u6ePIYXjMIVkYCwmEXzb9AjbGYJPZYmQUeOhdeAZpjcLu1l9LIA-MjILl-E-siG7oGDZyOSzxBk5y5eSp1LAdIMwGdA5EBBSQd3KVsjsbwM6tXj1M-fj0UsP_SWc-ycQ9YkuDx-m28SSttaCBluq1jJTb8phc0slqqORCRMSymPmGleSzwmV_VBRw/w640-h216/SF6-Leak_06-03-22_003.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-43589816038478309432021-09-10T10:59:00.004-07:002021-09-10T10:59:37.691-07:00Art styles<p>For Capcom, you can see various "generations" of artistic styling on their fighting games, i.e. mostly Street Fighter.</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Street Fighter I was made in 1987 on very primitive hardware by the standards of what was to come. The art looked really good for the year that it came out, but it looks primitive by 90s standards, with stiff, non-fluid animation and relatively little detail.</li><li>Street Fighter II was the same <i>style</i> as the earlier game, but the hardware was improved, and everything looked better. The character animation was both more fluid and more detailed, the backgrounds had a great deal more detail and animation, etc.</li><li>The Street Fighter Alpha games used the same style as both the Marvel and Darkstalkers game, and looked less like a video game and more like an animated movie, by design. The hardware was improved (CPS1 to CPS2 board). Everything was again improved; the backgrounds look wonderful, the characters look pretty good, although they're still the same size/resolution as the earlier style--but artistically they were very different. I'm not 100% sure that the frame rate or fluidity increased. The F/X stuff looked tons better too. This artistic style actually carried forward for quite some time, and overlapped with the <i>next</i> generation of art.</li><li>The Street Fighter III games were on improved hardware, the CPS3 boards. There were some graphical improvements associated with this, including a greatly increased framerate. The 2-D backgrounds from this era look really good; some of the best ever made, in fact, to this point. The size and resolution of the characters still look the same, although the art style was revised. It's still animated movie-like, however. The vs games were also on this same hardware, although they usually used Alpha-generation sprites, or newly drawn Marvel/SNK sprites that were the same style, more or less. This is also where some 3-D backgrounds started to pop up in the latest versions of the Marvel vs and the vs SNK games, although they do <i>not</i>, in my opinion, look as good as the 2-D backgrounds of the same era.</li><li>Although chronologically out of order, I think this belongs here; the high resolution UDON drawn sprites and backgrounds of the Turbo HD Remix and the Switch-released Ultra Street Fighter II game. This stuff looks absolutely FANTASTIC. I actually think I prefer this style of art to any that I've otherwise seen, although some other franchises have very similar style art.</li><li>Street Fighter IV is the first 3D Street Fighter game (I'm obviously not counting the EX games) although that's just the graphics, not the gameplay, which remains solidly 2D regular "Street Fighter-like." I think this game looks fantastic, mostly, but I admit to preferring the animated 2D style of generation 5. The only thing that makes this better than 2D is the ability to have alternate costumes as 3D modules.</li><li>Moving from the PS3 (and Xbox 360) to the PS4 allowed for higher quality 3D animation, but the reality is that Street Fighter V doesn't actually (necessarily) look better than Street Fighter IV. The art style is often more caricaturized, there are really bad clipping issues (especially in the story mode cut scenes) and a number of characters have really badly designed new looks. </li></ol><div>In general, I'd say that of the Capcom art style generations, I like the Alpha stuff quite a bit, although I also admit that it looks dated now. I also like the SFIV 3D models, but the UDON high quality 2D animation is my favorite Street Fighter art style. </div><div><br /></div><div>Because I've started talking a bit about the beat em up tangent to fighting games, its worth pointing out that beat em ups at Capcom never really advanced out of the SF2 <i>style</i> regardless of what hardware they were on. <i>Maybe</i> Captain Commando has a bit more of an Alpha feel, but I don't think so. That said, a number of beat em up (and other) Capcom characters were remade in different styles because of crossover games, including loads of Final Fight characters that came to Street Fighter or Marvel vs games. The Alpha series, and SF's IV and V have about a fourth to a third each--roughly--of Final Fight characters in them. Street Fighter III even had one.</div><div><br /></div><div>Capcom's biggest competitor in the fighting games genre was SNK. Even other competitors who made Street Fighter II clones often did so on MVS hardware, like World Heroes by ADK, Breakers by Visco, or the Fighters History games by Data East, so I won't mention them specifically (most of them never advanced beyond Street Fighter II-like anyway.) SNK used the same hardware for the better part of two decades, so they never really increased their technical capability until they finally abandoned it after the turn of the millennium. However, that doesn't mean that every game used the same <i>style</i> of artwork, and different series had more or less attention to detail, realism vs cartoonishness, etc. I'm going to call all of this a single generation, although there are some notable things to point out as brackets <i>within</i> that generation.</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>MVS generation. A lot of different graphical "tricks" were tried, even fairly early on, like Art of Fighting's zoom feature. Fatal Fury itself has the most primitive graphics of the series, although it's not really much less primitive than Street Fighter II. However, after the release of Street Fighter II, the art <i>style</i> was done more in open imitation of SF2's style, and games like Fatal Fury 2/Special, for instance, look like SF2 clones in terms of style. While always somewhat stylized and comic book like, or animation-like in style, it's fair to say that most of the games of this era approached a semi-realistic look within the animation gamut. A notable exception here is the direction that the Real Bout games went for Special and 2, where they had a much more stylized, cartoon-like appearance that (I believe) was probably done in deliberate imitation of the Alpha style of Street Fighter games. Unlike Capcom, SNK didn't just reuse aging sprites, but constantly updated them and often made them better-looking over time without really changing the style over much itself. If you look at an early King of Fighters game, like 94 or 95, for instance, and compare it to a late MVS (or even Atomiswave) titles like King of Fighters 2002, 2003 or XI, or Mark of the Wolves, you'll probably notice that from a technical standpoint and a stylistic standpoint, they all look quite similar, but you'll also (I believe) quite easily note that the later titles look "better"; the artists just got better over more time and practice with the system, and were able to put out better looking works. That said, the home ports did employ some additional graphical "improvements" including 3D backgrounds (not always better than the 2D ones, but sometimes they were) and pixelation smoothing of the sprites. There was also very notable and noteworthy improvement of the character portraits after matches, during menu selection, etc. as a more comic bookish or anime approach was adopted. Anime is more than one style, however--the anime style that SNK adopted is one that is closest in appearance to western art and animation, while still having an eastern "anime" edge to it. It's less Sailor Moon and more Jim Lee, if you will. This is maybe a little hard to describe as western comic book art and animation and Japanese manga and anime art have cross-pollinated each other to such a degree that its often not easy to say what western animation looks like anymore, other than it certainly excludes the more cartoonish giant-eyes anime and bizarre emotional overreaction cues. But hopefully you can follow what I mean here.</li><li>After SNK's bankruptcy, all of their titles except King of Fighters basically shut down. XII and XIII were the last 2D fighters, but they feature greatly improved graphics in much higher resolution. I'd say that in most respects, they are comparable to the UDON graphics of Ultra Street Fighter II, but a bit more anime and caricaturish on occasion in style.</li><li>They didn't stick with that style for very long, for whatever reason (probably because somebody figured out that 3D was cheaper and faster and more flexible.) For XIV and the upcoming XV, they've switched to 3D models. These models are much better than anything Capcom have used, in my opinion; although they are still more "realistic" "western" anime in style.</li></ol><div>Given what I thought about Capcom's styles, you'd think that generation 2 would be my favorite, and you'd probably be right. However, I think that SNK did their 3D animation (after they got the Maximum Impact series out of their hair) better than Capcom did in general, and it's hard to fault their 3D animation. With one exception. SNK has always been known as being "stylish" compared to Capcom. Stylish in this regard is a very Japanese thing, though, taking a lot of inspiration from "Japanese Street Fashion". I suppose there's nothing to call that other than "stylish" compared to Capcom, but whereas stylish would seem like a compliment, here it isn't. Japanese street fashion, to western eyes, looks like what a horde of flaming gay people would wear if they all decided that they were really nerdy and wanted to go to Comicon via some kind of goth/steampunk niche. These character and costume designs that SNK comes up with are <i>not</i> cool. They're not good. They're bizarre. SNK has always had that reputation, but it's gotten orders of magnitude worse in the last few titles compared to what it used to be during the "glory days" of mainline King of Fighters titles. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Luckily, enough characters have enough history that they can't deviate <i>too</i> much from their look without upsetting the fans, so this mostly applies to the new characters that they keep adding rather than the older ones that they're still picking up because they're perennial favorites. This limits the amount of damage this bizarre aesthetic can wreak on the series, but as time goes on, it's probably going to get worse.</div><div><br /></div><div>As an aside, it's worth pointing out that the King of Fighters XIII cast was one of the most conservative, traditional ones done in many years, which also limited the ability of the "SNK aesthetic" from being very prominent in that game. Yet another reason to like generation 2.</div><div><br /></div><div>For beat em ups, Sega's Streets of Rage was obviously the main competitor to Final Fight. Those two are usually considered the epitome of the beat em up genre. Normally, I wouldn't think a comparison here would be necessary. Streets of Rage was sub-generation 1 in comparison to Capcom, while 2 and 3 were comparable to Final Fantasy and therefore to Street Fighter II in graphics.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, in recent years, an indie publisher convinced Sega to let them publish Streets of Rage 4 out of <i>France</i> of all places, and they've done a fabulous job with it. I highly recommend watching a youtube video of a playthrough of it. While the art style is sometimes quite anime, at other times, it's more reminiscent of western comic book or Disney style art. In any case, at all points, it looks absolutely fantastic, at least as good as Capcom's generation 5 or SNK's generation 2, and similar in many respects to both... but probably actually <i>better</i>. Capcom's generation 5 still tried to just upgrade technically while copying faithfully their generation 2 designs, and SNK's generation 2 was a little too out there with caricaturish anime stylings. Streets of Rage 4 does everything that those do, except without the weaknesses. </div><div><br /></div><div>If I could see fighting games done the way I'd most like to see them done, then the lizardcube style from Streets of Rage 4 would be it. The ONLY thing that I can complain about with Streets of Rage 4, and I'm not 100% sure that I'm willing to complain about it until it gets even worse, is its bizarre Diversity, Inc. cast with way too many women acting like men and way too many bizarre ethnic groups. Why is the one guy a Maori? Do you know how many Maoris I've seen in America in nearly fifty years of living here? Other than a handful of students at BYU Hawaii, absolutely ZERO. Anyway, I think it's on the cusp of being a problem without <i>quite </i>managing to become one yet at its current state.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, I've posted this before, but here's a mockup that the lizardcube guys did of a Mark of the Wolves 2 done in their Streets of Rage 4 style. I'd love to see some fighting games get this treatment. Absolutely.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtAcKNjM-QXg5NtvRsdbp0FQkXQAUzBDrgReHSe-xskGgzxUn0xFsc7X2GKfHPXdx_O5GnL8E5bgcYWA4GO_Twc7510zLnrgPo5kDa6L9D4B6nwytChyphenhyphenxIE57y068O5onfRMIig8_B6Bni/s2048/EsGpM9hXAAgjziX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtAcKNjM-QXg5NtvRsdbp0FQkXQAUzBDrgReHSe-xskGgzxUn0xFsc7X2GKfHPXdx_O5GnL8E5bgcYWA4GO_Twc7510zLnrgPo5kDa6L9D4B6nwytChyphenhyphenxIE57y068O5onfRMIig8_B6Bni/w640-h360/EsGpM9hXAAgjziX.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-5019151353103223652021-09-09T08:15:00.001-07:002021-09-09T08:15:47.771-07:00Beat em ups<p>Although I haven't really talked much about beat em ups except as a kind of aside, since so many Final Fight characters made their way over the years into Street Fighter, that's probably not really fair. Beat em ups came out about the same time as fighting games; maybe just a bit earlier, and their origins and development are inextricably entangled with that of fighting games too. If fighting games have a number of "fallow" years in the early 00s, the beat em up genre experienced a much longer fallow years blight; from the mid-90s until just a few years ago, honestly. Right now there's a fairly good scene for beat em ups, although to be fair, many of the titles are kind of indie and you may not have heard of them, but the revival of Streets of Rage in its belated fourth entry, brought the revival into the mainstream; it's available on pretty much every major platform right now, and has sold over two and a half million copies (that number is as of six months ago, and before the release of its DLC. It's probably significantly higher now.)</p><p>Because beat em ups were popular prior to the arrival of fighting games as we really know them, I was a huge fan of them prior to playing fighting games. While the narrative is that beat em ups suffered in popularity following the release of Street Fighter II, the reality is that probably the most popular and often considered the best one was released <i>after</i> Street Fighter II, and took deliberate inspiration from it. Beat em ups and fighting games followed a lot of parallel development in terms of how they should play, which admittedly could only go <i>so </i>far because of the fact that one is focused on 1x1 martial arts fist fighting in a duel-like environment, while the other is focused on beating up wave after wave of much weaker enemies (except the bosses) on a belt-scrolling stage. I think people stopped playing them because they weren't available anymore in arcades rather than because people didn't want them. I mean, when semi tongue in cheek fan project Beats of Rage gets a million downloads with only word of mouth, that strongly suggests that there was a market for good games of this type all along.</p><p>I already mentioned how the environment and enemies is a major difference between fighting games. The belt-scrolling stages where you fight wave after wave of arguably weaker opponents to end the stage against a boss that's comparable to you, if not stronger is the major distinction, but other things are significant too. The potential for cooperative play between more than one player is another key element, as is the use of disposable weapons like the knives, metal pipes and other things that you pick up and use for a little while before they disappear. The most iconic titles are fist-fighting martial arts games, like the most iconic fighting games, but the moves are much simpler, usually focusing on only two or three buttons. Over time, this has changed somewhat in cross-pollination with fighting games; more complex combos and special--even super moves--have entered the lexicon of beat em ups. But the originals didn't really have too many of them. Despite the fact that there were only a few buttons, there were combinations of things that you could do with them that led to more moves being available than merely two or three, of course--but the classic beat em up is a simpler game to play than the classic fighting game, at least in terms of player character moves.</p><p>From a story and setting perspective, there have been lots of different types, but the classic involves fighting street gangs in a setting of urban decay and chaos, often to go rescue one of the characters girlfriends. The first game that is usually called a beat em up in the traditional sense, although it still lacked the cooperative play feature, is "Hot-Blooded Tough Guy Kunio" which was translated into the West as <i>Renegade</i>. It wasn't just translated, though--it was graphically remade, and the whole rescue the girlfriend story was added. Rather than being a Japanese high school delinquent protecting his nerdy friend from being picked on by gangs from school, it was loosely based on the cult film <i>The Warriors</i>, released in 1979, which I don't think much of anyone saw at the time, but which has been referenced by creative types in multiple genres over and over and over again. (The music video for Shake It by Metrostation, for instance, is also based on it. K-Traxx and other EDM artists have sampled vocals from it in many places, and Renegade, among other video games, lifted the look and concepts straight from that movie too.) Renegade is an insanely influential game, but the beat em up as we all know it really was created the next year (1987) with the same creators building on both the Japanese and Western versions of the game to create <i>Double Dragon</i>. Curiously, the same year as the initial release of <i>Street Fighter</i>, which although a different kind of game, was obviously influenced by the success of <i>Renegade</i> in its title and concept.</p><p>Double Dragon was originally going to be the <i>actual </i>sequel to Kunio/Renegade, but the decision was made to give it a different cast, setting and make it its own thing, which was probably a good move. This is where the genre really finally came into its own; Double Dragon introduced the cooperative play, the continuous side-scrolling, the disposable weapons, etc. It also utilized the Western Renegade type setting and plot, including some cut scenes, and it went even further. Rather than simple urban decay as in <i>The Warriors</i>, Double Dragon takes place in an almost post-apocalyptic urban setting, heavily influenced by the Mad Max movies and <i>Fist of the North Star</i>. Much of these tropes would be copied by most of the other subsequent beat em ups. Heck, even such esoteric details as an enemy female character who dresses like a stripper and uses a whip were carried over at least into both Final Fight and Streets of Rage from Double Dragon.</p><p>Double Dragon was wildly successful; in America it was the highest selling arcade game for two years in a row, 1988 and 1989 after its initial release. By 1989, two rival franchises became probably the most successful in the genre, Sega's Golden Axe, which took the concept of the Double Dragon beat em up, wedded it to the developers love of the Arnie Conan movies, and the concept of special moves that Capcom had introduced in Street Fighter I. This game was hugely successful and spawned several sequels and spin-offs. I personally probably played more of it than I did Double Dragon, although I played a fair bit of Double Dragon in arcades in 87-88 or so. This type of game was even better served, I think, when Capcom got a hold of the Dungeons & Dragons license and created Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara in the mid-90s, using big, Final Fight-like sprites. </p><p>Capcom, in fact, had a large run of beat em ups. Not only the D&D games, which are fantastic, by the way, but the weird post apocalyptic Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Alien vs Predator, and futuristic superhero Captain Commando. The D&D games themselves probably came about because of Capcom's own King of Dragons and Knights of the Round. But probably the most famous, and later a contender for the top series of the genre was Final Fight. Originally conceived as Street Fighter II, albeit a totally different kind of game more closely based on Renegade and Double Dragon, Final Fight brought <i>much</i> better graphics, smoother gameplay and much more character than any game in the genre had heretofore delivered. The arcade version is a great game, but unfortunately, it got a SNES exclusive conversion that was hacked in many ways, and pretty disappointing. It's readily available now in modern systems; you can buy the arcade version on the Capcom Classics Collection (PS2 era) or the Capcom Beat em Up Bundle on Steam, PS4 Nintendo Switch, etc. (It's interesting, isn't it, to see this classic era of video gaming make a resurgence as gamers are discovering that the direction the market went was <i>not</i> actually in the direction of games that were necessarily more fun. Stuff that's now twenty or even thirty years old is being rediscovered and it turns out that it's considered good design even still.)</p><p>Final Fight was enormously successful; it was the most successful video game in arcades in 1990 (it's release date is late 1989--around Thanksgiving) and the <i>second</i> most successful arcade game in 1991, behind Street Fighter II. It also was one of Capcom's best-selling games on the SNES, in spite of the poor conversion. It epitomized the genre in almost every respect; the urban decay, the go beat up gangsters to rescue a girlfriend, the roster of characters which includes (admittedly somewhat generic) Cody, the boyfriend, but also the girl's father, Mike Haggar, who was also mayor, and Cody's best friend Guy, a Japanese ninja who was hanging around town for whatever reason.</p><p>Final Fight characters had so much character, in fact, that they've had a somewhat startling level of longevity. Even relatively "faceless" mooks have gone on to become Street Fighter characters (Hugo and Poison, in particular) while many of the bosses have as well (Rolento, Abigail, Sodom) and both Cody and Guy have appeared in multiple Street Fighter roles. Even some characters from the sequels (Maki, Lucia) eventually made their way into Street Fighter. Also extremely curiously, Mike Haggar has <i>never</i> made an appearance as a playable character, even though he did so in Marvel vs Capcom 3 Ultimate. Why they didn't port him to Street Fighter IV's later updates is still a frustrating mystery to me.</p><p>Although they are significant in Street Fighter as playable characters, they also don't really contribute in any way to Street Fighter's story, however. In fact, in the General Story mode of Street Fighter IV, I'm pretty sure that not a single Final Fight character makes so much as an appearance, even. They're part of the same continuity, but somehow part of a completely parallel existence.</p><p>Final Fight was also caught up in the console wars between Nintendo and Sega of the 16-bit generation. As I said above, Final Fight got a SNES exclusive port, although it had to make significant sacrifices from the arcade version to be ported to the SNES. While it was successful as a seller on the platform, I suspect most gamers were disappointed in it. Sega, seeing an opportunity here, took their Golden Axe engine and made an urban Final Fight copycat game which was exclusive to <i>their</i> console, the Sega Genesis, called Streets of Rage. While graphically it doesn't really compare to Final Fight, in most other respects, it is a <i>better</i> game than the SNES port, if not the arcade version, of Final Fight.</p><p>You'll notice that many fighting games from the early years followed exactly the same tropes as Final Fight and other beat em ups. Art of Fighting has the exact same plot. Fatal Fury has Geese knocked off of a skyscraper, just like Belger, the boss from Final Fight. Street Fighter Alpha 2 foregoes the fighting championship, and has characters moving around not unlike a beat em up in nature. </p><p>Final Fight 2 and 3 were SNES exclusives, not arcade games, and "fixed" a number of issues that the SNES Final Fight game had had, but Sega was not resting on their laurels either, and Streets of Rage 2 and 3 are considered by many fans to be the absolute best games in the beat em up genre; Streets of Rage 2 in particular. (3 is often seen as good, but offering little than 2 didn't already offer.) In fact, the game is often considered one of the best <i>video games</i> of all time period, which is really saying something. It continues more of the cross pollination that was happening with fighting games by introducing more moves and more variety for playable characters, something directly inspired by Street Fighter II and its success. One designer even said that having the same kind of combo rhythm as Street Fighter II was a key design attribute that they wanted to corner. Streets of Rage 2 also had greatly improved graphics over its predecessor, comparable to Street Fighter II's in most respects. In addition to this, Streets of Rage had what was considered at the time--and maybe even still--one of the greatest original soundtracks ever bundled with a video game. (Personally I still greatly prefer Star Wars the Old Republic's.)</p><p>It's curious to me that Capcom's big rival in the beat em up was Sega, while their big rival in the fighting game was SNK. SNK also had a Final Fight-esque beat em up called Burning Fight, which is capable enough, but which lacks a lot of the character that made Final Fight or Streets of Rage so memorable. Still, it was relatively successful in Japanese arcades, at least, when launched in 1991. I'm a little surprised that a King of Fighters '94 team wasn't made of the three selectable characters, to stand next to the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters. Not that the USA Sports Team doesn't have its fans, but I think this would have been a better use of that team's slot.</p><p>Burning Fight has two American policemen from NYC come to Japan in pursuit of a Yakuza criminal gang that was causing trouble at home. They meet up with a Japanese detective and the three of them are the selectable characters. Among other things, if they had used these characters, King of Fighters would have it's own character named Ryu, although he would have looked and probably moved much more like Guy.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-52887202421170477112021-09-08T10:52:00.006-07:002021-09-08T11:13:14.021-07:00Game Feature: King of Fighters '98<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLmv4eAlPKM0Jj8msvxAL3TODN635E3Bj1sp3dWjO8i_W2qSjGWB1zSOC0uRISJR8jC66Bitb698gf41X1HFN8DKEX7edrwaXMOu1jFFzGd6z8iAbkOQBqeLAWmj32vzY6_-1hyphenhyphenYIOBy0n/s640/188964-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-playstation-screenshot.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLmv4eAlPKM0Jj8msvxAL3TODN635E3Bj1sp3dWjO8i_W2qSjGWB1zSOC0uRISJR8jC66Bitb698gf41X1HFN8DKEX7edrwaXMOu1jFFzGd6z8iAbkOQBqeLAWmj32vzY6_-1hyphenhyphenYIOBy0n/s320/188964-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-playstation-screenshot.png" width="320" /></a></div>I haven't done a game feature post in quite a while, and the obvious one to do that I haven't yet is King of Fighters '98. For many, many years, the KOF was done on the same MVS hardware, and even when it briefly migrated to the Atomiswave hardware, it was still done with the same graphics. Only when we get to King of Fighters XII and XIII do we actually get <i>improved</i> graphics and only when when we move to KOF XIV and XV (out February) do we get fully 3-D graphics (although still with traditional 2-D play.) All of the Orochi Saga games can be "summed up" if you will in King of Fighters '98, and all of the NESTS saga games can be summed up with King of Fighters 2002. If you're not actually interested in playing the "story" of the games, you can get all of the action you want from the entire saga in the "summary" games; King of Fighters '98 has everything you can get in any Orochi Saga game, and then some. This is especially true for the "Ultimate Match" version, which added all of the (very few) characters who had appeared in an Orochi Saga game but hadn't yet appeared in '98, like the remaining bosses, Eiji Kisaragi, and a handful of others.<p></p><p>I have a handful of versions of this game, although to be fair, only the Ultimate Match is one that I'd ever feel compelled to come back to at this point. The first version I got was when I got my old Dreamcast, and it had the odd title of King of Fighters Dream Match 1999. I suppose SNK were a little self-conscious at feeling out of date with the title, which I suppose is a fair problem. For the PS2, I have the Ultimate Match version of the game, which <i>also</i> includes the original Neo Geo version of the game. And finally, I have the Neo Geo version of the game also on the Orochi Saga compilation for the PS2. There is one more final update, called Final Version, or something like that, which is what was available on Steam or now Good Old Games. It's relatively cheap, but it doesn't add anything new to Ultimate Match, just a few subtle tweaks to gameplay.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIaZSmCECeBX6oZfaBw2gINxc2NWE1DH3SKURjaJbaeemuDCdxuc9iRB0Yxr1DVpTn5zsB9lXYwrFW0bkn6y6TPWEEaJ0qR93vSJ7JYXi4pR4K8aCbEeVziG8nLBgMdapDld7hYk98-vQj/s304/225855-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-neo-geo-screenshot-a.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="304" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIaZSmCECeBX6oZfaBw2gINxc2NWE1DH3SKURjaJbaeemuDCdxuc9iRB0Yxr1DVpTn5zsB9lXYwrFW0bkn6y6TPWEEaJ0qR93vSJ7JYXi4pR4K8aCbEeVziG8nLBgMdapDld7hYk98-vQj/s0/225855-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-neo-geo-screenshot-a.png" width="304" /></a></div>The whole point of '98 was to be a "Dream Match", i.e., there's no story to it, but it brings back all of the "greatest hits" of the Orochi Saga in one game, including teams that only made an appearance in the first game, like the USA Sports Team, or the Boss team of 96, or creating new teams out of "retired" master characters like Heidern or Saisyu Kusanagi and Takuma Sakazaki, etc. Although from a story perspective, Rugal was only the boss of the first two games, and was therefore just the taste of things to come, the developers also wisely realized that in most respects he was the most iconic King of Fighters boss, and brought him back as the boss of this game as well. Of course, for Ultimate Match, <i>all</i> of the bosses of the Orochi Saga made reappearances, even the mid-bosses like Riot of the Blood Leona, etc. Of course, the reality is that most of those bosses were kind of underwhelming anyway. Rugal was so good that they even brought him back for the <i>next</i> dream match in 2002, ignoring all of the NESTS saga bosses. In both cases, he was the supered out "Omega Rugal", complete with stripper shirt and everything.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkPaNqcgUbLu_gKZBsx_OZXPLyRyBDQQ1t8yiuvW4ov4hgZu79h8Upvq18fLfDLEoNUtI6ui7oWNB-NwdjI6TmZ_Amk559D70f9MTbsjmOcuN_UtyVlFfndhd-v2ZhDxsWlxVxRbVztoD_/s304/352819-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-neo-geo-cd-screenshot.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="304" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkPaNqcgUbLu_gKZBsx_OZXPLyRyBDQQ1t8yiuvW4ov4hgZu79h8Upvq18fLfDLEoNUtI6ui7oWNB-NwdjI6TmZ_Amk559D70f9MTbsjmOcuN_UtyVlFfndhd-v2ZhDxsWlxVxRbVztoD_/s0/352819-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-neo-geo-cd-screenshot.png" width="304" /></a></div>A good case can be made that especially once 2002 got "remade" as Unlimited Match, a kind of upgrade very similar to the Ultimate Match upgrade to <i>this</i> game, that there was no longer any reason to play <i>any</i> King of Fighters game that had preceded it, unless you wanted to see the specific story cut scenes associated with one game, or something like that. I don't think that that's completely true; there are a number of things in particular that are unique to the Orochi Saga. Sometimes these are little things, like Terry Bogard's moveset, for instance, which is a bit different in the NESTS games, and other times its more in the vibe, presentation and "feel" of the game, and harder to put your finger on. <p></p><p>While I can certainly see and actually probably agree with that perspective to some degree, I have a lot of nostalgic attachment to '98 over 2002 and in many ways still prefer it, especially in its Ultimate Match version. The game presents to you the two basic different "systems" that the prior King of Fighters games used; EX, which is similar to '94 and '95's manual charging of super movies, dashes, etc. and "Advanced" which was similar to '96 and '97s super stocks, rolls and other items. The Ultimate Match version also allows you to play an Ultimate Mode, where you can pick and choose elements from EX or Advanced, although honestly, I just prefer to use Advanced. Not surprisingly, it's the most like A-ism from Street Fighter Alpha 3, or the C-groove from the Capcom vs SNK games of the options presented, which is my favorite system.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4FfnV_QPFGSEEavMhlMZ6OKn-lMsKk7vNB7cGFuVZNB2YT1hl0nPn9PPl3BSS9M2w8ADHRP6TXl9jCz1VtQCalPjIKjDzpuF8Ku25tOSctO7HJKXcoJJv431F6JZCKWSez2-JXjBfeswe/s320/666172-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-arcade-screenshot-leona.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="320" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4FfnV_QPFGSEEavMhlMZ6OKn-lMsKk7vNB7cGFuVZNB2YT1hl0nPn9PPl3BSS9M2w8ADHRP6TXl9jCz1VtQCalPjIKjDzpuF8Ku25tOSctO7HJKXcoJJv431F6JZCKWSez2-JXjBfeswe/s0/666172-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-arcade-screenshot-leona.png" width="320" /></a></div>You can play in teams, or you can play single player, which is more "Street Fighter" like in terms of how it plays. I usually prefer the latter, of course. The fact that there aren't any story endings means that team composition doesn't matter; the only endings are a bunch of joke animations from the characters during the credits.<p></p><p>The player select menus are, in my opinion, extraordinarily ugly, as are the character portraits. They are improved somewhat for the Ultimate Match, but the character portraits and end-match art/quotes are the same in every version. Shinkiro is the artist, who's normally quite a talented fella, but this is <i>not</i> his best work. That said, once you get playing, this matters very little. The Dreamcast version has the same menus as the Neo Geo or arcade, with the exception of course, of a very bare bones "text only" menu of console specific modes and options, which are all pretty basic. </p><p>I've talked before about the shift to 3-D backgrounds that was happening right about at the turn of the millennium in these kinds of games, and it came for KOF'98 too. The Dreamcast version has the backgrounds redone in 3-D, although it's relatively low-res 3-D, and mostly just looks almost exactly the same as the 2-D backgrounds for most of them. (Oddly, the Osaka street scene outside of the SNK headquarters is an exception here; there are variants in the 2-D version that are not done in 3-D.) The Ultimate Match version gives us redone 3-D backgrounds, including more variants. In particular, it seems that the developers were very enamored this year of adding a bluish, washed out haze to make the backgrounds look like they take place early in the morning in the minutes right before the sun comes up but the light is still relatively strong. Almost <i>every</i> stage has a variant that looks like this. It also adds a bunch of new stages to the mix that hadn't yet ever been seen.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN7eZkrE2EvclXR_6NeMa4B52rW5m28UdRm1ZrjLJJqnJwh97HwLWRs22A4pvq6zVei158TSL7k_uRlc1oy4ogeXwLnR3LJGQmkRjX5j7HJQyton9M1GAYeEpISSyyHX8QeD8pZYvLexaj/s320/666274-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-arcade-screenshot-finishing.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="320" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN7eZkrE2EvclXR_6NeMa4B52rW5m28UdRm1ZrjLJJqnJwh97HwLWRs22A4pvq6zVei158TSL7k_uRlc1oy4ogeXwLnR3LJGQmkRjX5j7HJQyton9M1GAYeEpISSyyHX8QeD8pZYvLexaj/s0/666274-the-king-of-fighters-98-the-slugfest-arcade-screenshot-finishing.png" width="320" /></a></div>In fact, most of the stages are new to this game, even in the old Neo Geo version. A handful are from other games in the Orochi Saga series, like the '96 boss stage, or the Orochi boss stages, but most are not. In my personal opinion, this is a bit of a missed opportunity; the Ultimate Match didn't need <i>new</i> stages added when it could have brought forward the older stages from the games that had come before, redrawn if necessary. I think that there were some really beautiful stages that I miss not having in a game that I'm actually likely to still play anymore. The Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting team stages from '96 are in particular to be highlighted here. Sigh. In this game, stages are no longer associated with specific teams, except for the boss stages, and tend to come up randomly.<p></p><p>Curiously, the 3D stages, especially in the Dreamcast version, but even in the Ultimate Match version, are not necessarily better than the older 2D stages. Although in the case of most of them, it doesn't actually make much noticeable difference. The Japan Street set of stages are better in 2D. The Korea ones are noticeably different, but neither is better than the other, in my opinion. A few stages have slightly different lighting details between the 3D and 2D versions, which I think is very unusual. The characters themselves offer a smoothness indicator that can be modified, to give them a less pixelated appearance, so that they match the backgrounds a little better and don't look so old-school and clunky.</p><p>All in all, King of Fighters '98 is the best King of Fighters game, or at least it was when it came out, and remains so probably at least until 2002, although even then that's a question of opinion, not objectivity. In 1998 when it came out, it was side by side with Street Fighter Alpha 3, and that was probably the best game in the Street Fighter series up to that point. This was part of the genesis of the Capcom vs SNK series in the first place; with two of the best titles from the two most important series by each company out at the same time, it begged the question of what it would be like to have them really duking it out head to head. Although the Capcom vs SNK games are pretty good, I think that there's still definitely a kind of desire and demand to see this question answered more definitively still. And no, MUGEN doesn't really count.</p><p>But of the grade of games that precede the major graphical upgrades of the very late 00s and 10s years, King of Fighters '98 has to stand out as one of the best representatives, and one of the better games in the entire genre overall no matter how you slice it.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-82986578618501059582021-09-02T12:49:00.001-07:002021-09-02T12:49:20.570-07:00Alts<p>So, when I fired up Steam a month or so ago for the first time in several months and started playing around with USFIV again, one of the things that I finally broke down and did was figure out how to swap out some of the alternative character costumes with fan-made ones. EVERY character has at least one, if not multiple, alternate costumes that are super whack. Some of my favorite characters only had one or two costume that I even liked at all. So it was fun to rehabilitate the "style" of some of them by swapping out something else. Ken's bathrobe and cowboy outfits were probably the very first to go, for instance, but I've got lots of alternatives on lots of characters, with more waiting in the queue for me to get around to. Maybe. (I've already gone pretty deep on the bench with characters that I'm likely to play, for instance.) I also found another app that allows you to "turn off" certain elements of character costume models. So, for instance, Akuma's first alternative costume, which is pretty cool except for one thing; a gigantic bow made of super thick rope on his back, which looks insanely ridiculous. I took that off. Now that costume is... well, it's not necessarily <i>great</i>, but it doesn't offend me with its silliness anymore either.</p><p>So now I've started on a project of playing through all of the costumes. I'm doing vs CPU, and going through every color of every costume for a character, vs a random com character on a random stage, and then when I'm done, I'll play through the arcade mode with that character, and then move on to the next. This will take some time, and I'm not doing this for <i>every</i> character, just for "my" characters. I've done Ryu and Ken so far, and I've started Akuma. Evil Ryu and Oni are next, followed by Sagat and Sakura. We'll see if I still have mental stamina left to pursue this project after that, or if I need to walk away from it, but I do have lower tier characters that I still sometimes play beyond that. Probably nearly a dozen more. And then maybe another dozen after that that I don't really consider my characters, but which I sometimes play. And then at least another dozen after that of characters that I've never really dived into in USFIV, but which I have in other games like the Alpha series, or something, so I've always kinda wanted to.</p><p>I've talked before about it being important to think that the character you're playing is cool in some way. The alternate costume idea was a great one in that regard, because it could turn a mediocre or even poor design into a good one. Being able to mod them even further helped with this, because honestly, the designers costumes were sometimes really, really bad.</p><p>Even before we had 3D models where alternate costumes were easy to implement, a lot of home console ports did have color palette editors which did a little bit of the same thing, although not as well. Sometimes characters just changed their look and evolved from game to game to game. On the SNK side, Athena is famous for having a different outfit in every single King of Fighters game, and Kyo has a different outfit every single major series--so he's on his fourth now.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrqaInudPSsM2XMRQz5bD2BvZzgqD5sWhd84U6866K_0DVrGtpfTfDGPlXkGNWb1MZIO7rBy3Z7tkKh5vV4VrdLjSegNeE1vqcQO9wqAmjFNz6VyIQCCXZWRnwrb_PE94PIb-fzW71tBs_/s1080/c1u7mbv9y8241.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrqaInudPSsM2XMRQz5bD2BvZzgqD5sWhd84U6866K_0DVrGtpfTfDGPlXkGNWb1MZIO7rBy3Z7tkKh5vV4VrdLjSegNeE1vqcQO9wqAmjFNz6VyIQCCXZWRnwrb_PE94PIb-fzW71tBs_/w640-h640/c1u7mbv9y8241.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>Anyways, it's just one more reminder that whomever that complete and total tool who tried to tell us that people didn't care about Magneto being in Marvel vs Capcom Infinity, because Magneto wasn't actually a character, he was just a mechanical function, is a complete moron. He's not a normal person. He's some kind of spergy, lizard simulacrum of a human, like Mark Zuckerberg. People like their characters <i>because</i> they're characters, and they identify with some aspect of them, and they want to see them represented in a way that they can identify with.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-53615339096902950282021-08-28T20:12:00.001-07:002021-08-28T20:12:28.278-07:00What's wrong with SFV?<p>I just finished again playing the General Story earlier today. I had a lot of costume customizations, and it had been a while, so it was reasonably fun to go through it again. It reminded me of a lot of reasons why SFV will never be one of the best games in the series, though. In fact, it seems like it's the odd numbered ones that have struggled the most, finding cult followings among the super competitive set, maybe, but otherwise being rather unremarkable in their performance in the marketplace. This assumes for the sake of argument that the "zero/alpha" sub-series is an even number, of course.</p><p>A few technical things first. Why the devil are load times sooooOOOoooo bad on the PS4? The game is native to that console, fer cryin' out loud. I don't know if its better or not on a good gaming PC with the Steam version, but the load times for SFV on the PS4 are embarrassingly bad. Just absolutely terrible. Worst in the series. SFA2 on the SNES was better.</p><p>I deleted the from my PS4 for months and then redownloaded it again. For some reason, since I've gotten it back, I've had a hard time staying logged into the server for more than about half an hour or so before I get booted and have to get back on it. And for some extremely stupid and inexplicable reason, the game wants you to be online even in totally single player experiences. Getting booted out of the general story mode because you lost your connection to the Capcom server is beyond stupid and really, <i>really </i>annoying. I NEVER play any online modes; if I'm not playing a story mode, I'm playing arcade. I should never EVER have to connect to the server unless I'm browsing the DLCs. This doesn't happen with any other game, it doesn't happen when I'm streaming movies, or using other devices, etc. To be fair, I do occasionally (although <i>much</i> less often than in SFV) get have hiccups in our video conferencing software at work too, though. I can't completely and totally rule out that my own internet service is causing the problem, although the likelihood of that being the case is extremely low since everything else works like a charm. Even so... why do I even need to be online at all?</p><p>The story mode is also pretty embarrassing, although I admit to liking <i>some</i> aspects of it. The plot, though... gah. Who wrote this, a fifth grader? And the dialog... Look, I know it's probably translated directly from the Japanese, but why do Japanese anime and other storytelling formats always tend to sound like a bunch of pretentious blowhards reading out of context fortune cookies at each other in an attempt to sound like somebody has some depth to them? The "comic relief" such as it is, is so cringy that it makes me feel like I need to go to the gym just to recover from the beta that's all over it. The live-action Street Fighter movie with Raul Julia, Jean Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue is widely considered one of the worst movies ever made that got a wide release, but that comes across as a masterpiece of craftsmanship compared to this story mode storytelling.</p><p>SFV is also a shockingly ugly game most of the time, although it isn't consistently so; sometimes it actually looks really good. Sometimes the ugly is technical, like the incredibly plastic looking models, and the really bad clipping and crazy spastic behavior of hair and clothes. But sometimes its just the art design. Somebody <i>really</i> hated Ken and Akuma, for instance, and went out of their way to make them look absolutely retarded. Meanwhile, Ryu and (most alternates of) Chun-Li look quite good. The "hot Ryu" redesign is so good that it is up there with the Mark of the Wolves Terry Bogard as a kind of "this should have been his design in the first place" kind of redesign. Recent DLC character Akira looks tremendously good. Alex looks like he has a broken leg in his normal standing stance. It's really kind of all over the map, but when you compare SFV to some of its PS4 generation contemporaries like Fighting EX Layer, King of Fighters XIV, SNK Heroines, Tekken 7, etc. it really stands out as a mostly tremendously ugly game.</p><p>Character selection and prominence was quite weird. Did Karin go and become a fan favorite sometime when I wasn't looking? She was in <i>one game</i> as a totally forgettable rival; she is to Sakura what Ken is to Ryu, except that Sakura isn't as iconic as Ryu and she doesn't really need a Ken. Even the UDON folks completely ignored her other than an off-hand reference that Sakura's friend from school makes. And they LOVED pulling obscure characters out and finding ways to use them for <i>something.</i> There are plenty of fan favorites and original world warriors that don't show up, yet we also get a lot of kind of obscure and odd characters. Even very prominent characters from the last game don't show up except as cameos. Really? No Crimson Vyper? But we get Seth come back as a girl? Seth the boss that nobody really liked, and who was one of the weakest parts of SFIV? (To be fair, not very many of the SFIV original characters are very good. Rufus? El Fuerte? Somebody should have been fired over those two.)</p><p>I will say that at least at this point in the game's lifecycle, the gameplay itself is pretty solid. Not the most exciting SF gameplay I've ever seen, but it's not overly simplistic, it's not overly spastic, and its not overly technical. It does kind of hit a sweet spot that the best Alpha and SFIV iterations did. But given that almost everything else about this game is mediocre, disappointing, or otherwise fails to live up to the promise that it should and could have, and those other games with equally compelling gameplay are still around and can be played quite easily, it's a little weird to expect us to get very excited about this title still. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-68161660895565548442021-08-28T14:05:00.003-07:002021-08-28T14:33:01.330-07:00The Lost Street Fighter characters<p>I noticed that on the PS4 store you can buy Fighting EX Layer, and that it is 80% off from now until the some time in early September; about a week or so away. From $40 to $8 was a deal too good to pass up (it cost almost that much to add Terry Bogard as a DLC character!) so I bought it this morning (and Terry, because... c'mon, c'mon. It's Terry.) I've played it just a bit, and have some very early commentary.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>I played with Kairi, who's the kinda sorta Ryu clone. My first thought is that he doesn't actually have a lot of moves; two or three "unique" moves, three special moves, and three similar and kind of unimpressive supers. Maybe there's some combos or something that I don't know about that will make him more fun to play, but in general, I thought he was a bit simplistic to play and I got a little tired of him extremely quickly; he just didn't have a lot of tactical diversity to bring to bear. Against the CPU, at least.</li><li>The game seems specifically geared towards online competitive play. Two different versus modes, one for online and one for offline are listed before even arcade mode. I've heard that the netcode is particularly good, and will match you up with players of your same skill level much better than almost all of its competitors, so that you actually have a fun experience playing online games, instead of just getting blown out by freaks who practice all of the time. But I can't comment on this first hand, merely note that the single player experience seems to be a bit lacking.</li><li>Not only that, the arcade mode wasn't particularly interesting to play. Instead of best two out of three, it was best three out of five matches. The CPU blocks a lot, so you throw out a lot of attacks that don't do anything before you finish your matches. I had several matches end because time ran out. Not the funnest way to play either. </li><li>The characters have potential but Arika do absolutely <i>nothing</i> with them. Very little personality exhibited, and no story to speak of. Just a brief paragraph as an ending, which told me very, very little about the character. This is another indication that the competitive play is the focus for the developer. In my opinion, <i>any</i> game, no matter how much the devs want to focus on a multiplayer experience, that doesn't have a good single player mode is going to be one that eventually people don't play much of. No matter the genre. Look at Star Wars the Old Republic, for instance, and how they added a massive single player experience that they didn't expect to (and that they claim at least 80% of their players are focusing on). Look at Overwatch, which nobody played for more than a few months because it was all running around with bratty little kids and there wasn't anything else to do. There's a handful of exceptions here and there, and a good cooperative or competitive scene is important for a lot of games, but people better be able to just sit down with the machine and play it without relying on someone else, or they'll likely be disappointed pretty quickly. I think the devs made a mistake with their focus here.</li><li>The game <i>looks</i> quite good. In fact, it just highlights how incredibly ugly Street Fighter V is in general, although that's a post for another time, because it's a big topic. The characters look fantastic, if occasionally a little plastic. I didn't see any clipping going on, and the character and stage design was just well done. The strange anime character portraits at the select screen (which also show in the win and lose images, as well as in small form at the top of the HUD) are sometimes hit or miss, but the actual 3D models are great. The stages are really good too. Some of them have a weird deja vu feel to them, like Terry's train ride through the desert southwest of "West Albuquerque", although there's probably a reason for that, because it's Terry. But why does Hokuto (and Shirase, formerly known as "Bloody Hokuto") have a giant snaky background that looks like Mukai's stage in King of Fighters 2003? Anyway, all very well designed from a visual perspective. Nothing at all to complain about here.</li><li>There are hints offline that there is some kind of potentially interesting story here, even if it is derivative, about sealed demons breaking loose, forgotten memories, the main character Kairi turning into an Akuma-like creature, but not realizing it because he's lost his memory, etc. Sure, sure... the story seems to be ripped off from other games that already did it better in the genre; a kind of Orochi Lite, or something... but there's something here that sadly they do nothing with. In fact, you kind of don't know anything at all about it unless you look up stuff on Arika website (or other wikis), because it's not really in the game at all.</li><li>A lot of people probably enjoy this about the game, but I found, quite honestly, the barrage of options that you have to pick before you even start playing to be kind of strange and overwhelming to someone new. What is Classic vs Progressive? No explanation given. What the devil are all these different "Gougi" modes and what to they mean? No explanation given. Again, I have an internet and a browser, so it's not like I can't get some answers out there somewhere, although the game is sufficiently low key that there's less information on it available than you'd probably like to think. </li></ul><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjttK9Xwa-d32KHSC-NAEQwy6uKhZ5MovUlpXnHsk-8N8styZnIUilm1GUyHvmzrRKvwwQ13Y7BYWKDKC1Ln_l_Al-OZBdvDWPhVXs0Krfof2Fb4q_-Wc28tNL3vKWftzXHmMohg1iIFZT1/s1920/ss_5ce70c126b44eb85e66cef5461e3f8142f337f05.1920x1080.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjttK9Xwa-d32KHSC-NAEQwy6uKhZ5MovUlpXnHsk-8N8styZnIUilm1GUyHvmzrRKvwwQ13Y7BYWKDKC1Ln_l_Al-OZBdvDWPhVXs0Krfof2Fb4q_-Wc28tNL3vKWftzXHmMohg1iIFZT1/w640-h360/ss_5ce70c126b44eb85e66cef5461e3f8142f337f05.1920x1080.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Anyway, I certainly recommend getting it at that price while you can, if you haven't. At that price, heck, even if you only play it for a few hours total, it's probably still worth it. I doubt it's going to really creep up into superstar status, rivaling King of Fighters or Street Fighter, but it's not a bad game so far, and there are a lot of things that it does do really quite right. It's also the repository of a whole bunch of lost Street Fighter characters, the legacy of the EX spin-off series, and the fact that it has Terry Bogard as a DLC character opens up interesting crossover possibilities that I wish more of these jokers would get on board with. Let's face it, the fighting game genre isn't the top of the heap anymore like it was in the early to mid 90s, and all of the developers need to do more to keep their brands and their profile higher, I think. Or at least keep their existing fanbase excited to keep coming back for more. Big crossover games, and characters that are familiar but in a new setting, like Terry in this game, or Akuma in Tekken 7, or a female Skullomania in the SNK Heroines game is a fun concept, and fans eat that kind of stuff up. Keep doing more of it! In fact, that whole crossover potential is part of what prompted me to start this blog and the Google Sites for Karate Supers that I have. Sure, sure... I could just collect and play these games on my own. I could even record my playthroughs or something and put them on YouTube. But what I really want to do is imagine what it would be like to imagine this whole thing as the "karate supers cinematic universe" which, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, would tell stories, somewhat "remixed" or redone with occasionally very different details to them, and mix up characters who otherwise might not be seen together in the same games already.</div><div><br /></div><div>Terry Bogard appearing with the "lost" Street Fighter characters from the EX games in Fighting EX Layer is just a tiny taste of what I'd like to see more of.</div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-67162767253880002822021-08-27T09:57:00.009-07:002021-08-27T16:39:55.084-07:00Street Fighter vs King of Fighters<p>The year is 1998. Capcom has released, this year, its arguably most polished—and still considered one of its best entries in the entire Street Fighter series even now, years later—Street Fighter Alpha 3. It's in between the releases of Street Fighter III: Second Impact (1997) and Third Strike (1999). Its vs series has just barely graduated from Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter (1997) to Marvel vs Capcom (1998) which expanded the roster from just Street Fighter characters to include characters from other Capcom franchises like Megaman, etc. That would be greatly expanded in the next game in the series, Marvel vs Capcom 2, but this was the first game that started the real trend of gonzo, spastic, novelty value of having such a tonal dissonance of characters all appearing in a crazy crossover game. Prior to that, the Marvel crossovers had been marginally more serious, and the Street Fighter games themselves obviously so, with a consistent tone and feel throughout. In many ways, 1998 was "peak Street Fighter" for a whole decade, while the franchise lingered under lazy, uninspired efforts, before being revived with Street Fighter IV in 2008.</p><p>Meanwhile, SNK also released King of Fighters '98 in 1998, obviously. Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 also came out that year, which although a tremendous game, had already had the spotlight taken from it to migrate to King of Fighters. While here in America, this was never really the case, in many markets in Asia and in South America in particular however, SNK was as popular as Capcom at the 2-D fighters, and the supposed rivalry between the two companies was catnip to games journalists, especially seeing as what even many years later many fans see as two of the best entries in both Street Fighter and King of Fighters came out in 1998. This fact was not lost on people at the time, of course, and both games were covered in the press, often in fact, in the exact same issue. At least one publication, Arcadia, plastered the title Street Fighter vs King of Fighters on its cover, and at least some fans, tantalized by that title, thought that that meant that some kind of actual crossover game was coming, as opposed to the magazine merely reviewing two of the best competing entries from each company in the same issue.</p><p>Whether this is literally true or not, this fan and journalist fervor is supposedly what prompted Capcom and SNK people to talk to each other and hammer out the license for what was to become the various Capcom vs SNK (and SNK vs Capcom) series of games. From the get-go, however, this concept was tainted by what was going on in the crazy, spastic Marvel vs Capcom stuff; the idea that we needed to add characters who had no tonal resonance with the others, just because the whole point was throwing everybody in a giant bag of a game and shaking it up until it broke. The Capcom vs SNK games were more serious in most respects than the Marvel vs Capcom game of the same era (2000-2002 or so) when they did finally come out in response to that stimulus in 1998, but for my money, they never <i>quite</i> lived up to the premise and promise of Street Fighter vs King of Fighters described in the headlines.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb7uox1MMeRwqXJaOrJQSMX2OR4OS4v3tryXW_J1C8gwiOWY76iHO15XRfiUsKdLzgErkq7j-knFw3xEeVkm7rNjAeUEfgj5IMtNMSRIqlcjEJm5SfjflP6zRTdvh_lkW9_w1oOIFp-pEM/s1280/maxresdefault.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb7uox1MMeRwqXJaOrJQSMX2OR4OS4v3tryXW_J1C8gwiOWY76iHO15XRfiUsKdLzgErkq7j-knFw3xEeVkm7rNjAeUEfgj5IMtNMSRIqlcjEJm5SfjflP6zRTdvh_lkW9_w1oOIFp-pEM/w640-h360/maxresdefault.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>There are some other titles that qualify as similar in tone, of course, although <i>most</i> of them have already had some kind of crossover of sorts with the two flagship franchises. On Capcom's side, Rival Schools and Final Fight have always been associated with Street Fighter; Sakura appearing in Rival Schools and more recently, Akira appearing in Street Fighter V's final season. Final Fight characters were all over the place in the Alpha series already, and more of them have been more and more integrated into the Street Fighter franchise since. Although going back to 1989 already it was clear that they were going to be the same canon; the crush the car game from Street Fighter II was borrowed from Final Fight, and Final Fight's original title was going to be Street Fighter '89! Darkstalkers is a little more difficult; while the Darkstalkers titles have more or less the same vintage as the Marvel and Alpha games, and are obviously very similar to them in many, many regards, they do have an occasionally more gonzo tone than the Street Fighter games, at least. Although other Darkstalkers characters would fit in more closely with the Street Fighter cast. Curiously, as far as I'm aware, no Darkstalkers or Street Fighter character have actually ever appeared in the same game unless it was explicitly a crossover game (or puzzle fighter or something), however, and there hasn't ever been a Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers type property except for a comic book series published by UDON. I find this observation oddly compelling to noodle on. Some of the Street Fighter characters, especially Akuma, but also maybe Gill and Urien and Rose (and Menat) and more recently G (and Q) have the kind of vibe that would fit quite well in a Darkstalkers game. And with the successful relaunch of Street Fighter again, there's certainly been a call to do <i>something</i> with the Darkstalker characters besides an occasional cameo or cosplay alternate costume from many fans, which so far seem to have been unanswered and unaddressed. Curious and curiouser.</p><p>The King of Fighters games were always meant to be crossover games, of course, but they were primarily based around the concept of Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting and other similar characters; even characters like the US Sports team, the Psycho Soldiers team or the Ikari Warriors team were remade into a Street Fighter-like character representation. Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters, of course, were already in that mold. From time to time, characters who were a little more outré have popped up, like Nakoruru being a significant part of the plot of King of Fighters XIV, or some of the weird sub-bosses that showed up in King of Fighters XI, or especially all of the strikers that showed up in King of Fighters 2000. And curiously, a number of their <i>actual</i> bosses have always had a Darkstalkers like vibe too; I mean, what is Mukai and Magaki and Saiki and even Orochi for that matter, if not Darkstalkers in a Street Fighter-like game? The NESTS saga was less supernatural, but that only meant that it much more closely resembled the Street Fighter Alpha games, and later the G-project Street Fighter III stuff.</p><p>A few other games merit some mention. The Street Fighter EX games were, of course, Street Fighter games, but they were developed by Arika, and had a reasonably diverse cast of characters that have <i>not</i> appeared in mainline Street Fighter. The reason for this, it appears, is that the rights to those characters remained with Arika all this time, so that even if Capcom <i>wanted</i> to use them (which isn't at all clear that they ever did) they couldn't have without making some kind of new deal with Arika to do so. Arika have not that long ago finally released a new Street Fighter-like fighting game of their own, featuring these characters. Curiously, they made a deal of some kind with SNK so that Terry Bogard appeared in their game, and Skullomania appeared in a strange King of Fighters spin-off. This raises the tantalizing question of including these Arika Street Fighter EX characters in with the Street Fighter and/or SNK characters as certainly plausible. </p><p>There are a few more even more obscure but also tantalizing connections. Data East released a Street Fighter II-like game called Fighters History and Fighters History Dynamite, its sequel or upgraded version. This was released on the Neo Geo and just based on the look and gameplay of it, it's mostly a late Street Fighter II vintage copycat. These characters would fit very well. In fact, Capcom thought that they would fit <i>so</i> well, that they sued Data East for copyright infringement. They lost because of the <i>scenes a faire </i>doctrine, which in fact suggests that Capcom was right in believing that the FHD characters are basically Street Fighter wannabes. Curiously, the rights to use these old Data East characters are currently with SNK, and although they've done precious little with them, they <i>have</i> on occasion had crossovers and cameo appearances, including a FHD character appearing in one of the Maximum Impact King of Fighters 3-D games, and a crossover cellphone game using Fatal Fury and Fighters History characters. I'm not quite sure why they haven't introduced a few of them into their mainline King of Fighters series since they have the rights; maybe it's because they don't know that they'll retain the rights forever and don't want to be stuck unable to sell a title that they've produced. But it'd be pretty fun to see a Fighters History team or two, even if they're DLC "non-canon" characters make an appearance in a King of Fighters game.</p><p>A final one I'll note is another Neo Geo game, but one developed by another studio, Visco. This is Breakers and its update Breakers Revenge. For my money, this one is even <i>more</i> overtly Street Fighter II-like (with a handful of Darkstalker nods; I actually think Alsion III is a better manifestation of the mummy concept than Anakaris, for instance) yet it was Data East that got sued.</p><p>Both Fighters History and Breakers have cult followings for various reasons; the super solid gameplay of Breakers Revenge, for example, and some of the odd character designs for Fighters History Dynamite. While they are largely forgotten (if they were ever known to begin with) by the mainstream as merely Street Fighter 2 copycats, the fact that they were such clear Street Fighter II copycats, not to mention the occasional cameo of some of the characters in other games of the same type, raises the question of whether or not there's any value in adding a Street Fighter vs Breakers Revenge or vs Fighters History Dynamite angle to this crossover. Probably not, because hardly anyone is asking for it, the characters don't have as much depth or interest for the most part, and frankly just with Street Fighter vs King of Fighters alone you've got too many characters to choose from anyway. But... it remains a tantalizing feature; how do (or at least how <i>can, </i>the Darkstalkers characters, EX characters, Fighters History Dynamite and Breakers Revenge characters somehow get worked in to this massive crossover game that yet somehow still manages to have a consistent feel with characters that <i>all feel like they belong there</i> for the most part, without having bizarre characters that <i>don't</i> belong, like Megaman or Amingo or Phoenix Wright, or other characters that actually <i>have</i> appeared in crossover games? Probably mostly just to provide novelty value for the silliness of the concept of adding them, honestly.</p><p>Whew. So, where am I going with this? I don't know yet. I'd like to think that eventually I'll write a big fan fic that crosses over the Street Fighter and King of Fighters characters, with some nods towards Darkstalkers and maybe some of the other titles, but honestly, I'm not really doing anything there and not likely to in the immediate future. I am, however, putting together a more complete list of character on my Google Drive. I already had a list of mainline Street Fighter characters. I needed to add the recently announced Luke to the list, and decided, why not create more tabs and go all out? I've now done the EX characters tab, using all of the EX games, including the various iterations of Street Fighter EX and the two games that Arika published that are not Street Fighter. Next will be Darkstalkers, and then I can turn to the SNK titles. I'm doing that one last because it's by far the biggest and most difficult of them all to do.</p><p><b>UPDATE:</b> I really buckled down and finished the lists after a couple of free hours. The King of Fighters rosters were—as anticipated—the most difficult to do. It also reminded me, actually, that there are a lot of really dumb King of Fighters characters. The developers, going back to the very beginning, really, have a strange fondness for introducing characters with bizarre "Japanese street fashion" outfits, although that's admittedly gotten much worse since Falcoon started working for the company. They also have a really bizarre tendency to like to enter little kids in the game, and there are tons of high schoolers and even younger kids padding out the roster. </p><p>Whatever I do with these characters (including simply playing the games) I will very studiously ignore the worst of these.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-47025345665284235642021-08-17T18:27:00.002-07:002021-08-17T18:44:02.129-07:00Capcom vs SNK Pro vs Capcom vs SNK 2<p>It seems like it should be obvious that CvS2 is better than CvS Pro. But, if you have the Japanese import Dreamcast version of the latter, which I now do, then that's not necessarily true. I've had the PS1 version for some time, and it's notably not very pretty or fluid, although it plays quite well and is a perfectly fine game. The improvements that the Dreamcast version adds make the comparison between the two games a bit more unclear, though—it really does make it a much more pleasant if not even occasionally breathtaking experience. Let's talk about various areas where they differ from each other, and I'll talk about which one offers a better experience overall.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitb_BpTBBGLy8QwdU5YPIFBOJpRLXa4LBCg9l9ZSbxsfd4oQxNl-NvwBGB-0Tao2MXf9mWzhYu7HiKFeXefrT8i_Puus6UjP2geyDxJrECBOIcKDe7lyGdi6IBT9xziLowPWfEHr5ayop9/s2048/Kyo-and-Sakura-capcom-vs-snk-22608139-2560-2369.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1895" data-original-width="2048" height="592" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitb_BpTBBGLy8QwdU5YPIFBOJpRLXa4LBCg9l9ZSbxsfd4oQxNl-NvwBGB-0Tao2MXf9mWzhYu7HiKFeXefrT8i_Puus6UjP2geyDxJrECBOIcKDe7lyGdi6IBT9xziLowPWfEHr5ayop9/w640-h592/Kyo-and-Sakura-capcom-vs-snk-22608139-2560-2369.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><b>Character Selection.</b> It's clear that the second game has a better character selection than the earlier version. However, this doesn't matter as much as you'd think unless you're a fan of a more esoteric character. I've actually only quite rarely played any character in 2 that <i>isn't</i> in Pro. My go-to characters, down to the second and third string, a bit deeper on the bench, are almost all characters that are in Pro. However, again—there's no doubt that the second game has more characters, and it <i>also</i> has better bosses. Shin Akuma and Orochi Rugal are simply better than the version of Geese and Bison that Pro has. But on the flipside, Pro has a more even theme and tone. While neither game is anywhere near as gonzo and spastic as the Marvel vs Capcom series had become, especially by the time MvC2 came out, there are still some characters that really don't fit the concept of Capcom vs SNK. Which, lets all face it, was really always meant to be about their iconic fighting game franchises, and specifically kind of Street Fighter vs King of Fighters with maybe a Darkstalkers, Fatal Fury or Art of Fighting character that wasn't in KOF thrown in just for kicks. The inclusion of Samurai Shodown and Last Blade characters just don't feel like they belong in this game. And of course while Morrigan was a perfectly fine fit as an unusual offbeat character but not too much so, her sprite was absolutely terrible, and has been mentioned by every reviewer who's ever talked about either of these games. (I should mention that Nakoruru is in Pro, and she seems to show up as a com player way more often than she should.)</p><p>I've got to give a slight edge to 2 over Pro, but much more slight than you'd think; only a tiny sliver of advantage.</p><p><b>Gameplay System.</b> I'm covering three different things here: 1) button layout and moveset, 2) the ratio system, and 3) the groove system. While most people would say that 2 beats Pro handily on all three dimensions, I'm going to make the case that it doesn't; it either is the same, or even arguably worse. For my taste, of course.</p><p>1) Pro made the decision to switch to a SNK-like layout, using four buttons instead of the default Street Fighter scenario of six. While this meant that some moves had to be abandoned here and there, curiously, nobody's ever complained about the King of Fighters characters feeling move impoverished because they used four instead of six buttons, and nobody has really complained since the first month or two of release about the four button approach of Marvel vs Capcom 2. In fact, in an era when home ports to consoles were becoming much more important than arcade renditions of the games, you could easily make a case that a four button layout is much less awkward than the six button Capcom default. Unless you went out of your way to buy a specialty control pad, after all, you always only had four buttons on the face of your controller. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think the four button layout is better than the six button layout, and I've always been slightly annoyed by trying to figure out the best way to map the six button layout to every four-button (plus triggers) control pad I've ever used to play a Capcom fighting game, from the SNES, the PS1, the PS2, the PS4, the Xbox, the Dreamcast and my USB PC controller. <i>Every single one of them</i> would have benefited from being designed to be a four-button game rather than a six button game. Of course, this isn't an issue for the SNK games, all of which are four button games to begin with... if they aren't even three button games for that matter, which a few of the Fatal Fury titles are.</p><p>2) I don't like the ratio system for either game. Luckily, there's actually no reason to play it for either game if you don't like it. Pro has the Pair Mode, where you ignore the ratios and pick two characters of your choice, who are merged into ratio 2, regardless of what they originally had been in the ratio mode. 2 has a slightly better selection; offering a 3x3 mode that is like the pair mode but obviously with three instead of two characters, as well as a regular Street Fighter-like 1x1. Normally, I'd suggest that the 1x1 is essential for the way I like to play, because I don't like having to mentally switch gears between characters. This is one of my bigger complaints with the regular gameplay associated with the King of Fighters games, although most of those titles also offer a well-done 1x1 mode as well. I find, however, that picking two characters instead of three doesn't trigger that reaction in me; I guess switching between two characters I can handle, whereas switching between three is too many to be fun for me and subconsciously stresses me out or something. I can't remember the last time that I played either game using the default ratio system, and I can't imagine why I ever would again. The ratio system simply was a bad idea, and even improving it between Pro and 2 didn't make it worth using, when there are better options right there in both games anyway.</p><p>3) I suppose some people like the number of grooves that 2 offers over Pro. I can certainly see that, especially if you're a fan of a particular groove that is unique to 2 rather than Pro. 2 has six grooves; C-A-P-S-N-K. C is almost exactly the same as A-ism from Street Fighter Alpha 3. A-groove is similar to the V-ism of Street Fighter Alpha 3. P-groove is most often compared to the Street Fighter III games, because of the presence of parry. Although parry was difficult to pull off in III, and it's even more difficult to master in this game. If you're really good at it, it's probably the best groove, but I'm not, so I don't care for it. S-groove has the manually charged super meter, and Desperation moves when you're health bar is red, similar to the earliest KOF games. N-groove is similar to the advanced mode that later KOF games started to develop, including 97 and 98 (and maybe 96? I'm drawing a blank now on that one.) K-groove is an interesting mashup of Samurai Shodown features and Mark of the Wolves features, making it a unique groove. This choice is great if you like one of the new grooves, or like playing around with optional things in the system and having lots of choices. There's even a groove edit mode where you can create your own grooves. However, after trying all of them out for a bit, I now only play C-groove on 2. I have no interest anymore in any other groove, although if for some reason I had to pick another one, I'd go for N. Pro only has two grooves, and although they don't have the same names, they are identical to C-groove for Capcom and S-groove for SNK. Since I can't imagine that I'd ever pick another groove again other than Capcom/C-groove, and it's present in both games and works exactly the same in both, the additional choices of 2 offer me nothing that I actually want.</p><p>I'd say that the button layout is a very slight advantage to Pro over 2 and a similarly slight advantage goes to 2 over Pro for offering the 1x1 and 3x3 over the 2x2 of Pro. Neither has an advantage in groove selection, because both offer me the only groove that I'm still interested in playing ever again. On this dimension the two games, therefore break even.</p><p><b>Presentation.</b> In terms of the sprites, they are basically the same for both games, and there are, honestly, issues with them. The handful of redrawn Street Fighter sprites (just Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and M. Bison, I believe) and the obviously newly drawn SNK sprites all look pretty good. Ironically, by the time even the first of these came out, many of the SNK characters had migrated to improved looks; Kyo's NESTS saga look was a big improvement over his Orochi saga look, for instance, but it's the latter that got drawn in the Capcom style. Regardless, that's all nearly top of the line for the era, and can't really be complained about. The rest of the Capcom sprites, however, don't look nearly as good. Everyone always points out how terrible Morrigan looks, and while it's true that she has the worst looking sprite in the game, many of the older Alpha vintage sprites really aren't that much better. Not only that, they really aren't drawn in the slightly more serious style that the SNK characters and redrawn Street Fighter characters are. A few new characters (and by new I mean drawn from much older games) from the Capcom side got ported to 2 that weren't in Pro, like Maki, Kyosuke or Eagle, and they also had to be redrawn in the newer style. The Alpha sprites look fine in their own game, but they are somewhat more cartoonish than the style that the SNK and redrawn Capcom sprites are in, which causes further graphical confusion; they just don't all look like they belong in the same game at all. (To be fair, this is also true even for some 3-D models that <i>are</i> in the same game. SFV has characters that look ridiculous next to characters that look really good. The newly released Akira in particular simply looks like she shouldn't be in the same game at all as the totally whiffed up Ken model.) However, while this is an issue, it's equally an issue for both games, so I can't give either game a leg up in this regard. Other parts of the presentation are different however.</p><p>While I don't think either game has really very memorable music, Pro's music is substantially better than the really generic Eurodancy soundtrack of 2. In general, I'd say Capcom was really whiffing on their music selection in this era too; this is the era of Marvel vs Capcom 2; the worst music ever featured in a major fighting game, and Street Fighter III. (To be fair, I'm really only familiar with the Third Strike music. But I didn't like most of that either.) Neither game is anywhere nearly as ridiculous as MvC2 (and yes, I realize that the music has grown on many fans. I'm not one of them. If anything, I find it even more obnoxious the more time passes. But I have other reasons for not really loving that game too.) I think 2's music is comparable in its weird badness to Third Strike, whereas Pro's music is comparable in its pretty generic run-togetherness to Alpha 3. Ironically, I once really liked the music to Alpha 3, but after hearing the really well-done remakes of the classic Street Fighter themes, plus the equally cool stage scenes that Overclocked Remix did (both for the HD Remix of SF2, and on their own before even) and the OST for Street Fighter IV, that Alpha 3 has not aged well in comparison. I still think that both Alpha 3 and Pro are fine for the era in which they came out, and they at least don't distract from the game, like MvC2 does, but they really aren't all that good either.</p><p>Otherwise, the look and feel of the stages is also very much better in Pro than in 2. Now, I didn't appreciate this as much for many years, because I only had the PS1 version of Pro, but with the Dreamcast version, it's obvious that many of the stages in this game are literally the absolute best 2-D stages ever produced, while the 3-D stages from 2 (and MvC2 for that matter) are probably the worst stages produced in general. Now, I don't necessarily hate 3-D stages in their own right. I think later 3-D stages, like those in KOF 2002 UM or KOF 1998 UM, for instance, look great, and there's some other really cool console port stages of what were originally 2-D stages in the arcade versions for some games that I also quite like. But I certainly don't think doing stages in 3-D just because you can is an improvement, and the stages in 2 are just awful, with only a couple of exceptions (the two boss stages, as it happens.) Really well-done 2-D stages have aged quite well, and have a kind of timeless beauty to them now that the early 00s 3-D video game design simply doesn't have. That era really kind of is a wasteland of very ugly, blocky polygon graphical design that looks terrible almost across the board, no matter the type of game. Curiously, though—it's less the technical limitations of the era that make the stages so unlovely as it is simply the design of them. I've got to give the edge, and it's a more substantial edge than we've seen before in these comparisons, to Pro over 2.</p><p><b>Total.</b> Now, exactly which of those dimensions are most important to you may vary from what are most important to me. And some of my preferences there are obviously fairly subjective. Although I'll note that with the music in particular, I hear people make repeated mention of the "this is true love we're making" track of the London stage, and I've got to think that they've just developed a nostalgic fondness for an ugly track, the same way many have for "I'm gonna take you for a ride" from Marvel vs Capcom 2 rather than because it's an objectively good song or anything. But for my money, I'd have to say that it adds up to me being more likely now to play Pro than 2. Now don't get me wrong. I played a <i>lot</i> of 2 over the years, and I played probably a bit less of Pro when I had it only on the PS1. But now that I have the Dreamcast version, even with the Japanese, which I can't read a lick of, I just think that I prefer playing that one and probably will for the foreseeable future. All of the "improvements" made to 2 over Pro ended up being improvements that I don't really value that much, meaning that in most respects I can consider it an improvement from an academic perspective, but my own personal experience is actually a downgrade.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-68096007903419848212021-08-16T08:52:00.002-07:002021-08-16T08:52:13.571-07:00Story Summary: Art of Fighting series<p>The Art of Fighting game came out not too long after Fatal Fury. Like that one, it takes place in Southtown (albeit earlier than Fatal Fury) and features two playable characters, Ryo and Robert, who go through town fighting against gangsters and ruffians on the lookout for Ryo's kidnapped sister (Robert's girlfriend) Yuri. This makes it much more like Final Fight in terms of story, albeit more like Street Fighter or Fatal Fury in terms of gameplay. It turns out she's been kidnapped by Mr. Big, who looks kind of like a typical 70s pimp.</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VWECZBdmJu8" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p><p>There's a secret boss after Mr. Big, though... Mr. Karate. He's a guy who wears a mask, and he's got Yuri kidnapped. And the then the game ends on a cliffhanger after you beat Mr. Karate, right after Yuri starts to tell you who this masked Mr. Karate really is.</p><p>And this is where the story <i>really</i> starts; in the first game, it's pretty straightforward and pretty much the same as Final Fight; just go through town beating up some bad guys and find the kidnapped girl, beat the final boss, and she's saved. Hurray. But what we find out when Art of Fighting 2 starts is that <i>actually</i> Geese Howard is the real culprit. He's killed Ryo's mother, and sent Takuma Sakazaki (Ryo and Yuri's father) into hiding. Mr. Karate is, himself, Takuma, playing some game where he's trying to protect his children by working with Mr. Big, yet also keeping Yuri in his pocket so Geese can't reach him. Anyway, whatever exactly the plot of gang activity was that was going on in the first game (it's never explained exactly what it is other than "gangsta stuff", basically) was foiled by Ryo and Robert, another tournament takes place in the second game. This time, you go fight "young Geese". When you beat him, he simply flees to Japan, plots the murder of Jeff Bogard, who's been poking around investigating him, and presumably he's been chased out of Southtown for the time being, only to reappear some ten years later during the Fatal Fury game.</p><p>Of course, when Ryo appears in Fatal Fury Special, he's not aged, and when both the Art of Fighting teams and Fatal Fury teams appear in King of Fighters, they're the same age that they are in their own respective titles. This is because the King of Fighters takes place in an alternate time line. While it makes off-hand references to the events of the series to which they come from, no timing of any kind of implied.</p><p>There's a final Art of Fighting game, and while it also features both Ryo and Robert, the protagonist of the story is now Robert rather than Ryo. He runs into a girl he knew as a child, who's father is missing, and he runs around in the Sonoran border region of Mexico looking for her, and fighting with bounty hunters, and others who are all in it for some alleged cash prize. Her father was kidnapped and killed by Wyler, who's a boss I'd like to see make a comeback sometime. Together they've developed some kind of flawed super soldier serum, who turns him into a Mr. Hyde monster. </p><p>Although Wyler is a bad guy who killed this girls father, at the end, his mind is broken and childlike, and she decides that she needs to stay and take care of him (I don't get it.) Robert shrugs and leaves, heading for the airport. </p><p>Curiously, alone in the world of fighting games, here we actually have the resolution of a romantic plotline. Yuri and Ryo come to see Robert off at the airport, and then after he exits stage right, Ryo pulls a ticket out of his pocket, gives it to Yuri, and tells her to go get him. Yuri then follows Robert into the sunset. Every other potential couple is locked in the indecisive phase.</p><p>I think this may be a feature of Japanese storytelling, though. Ranma ½, the only anime that I've ever liked, does this too. The entire 7 season run of the series is based on an "everyone knows that they're supposed to get together" (except for the rivals, of course) but they never really actually do. While it's not my favorite genre by a long shot, I have watched a number of rom-coms with my wife, and I actually do think <i>Pride & Prejudice</i> is a true classic of English literature that everyone of English heritage should read. It's hard to imagine any of them being satisfying if they spend all this time on set-up and then refuse to give you the payoff at the end. </p><p>Anyway, I don't know that the Art of Fighting series is worth checking out if you haven't already. The gameplay is generally much more primitive than even the earliest King of Fighters games. I will give Art of Fighting 3 generally some credit for having absolutely beautiful backgrounds and stages (although the zoom feature often makes them appear unattractively pixelated) and for having an interesting tangent story that does something different than all of the other SNK stories, really. Other than that, the story is only marginally more interesting than Fatal Fury, if it is indeed more interesting, and is notable only for the introduction of characters who were later real standards in the King of Fighters games. However, it's Terry, not Ryo, who became the de facto mascot of SNK, and while the conceit of King of Fighters was bringing together the heroes from a number of games in the same title in a crossover jamboree (the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury teams being the most notable here), they also had their own protagonist(s) and villain(s) that were unique to King of Fighters. The Art of Fighting team, like the Fatal Fury team, ultimately end up becoming sidelined, and even come and go to some degree. (Although Terry and Ryo always make an appearance, at least. The rest of the cast sometimes rotates a bit.) Yuri makes an interesting pivot from being merely damsel in distress to being an active participant before it's all done.</p><p>But mostly the story offers little that can be useful. I think Final Fight's "go beat up bad guys and rescue the damsel in distress from gangsters" storyline is better, even though that's a beat-em up, not a fighter. The cliffhanger reveal that Mr. Karate is actually Takuma Sakazaki, Yuri and Ryo's own father, is more of a headscratcher than an interesting and compelling plot twist. It never really makes any sense why kidnapping Yuri is supposed to help with anything at all. Mostly, I think it's important to establish the relationship between the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury characters, although given the time depth that's supposed to separate them, that becomes an interesting aside rather than something important.</p><p>In the KOF Maximum Impact line, Ryo is older and is now Mr. Karate instead of Takuma. At least in his alternate costume, although he does have a "classic" look too. This lends a little bit more credence to the idea that the Maximum Impact games are actually supposed to be a continuation of the Art of Fighting => Fatal Fury series, although since they go a completely different direction than the Mark of the Wolves game, I have no idea how that's supposed to work. Mark of the Wolves also features a character who's part of Ryo's karate tradition, and supposedly Ryo's protege, with the 70s blaxploitation look and bizarre name of Khushnood Butt (sometimes Marco Rodriquez), furthering the ties between the two series. </p><p>It'd really have been nice to see a bit more of the two series tied together in Mark of the Wolves 2, but after SNK went bankrupt and the new SNK Playmore had to reacquire their own I/P from Eolith, or whomever ended up with it, and the hardware underwent major revision, that game was shelved. It was (supposedly) about 70% done, but since it was going to go on the old MVS hardware, one can pretty confidently assume that it'll never be revisited again at this stage, unless someone else does it.</p><p>The artists who did the Streets of Rage 4 reboot asked fans what they'd like to see them do some fan art mockups for, and Mark of the Wolves 2 was what was picked, though, suggesting that there's still some demand out there for this stuff. They turned out a pretty nifty mock up (see below) which seems to open the possibility, no matter how remote, that maybe some continuation of the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury stories will yet happen, through a revised Mark of the Wolves 2, or some such title.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtAcKNjM-QXg5NtvRsdbp0FQkXQAUzBDrgReHSe-xskGgzxUn0xFsc7X2GKfHPXdx_O5GnL8E5bgcYWA4GO_Twc7510zLnrgPo5kDa6L9D4B6nwytChyphenhyphenxIE57y068O5onfRMIig8_B6Bni/s2048/EsGpM9hXAAgjziX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtAcKNjM-QXg5NtvRsdbp0FQkXQAUzBDrgReHSe-xskGgzxUn0xFsc7X2GKfHPXdx_O5GnL8E5bgcYWA4GO_Twc7510zLnrgPo5kDa6L9D4B6nwytChyphenhyphenxIE57y068O5onfRMIig8_B6Bni/w640-h360/EsGpM9hXAAgjziX.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-39807773609670443012021-08-12T07:12:00.004-07:002021-08-16T05:29:02.997-07:00Character Focus: Terry Bogard<p>Since I just did a summary of the Fatal Fury series, it seems appropriate to focus briefly on Terry Bogard, the star and protagonist of that series, and my favorite of the SNK lineup of characters to play. In a KOF playthrough, I almost always turn to Terry first and most, and he's the character I'm most comfortable and familiar with of the SNK lineup.</p><p>That said, he's had a lot of changes over time. Not just to his look, but moves come and go in bizarre fashion. Some of his appearances have a move list twice as long as some of his other appearances. For his pretty radical redesigned look, which appeared in Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves and was used as well in King of Fighters 2003 and XI, he didn't have one of his signature moves: Rising Tackle. He's still a great character to play without it, but missing it was very strange.</p><p>Speaking of which, Rising Tackle is usually a flash-kick motion to execute, but for some of the later Orochi saga games, and King of Fighters 98 in particular, it was a dragon punch motion. Then it went back to being a flash kick again in 99 and beyond. So weird.</p><p>While Terry's initial backstory is that he was driven by the need for revenge against Geese for the murder of his father, Jeff Bogard, he kind of evolved into the voice of cool, chill, laid-back wisdom from the cast; the one everyone saw as a legend, who gave encouragement, etc. Although this may be a weird Japanese-ism, he doesn't appear to have been too smooth with the ladies. Blue Mary obviously had a thing for him, but it doesn't appear that they actually ended up together for long after all, according to Mark of the Wolves anyway, where no mention of her is to be found. Although to be fair, in SNK fighting games, everybody already has a coupled up relationship with someone else, or they never actually seem to close the deal (Art of Fighting 3 Yuri and Robert being the only exception I can think of.)</p><p>Terry also is obviously connected to his brother Andy Bogard and his friend Joe Higashi. The three of them are the OG Fatal Fury team from the King of Fighters, also known sometimes as the Italy team, because I guess that's where Andy prefers to live, or something. He's had some other team-ups too, though: in 99 when teams were four people, Mai was on the team, for instance. In 2000 and 2001, it was Blue Mary, but alternate strikers were all over the map: Geese Howard being particularly associated with Terry, for instance (Duck King, Billy Kane and Ryuji Yamazaki being other alternates associated with the team.) In the Ash Crimson saga, the teams got significantly mixed up; Terry's Fatal Fury team in 2003 had Terry, Joe and Tizoc. In XI it was Terry, Kim and Duck King. XIII and XIV were back to the classic line-up.</p><p>Because he's been turned into this friendly, laid-back kind of personality, he seems to be friendly enough with everyone on the Fatal Fury roster, and most of the King of Fighters roster, except for overt villains or their henchmen. Billy Kane has evolved over time into being more of a rival than an enemy.</p><p>And of course, his closest associated character in recent years is Rock Howard, since after Geese's death, Terry took him in and raised him.</p><p>Anyway, I've got some concept art of Terry. His classic look actually has more variations than some realize; in the earliest Fatal Fury game, his jacket <i>was</i> a jacket with rolled up sleeves to below his elbow, not a vest with ripped off sleeves. Later, some of his Fatal Fury appearances had a regular t-shirt under his vest with an actual sleeves, although his classic look is sleeveless. His leather bomber jacket and no hat or ponytail Mark of the Wolves look (sometimes called Wild Wolf) is his most notable alternate, and lots of Terry fans somewhat reluctantly (because it's not classic) admit that they like it better. I'm not reluctant at all about it; the only complaint I have about the bomber jacket look is that he never seems to have his Rising Tackle move. People <i>don't</i> seem to love his KOF XIV look, but it seems like a slightly redesigned variation on his very original look to me.</p><p>Anyway, here's some alternate concepts that SNK have developed. Some of them are pretty cool. Some of them are stupid beyond belief.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy6Rkj7MgGXzmNNgJVanbbz4-IgeCNCN3hGurO5_2-1wt4V4H2irrWwbJRjA4ELx39C_x1-x4EL22fXF3xacyb1uK_ypbVwp5aur-JcnL12lxp45n-mdGd_YxuDdjamI_78XmY5wxCRbNf/s790/terry-bogard-kof14-concepts.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="790" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy6Rkj7MgGXzmNNgJVanbbz4-IgeCNCN3hGurO5_2-1wt4V4H2irrWwbJRjA4ELx39C_x1-x4EL22fXF3xacyb1uK_ypbVwp5aur-JcnL12lxp45n-mdGd_YxuDdjamI_78XmY5wxCRbNf/w640-h314/terry-bogard-kof14-concepts.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div>The classic look to the far left. Next to it is the Mark of the Wolves look, with the addition of a ball cap. All of the rest I've never seen before, but I think that they're actually really good. I'd happily use all of them as alternates.<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe_88VpKiTPM9KtxYmxYWUqBjAjeFQOhMn5XWG17MtIEh3GC6dsjlGKa0XuDwS9x4vjT-ZhSgR-_v_kLFM0_aqoTKELk20iRT_5VfNKaEy09IawZgSZVq9qxQK1l6by0U05s5JPq4Ukf-K/s1280/terry-kof14-concept-art.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="950" data-original-width="1280" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe_88VpKiTPM9KtxYmxYWUqBjAjeFQOhMn5XWG17MtIEh3GC6dsjlGKa0XuDwS9x4vjT-ZhSgR-_v_kLFM0_aqoTKELk20iRT_5VfNKaEy09IawZgSZVq9qxQK1l6by0U05s5JPq4Ukf-K/w640-h476/terry-kof14-concept-art.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Some variations on the original Fatal Fury 1 design. they ended up turning into the KoF XIV design below.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh77hfYv2v2fuADdboHKMZoN2J80O3z46HyjybMUJy4Y3fscD1eNXgrmikP5EV0Q83zt2CZTs2irfPvq1d1pR1iTNf9Ik2YbpGZtXed3ZkWa3_h3jwUBZ6w0gazu5yGisxs5zMRivK1FGVQ/s1957/terrybogard-kof14-artwork.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1957" data-original-width="853" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh77hfYv2v2fuADdboHKMZoN2J80O3z46HyjybMUJy4Y3fscD1eNXgrmikP5EV0Q83zt2CZTs2irfPvq1d1pR1iTNf9Ik2YbpGZtXed3ZkWa3_h3jwUBZ6w0gazu5yGisxs5zMRivK1FGVQ/w278-h640/terrybogard-kof14-artwork.jpg" width="278" /></a></div><div><br /></div>The classic look and some really bizarre alternates, below. I actually don't mind that green jacket thing. A kind of male cosplay of Blue Mary, I guess. Blue Terry? I think that it might have been an alternate costume in Maximum Impact 2, but I never played that game. The big belt pouch on the classic is a new addition that isn't a terrible idea. The far right two concepts have ridiculously big belts. But then, so did Blue Mary. The American flag look is ridiculous, of course. The black, gray and red one is... I dunno. I need to think about it to see if it grows on me or not. Probably not, though.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIX8KRPdeREM-7cb-BFauHd3qtVTfNtOSENfiWKwksZAtyvBSkAodFy5avIOM0HCnsY6dKBIaaIBk-nBhfx1J58GbimPKDN6JSWJxENgDLRH7_mc0LukTjCNcEgZdNRaeV6q3xXyk5BPVo/s1080/terrycut-max22.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="1080" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIX8KRPdeREM-7cb-BFauHd3qtVTfNtOSENfiWKwksZAtyvBSkAodFy5avIOM0HCnsY6dKBIaaIBk-nBhfx1J58GbimPKDN6JSWJxENgDLRH7_mc0LukTjCNcEgZdNRaeV6q3xXyk5BPVo/w640-h398/terrycut-max22.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div>The Mark of the Wolves costume (albeit in a pretty stylized style) along with some of the worst alternatives I've ever seen. What is he, a Vegas performer in the 70s here? A stripper who can't make up his mind if he's going for a cowboy or a fireman persona?</div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijNQkD1Ay8gISMDc1tpqHP4cDdUHG_VuNNnmJ8E1tBJCDE0QbFp-W2wRb-TQfjJJH8q-z62bxN5JxVTWBjgBT_Q9wNwSdAZm97GBdfvnprqOvBTBlDAISZXy6mgiLn6MprA2G9dGWTF0DX/s1080/terrywildcut-max22.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="484" data-original-width="1080" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijNQkD1Ay8gISMDc1tpqHP4cDdUHG_VuNNnmJ8E1tBJCDE0QbFp-W2wRb-TQfjJJH8q-z62bxN5JxVTWBjgBT_Q9wNwSdAZm97GBdfvnprqOvBTBlDAISZXy6mgiLn6MprA2G9dGWTF0DX/w640-h286/terrywildcut-max22.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p>I like the concept of a good alternate, and as the Mark of the Wolves design shows, even a really bold new direction isn't necessarily a <i>bad</i> new direction. However, most of these designs are... not all that great. The top bunch are all designs I could get behind, however. Some of these designs look like what ended up coming out as weird alternates in KOF 2006, which was called Maximum Impact 2 in Japan. In fact, that game is famous for—mostly—the bizarre alternate costumes. Other than that, it was a kind of predictable and boring Tekken clone with some SNK characters.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-91693392425912890612021-08-11T08:33:00.003-07:002021-08-16T06:03:53.644-07:00Story Summary: Fatal Fury series<p>I hadn't intended to start with Fatal Fury, or even do it at all, but given that Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting were the genesis in a way of the King of Fighters series, and also that their plots are pretty simple and straightforward, I thought it worth doing. The Fatal Fury series in particular is notable for having a number of "dream matches" that are just recreations of prior games, but have no canonical story implications; it's just "lets get all of the characters back together for a big fight, exactly like we already did, but let's tweak the gameplay and character selection."</p><p>The original plot is as simple as this: Terry and Andy are brothers, and their father (adoptive, I believe) was killed by a rival, Geese Howard, who's now a mafia-type crime boss in the American city of South Town (or Southtown sometimes). Howard stages a street-fighting martial arts tournament. Terry and Andy join, because at the end they'll be able to fight Geese and get their revenge. Their friend, Joe Higashi, who's a Muay Thai fighter (even though he's Japanese. Because SNK is a Japanese company and they always focused mostly on the Japanese market) joins too, although his story seems to be little more than he's the Bogard boys' friend, and he wants to be famous. </p><p>Later more story developed to flesh out this plot, like Tung Fu Rue was Geese and Jeff (Daddy) Bogard's master, but he chose Jeff to teach his best techniques to, because Geese was a bad guy. This prompted Geese to kill Jeff. Tung Fu Rue was also Terry and Andy's master at some point. Of course, he's also one of the opponents you must face in the game's progression. A few more minor characters get a little bit of flavor backstory, but not much.</p><p>Anyway, supposedly Terry wins. Hilariously, in the cutscene animation, he seems to have forgotten all about getting revenge for his dad's murder, and just enjoys being the champion and partying with some women. And then, of course, Geese's thugs bring him to Geese's penthouse office suite, which is decorated in a bizarrely Japanese fashion, and they fight. Terry ends up knocking Geese over the edge, where he falls to his death Hans Gruber style... except that he doesn't die for several more games, and he keeps coming back even though he's supposedly dead even so.</p><p>For Fatal Fury 2, a German nobleman is curious as to the guys who were able to defeat Geese, so he hosts another tournament with the hopes of meeting them. This is Wolfgang Krauser (often pronounced and occasionally spelled Klauser, heh). We never really find out much about what Krauser's deal is, although we do find out that he's Geese's half brother, and some kind of really tough and brutal fighter. Other than that, we never actually find out about him actually <i>doing</i> anything villainous, in fact, the background material makes a bigger deal of his honor and sense of fair play, while also calling him "the Emperor of Darkness" and saying he's a villain. Show, don't tell! Anyway, we're told he's bad, so I suppose he must be, but I have no idea what he does that's so bad other than host a tournament so he can be the boss, and being related to Geese.</p><p>He does also have a progression of sub-bosses, almost exactly like M. Bison does. In fact, the similarities don't end there; we have a Spaniard matador (Vega clone) a new boxer (Balrog clone), and then Billy Kane. He's not exactly a Sagat clone by any means, but he's at least got connections to the first game as a sub boss there. Other than that, only one of the NPCs from the last game returns, albeit with a totally different name, and everyone else is new. But they have as much story and personality at this point, at <i>most, </i>as the characters from the very first Street Fighter 2 game, i.e., essentially none.</p><p>Anyway, Terry wins again, because he's the protagonist of the series and he always wins Fatal Fury games. Fatal Fury Special is the follow-up to this game. Although it's a bit difficult to tell, I don't believe it has a unique story; it's just a fleshed out and improved version of Fatal Fury 2. Kind of like how Super Street Fighter II was to Street Fighter II. Geese returns in this game although the mystery of his survival is never explained. It's also hinted here that Krauser had taken over Geese's empire during his absence, but given that Geese is a South Town local and Krauser is in a castle in Germany, that seems a bit unlikely.</p><p>Fatal Fury 3 is the next game, and curiously Geese, while in the game, is not the boss. Instead we have some really dumb blue- and red-haired kids (SNK have a bizarre fascination with little kid fighter characters, especially little girls. Really odd.) There are some ancient scrolls that have some kind of secret on them, and for some reason they're lost in South Town, even though they were made in China. Everybody wants them. Yamazaki makes his debut in this game, and he's the criminal everyone wants to stop, but Jin Chonshu and Chonrei, the dumb kids, are actually the bosses. Nobody's ever clear on exactly what the scrolls do, but the Jins seem to think that they confer immortality, and some characters, like Sokaku, seem to think that the Jins were delusional and corrupt. The scrolls remain a bit of a cypher and a MacGuffin, on which anything needed can be put as a plot device, I presume. According to some sources, but not in game ones, the Jins are posssessed by the spirits of their evil ancestors who want to resurrect themselves and conquer the world using the scrolls, although the idea that this would actually work is supposed to be the delusion. These ancestor spirits depart after the boys lose in Fatal Fury 3. It's implied in some dream match endings that they end up with Kim Kaphwan, training and being raised in his dojo along with his own kids, although for the most part, the twins are forgotten except as cameo characters after this.</p><p>Apparently, as we find out from material related to the next game, Real Bout Fatal Fury (Real Bout was an alternate title that was tossed around in development, but ultimately abandoned before the first game was released. Someone obviously liked it well enough to revive it as a subseries subtitle), Geese won the scrolls, or at least ended up with them somehow. But he didn't want to use them, either because he feared them, or just because he only wanted them to prove something in the first place. And he goes about reestablishing himself after his "resurrection" as the crime lord of South Town again. It's not clear if we're to interpret resurrection as in he literally died and somehow came back to life, or resurrection in that he was <i>presumed</i> dead but wasn't actually. Anyway, he holds another tournament in South Town, pretty much the same as the first game, except that some of the participants have changed. Terry wins again, and faces Geese on his tower... again. Somehow Geese's penthouse office catches fire during the fight, and Geese is knocked off of the tower... again. Terry tries to catch him, but Geese doesn't let him, falling to his death once again. At some point here, Terry ends up with Rock Howard, Geese's son, who's a little boy at this point. I doubt Geese left Rock's custody up to Terry in his will, but hey—laws and whatnot don't seem to matter much in these games.</p><p>There are two more games that follow which are both dream matches; Real Bout Fatal Fury Special and Real Bout Fatal Fury 2. But because they are "dream matches" they have no story implication; it's just an excuse to put all of the fighters back together again, in a much prettier setting this time. I actually really quite like these two games, and consider them among the best of the Fatal Fury games, even though there aren't any real stories to speak of.</p><p>The final game in the series is Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves (admittedly, only the Dreamcast release calls it Fatal Fury, but it's clear that it's a continuation of the same series. I think this was just a botched localization effort; it was always meant to be called Fatal Fury outside of Japan.) This is an interesting addition to the canon, as it takes place ten years later than the other games. Rock is now grown up, as are some other little kid cameo characters, like Kim Kaphwan's two boys. Terry is the only returning character, and he's been redesigned (for the better.) They start a whole new storyline, which takes place in South Town's neighboring city, Second South, just to the east. Someone named Kain R. Heinlein is hosting the tournament, and he supposedly is, again, a crime lord, although from the look of him, he's a weird costume party tuxedo caricature-wearing aesthete. Japan. Weirdos. </p><p>Anyway, it turns out that Kain is Rock's uncle; the brother of Rock's mother, Marie Heinlein Howard, whom Geese kept hidden so that she wouldn't be targeted by his rivals, or some such. Marie and Kain were raised on the streets under the eye of Abel Cameron. When Marie went off to marry Geese, Abel eventually became Grant, Kain's right hand enforcer man, who learned some kind of "dark karate" in the basement, where he still is when you face him. Kain has some kind of bizarro social Darwinism philosophy to make people happier by killing them if they can't fight, or some baloney like that, although this isn't explored too closely. Marie supposedly died of sadness because Geese was bad and didn't love her, or something like that.</p><p>In fact, a lot of stuff isn't explored very closely, because following SNK's bankruptcy, the in-development sequel never was released, leaving a number of cliff-hangers in the story. Rock seems to have gone off with Kain, but did he become a villain himself? There's hints that his mother actually didn't die after all, but went even <i>deeper</i> into hiding or seclusion, although that's unknown and why she would do that is completely unexplained. In any case, Rock is the protagonist, not Terry, this time around, and he is the one who won the tournament in a canonical sense, I think it's clear. Rock has made a few appearances here and there, but usually as either cameos or dream match type scenarios. There's a lot of demand to have him added permanently to the roster of King of Fighters, but reportedly the staff at SNK are resistant to this idea, because they want to save him for a potential Fatal Fury relaunch. That seems like a pipe dream to me; after over twenty years the series is going to get another entry? This leaves Rock and his story; the first really interesting one for the Fatal Fury games, in a kind of limbo. </p><p>The exception here is the King of Fighters Tekken-clone PS2 era Maximum Impact spin-off. It's not clear if SNK takes these seriously in any way, although clearly the storylines and characters that they contain are not part of the mainline KOF story. In fact, there are hints that it was a what if contination of sorts of the Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting storylines, although if so, it starts all over with some kind of weird alien villains that we haven't seen before or since in any SNK game. Maybe I'll cover these in a later post... maybe. I think that they're best seen as their own odd little mini-continuity, although they do seem to have more in common in most respects with the Fatal Fury stories than the King of Fighters stories, and they do contain more Rock Howard appearances, and take place in and around Southtown specifically. It does also contain not only Terry Bogard, but also "Wild Wolf", the Mark of the Wolves era Terry, with a slightly different moveset, and the Mark of the Wolves look (at least as his default.)</p><p>While the Fatal Fury storylines don't offer a whole lot, they did bring us many memorable characters, particularly the main hero and villains themselves; Terry and Geese. Rock's story was a potentially interesting one too; events in his life curiously mirroring that of Geese himself when he was younger. However, because he had a Terry-figure in his life, he has a chance to reject the dark side of the force and not become Darth Vader... er, I mean another Geese, but rather a slightly darker version of Terry himself; a hero with an edge, if you will. Whether that storyline will <i>ever</i> materialize isn't likely, in my opinion, but we'll see. And, of course, the setting of South Town is integral to all kinds of SNK goings-on following this game.</p><p>The Jin scrolls as a potential plot device are kind of nifty too. Although the Jin twins as interesting characters are not.</p><p>But this is OK. While I do that games such as the King of Fighters series and the Street Fighter Alpha series had complicated plots that are difficult to unravel, or that Street Fighter V had a whole General Story mode that told an anime-like story in most respects, sometimes a simple yet compelling plot without lots of complications, and a simple yet compelling antagonist are all that's needed to be memorable. The more complicated plots often trip over themselves as often as they do something interesting, or get really silly and dumb (I'll conquer the world by using your fighting power as a battery seems to get used more than once, for instance) Geese is a pretty compelling antagonist. Maybe not quite M. Bison or even Rugal Bernstein level compelling, but much moreso than Chris as Orochi, or Gill, etc.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-22582825211798433902021-08-10T06:12:00.003-07:002021-08-10T09:15:17.366-07:00Gripe<p>Just a quick gripe. Don't know why I'm posting this except I feel like complaining, and nobody at the house understands.</p><p>My original Xbox system stopped working years ago. I have a number of games that are <i>only</i> for that system, because they never got any other North American release that belong to the Karate Supers genre. Sometimes I really want to revisit those games. Not a lot; to be honest with you, none of the games that I have for that system are ones that I really love. The closest of them that I'd really want to play frequently is King of Fighters 2002, but I have King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match from Steam, so I don't need to anymore.</p><p>But every once in a while, I really think I'd want to play a bit of Neowave, or 2003, or SVC Chaos, and then I can't because my Xbox doesn't work.</p><p>Sadly, replacement hardware is shockingly expensive. I'd have to pay more now for a refurbished Xbox than I paid ten years ago. Sure, there's probably a shortage of supply given the system's age, but still—c'mon, nearly $200 for a system that's been obsolete for more sixteen years already?!</p><p>I could replace at least one of my Xbox titles with a PS2 title. I do have a PS2 that works fine, and I've replaced some of my Xbox titles over time, such as King of Fighters 00/01 and Capcom vs SNK 2. However, also shockingly, the 02/03 game is one that I can't find for less than $50! That's not terrible money, but it's quite a lot for a game that I already know that I won't play much. I don't need the 02 game at all, and I don't love 03 enough to play it more than a little bit here and there. I'd pay $20 to buy it for the PS2, and feel like that was a worthy deal. $50 is more than its worth. And of course, the other two games that I'd potentially replace, I can't because they never got North American PS2 releases. </p><p>Anyway... I guess that that simply means I won't be playing 2003 anytime soon. Which is kind of unfortunate, because sometimes I just get jonesing to pull it up and play it again. I disliked some elements of the gameplay of that particular entry, but I did really enjoy the atmosphere and character selection a lot. I mean, check out that boss stage!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH6xJAZd89qiKRK4EsQRbmmsafnHFEHV2JTfsqAZVA06JVwjKifiQDb7u7SEABeuDCI7hqtnmXArSiYe8H27T6278Ac4-geTDdfhBINQLHWKT2HJ1u9huBphksE4N8nLLrgRB9Ci6cifaH/s768/Kof_2003_mukai_stage.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="768" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH6xJAZd89qiKRK4EsQRbmmsafnHFEHV2JTfsqAZVA06JVwjKifiQDb7u7SEABeuDCI7hqtnmXArSiYe8H27T6278Ac4-geTDdfhBINQLHWKT2HJ1u9huBphksE4N8nLLrgRB9Ci6cifaH/w640-h294/Kof_2003_mukai_stage.gif" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-15373185527335092752021-08-09T09:33:00.002-07:002021-08-09T17:52:23.706-07:00New tag: story summaries<p>Like I referred to off-handedly in my last post, I'm going to do some story summary posts, mostly for reference. I don't want to have to watch a twenty minute YouTube video narrated by a guy with a really strong accent, or read a wiki entry that is borderline incoherent either to understand the major storylines in the various series. I've created a new tag, and this post is the first to sport it, called <span style="font-size: x-small;">STORY SUMMARIES</span> where I'll summarize the storylines from the games. The reality is that although it's a little hard to perceive them sometimes, most of these games have crazy-insane comic book-like stories with genuine supervillains, super-technology, superheroes and more either trying to take over the world or stop someone else from taking over the world.</p><p>I've got high priority and low priority posts to make; the low priority ones might or might not actually get made. Also, I'll split both high and low priority lists into an SNK and a Capcom list. </p><p>I should point out, although maybe I already have, that my definition of karate supers is a bit less anime, and certainly is weaponless (with the exception of a few people who do have weapons occasionally, like Billy Kane or Rolento.) I've never really gotten into Samurai Shodown, for instance, because it's historical and uses weapons. I've never gotten into Guilty Gear or Blazblue or any of those kinds of games, because they're way too whack and anime to have universal appeal, and they also often use weapons. There's been a lot of attempts to cross properties, but I'll reiterate here again, that I'm only considering "in scope" games from the following series: Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, and Darkstalkers. I'd actually be OK including the Marvel Crossover games too, except that I don't really want to try and use Marvel characters here. The Capcom vs SNK games (and SNK vs Capcom: Chaos) mostly count too, although a few characters here and there stand out as not fitting very well, in my opinion. I'm not sure what order I'll do these in, but certainly the high priority ones will all be done before I worry about the low priority ones.</p><p><b><u>HIGH PRIORITY</u></b></p><p><b><u>Capcom</u></b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Street Fighter II: while the story line here is actually fairly simplistic in most senses, this is kind of where it starts. The story started to develop as the series developed, mostly through character endings. It was obviously pretty simplistic in the first iteration, but as more iterations and more characters were added, it developed a bit more depth than you'd think. SF1 didn't really have any story at all, but it <i>was</i> kind of retroactively added by Street Fighter II. However, because of the bizarre time-hopping nature of the series, I'll do this out of order; Street Fighter II will be the <i>second</i> Street Fighter summary I attempt. </li><li>Street Fighter Alpha: Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 don't have separate stories; Alpha 2 is basically considered a refined and upgraded version of Alpha 1. However, Alpha 3 has a separate story that takes place after Alpha 2. Because the Alpha games came out after Street Fighter II, but take place before them, I'll actually start here. I'll just add a brief summary of Street Fighter I's story here to set the scene for Alpha. However, regardless of when the stories take place, the order in which they were created matters, and of course, when these stories came out, Street Fighter II was already long finished. </li><li>Street Fighter III: Another one that I'll probably do last of the higher priority ones. While this is still one of the earlier titles, in terms of release, it is the <i>last</i> one in terms of when it takes place. Sigh. It's also one of the most confusing of the titles. Exactly what the story is and what supposedly is the "canonical" version of what happened is hard to figure out. </li><li>Street Fighter IV: We go back in time again, to about a year or so at most after Street Fighter 2 takes place. While some characters get relegated to just being silly, for the most part, Street Fighter IV is a pretty decent game storywise, with plenty going on, and it's less confusing than some. Partly this is because of how much it rehashes the plot of the Alpha and II games rather than because it's necessarily told so much better, admittedly.</li><li>Street Fighter V: Now we're a few years after Street Fighter IV yet still before Street Fighter III. This one has the easiest story to follow of any Street Fighter title, because of... the story mode, which is optimized for attempting to tell stories! Each character has a little backstory vignette, and then the General Story mode, of course, actually tells the full story of the game.</li></ul><div><b><u>SNK</u></b></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Orochi Saga, which makes up the first several King of Fighters titles. 94, the first game, was kind of retroactively fit into this greater saga which otherwise takes place in games 95-97. 98 is the "dream match" capper to the series, which is all about gameplay.</li><li>The NESTS saga, which makes up the next chunk of King of Fighters games: 99-01. 02 is the capper.</li><li>The Ash Crimson saga, which is makes up the last phase of the King of Fighters storyline, including 2003-XIII (minus XII.) Yeah, yeah—I know that a fourth saga has started, but with only one game (of presumably three) released yet, it seems premature to attempt to summarize the story at all.</li></ul><div><b><u>LOW PRIORITY</u></b></div></div><div><b><u><br /></u></b></div><div><b><u>Capcom</u></b></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Darkstalkers (all three.) While I see cameos or even major uses of a few Darkstalkers characters as part of my own Capcom-SNK crossover symbiosis, I don't think that summarizing the story of the series overall is nearly as important. But I'd like to get to it eventually.</li></ul><div><b><u>SNK</u></b></div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Fatal Fury. To be honest, the storyline for Fatal Fury isn't really all that complex, even if you get into the Real Bout games and the scrolls of immortality, or whatever exactly they were called. Besides, half of the games in the series are dream matches without an official story, and several of those that remain basically tell the exact same story, just with a slightly rotating cast of supporting characters. This becomes a bit of backstory for some of the King of Fighters characters, and to be honest, they're not the most important King of Fighters characters anyway, especially in terms of KOF story.</li><li>Art of Fighting. Whatever is true for Fatal Fury is, if anything, even more true for Art of Fighting. Technically, Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury take place in the same timeline/continuity, while the King of Fighters games take place in an alternate continuity that just happened to have a lot of the same backstory beats, albeit compressed in time. If you imagine the situation similar to what Marvel was doing in the 00s, then the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury timeline could be seen as the "normal" lines of comic strips, while the King of Fighters was the Ultimate Imprint; same characters and basically the same stories, but retold in an updated and different fashion. Except while in Marvel's case the most recent Secret Wars ends the Ultimate Universe and folds some of its characters into the "main" universe, in SNK's case, the opposite happened, and the KOF timeline is the only one that's still active. This was largely, but not entirely, true even before SNK's bankruptcy. Of the original timeline, only the occasional Fatal Fury title still limped along next to the KOF timeline.</li></ul></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-47985176473597280202021-08-06T11:21:00.008-07:002021-08-06T11:56:34.369-07:00King of Fighters titles<p>No matter how you cut it, the King of Fighters series is one of the most important in this genre. Heck, I tend to limit my participation specifically to three series: Street Fighter, Fatal Fury and King of Fighters (not counting spin-offs that contain Street Fighter, Fatal Fury or King of Fighters characters, like Capcom vs SNK, for instance.) I recently watched a few videos on YouTube from a guy in Morocco of all places, who's a big King of Fighters fan. I found his channel while looking for a summary of the plotlines of the various sagas within King of Fighters, since I was a little rusty on the details. He did one on each of the main sagas: Orochi, NESTS and Ash, and they weren't bad. I'd actually like to make posts summarizing the plots myself, if for no other reason than so I have them archived for my own use. (Who am I kidding? This entire blog is a journal for my own use. Nobody else reads it.) But one video that he posted I found kind of interesting, in which he rated all of the King of Fighters titles. Now, he made exceptions: he completely ignored the Maximum Impact line (just like most Street Fighter fans usually ignore the EX line, or at most make a mention of how they're not considering it) as well as any hand-held titles. He limited himself to mainline titles only. This is more or less what I'm going to do, but I'll be going through the titles that I have and talking briefly about how much I do or don't like them relative to each other and the genre as a whole.</p><p>I should point out a little bit of context. I say that I'm a collector, but I don't mean that in a very obsessive sense. I don't have any arcade cabinets, or AES hardware, nor do I go out of my way to have all kinds of versions on all kinds of hardware. I mostly just want to have a decent port on piece of hardware I have of all of the titles. I'm also kind of notorious as a late hardware adaptor. I usually adopt one generation of console when the <i>next</i> generation is on sale, for instance (my PS4 adoption is an exception, but we mostly got that for my teenaged boys for Christmas one year, not for me.) Because of this, I've had a lot of titles on older hardware for a long time.</p><p>The King of Fighters games, of course, being subject to some of SNK's financial troubles, didn't always get very wide releases in North America, so sometimes I had to get them on whatever system I could get them on. Over time, I gradually picked up loads of systems (my wife isn't super happy about that. Not for the cost, more for the systems sitting around in the basement issue.) Let's go through my systems that have a King of Fighters title on them, in chronological order, and I'll talk about the games that I have for that system briefly. To be fair, I haven't fired up my older playstations in a couple of years at least, so it's been a while since I've played <i>any</i> of these titles. But I'm feeling the itch again, and I think I can actually coopt an old spare monitor with some adaptor cables and have a dedicated older console set-up here soon. </p><p>One quick note about the series: one of its main conceits, of course, was the three man team conceit. I don't like three man teams. I don't like trying to mentally switch gears between rounds from one character to another and what are the special moves again, and what is the timing, reach, priority, etc. again? I like big rosters, and I like playing multiple characters, but I like playing <i>one character at a time</i>. To be fair, most of the home ports offer a 1x1 mode alongside the 3x3 (or 4x4 during the NESTS saga) that does best two out of three matches; in other words, playing more or less like Street Fighter or Fatal Fury does. This is actually my most common way of "consuming" these games, and those that don't offer a decent 1x1 mode are much less likely to appeal to me, because I greatly prefer playing that way to the team play. I know, I know... I'm allegedly missing the whole point. Can't help it. I just very much prefer that style of play.</p><p><b><u>Playstation</u></b></p><p><i><u>King of Fighters '95</u></i> While the oldest chronologically, I think this is the <i>second</i> title I ended up picking up (for whatever reason 99 was available all over the place for a while there.) It's not a bad title. I don't really love the early system with the charging super bar that the first few KOF titles had, but it's not horrible. This is, I believe, the first console port (not counting the AES home system by SNK) of a KOF game, and of course, it came to the Sony Playstation, the biggest and best system of its generation. People often knock the Sony Playstation for its supposed inability to do sprite-based fighting games well, but I'll be honest with you: I've got a lot of titles from this era on this system. Sure, sure... now I play them on my PS2, which being backwards compatible, only requires a PS1 memory card in order to work. Hardware wise, it's perfectly capable, but the games on disc will feature less frames and some reduced graphical quality. For the most part, I only occasionally notice the difference, though. Some of these PS1 fighting games are just fantastic, and are <i>the</i> definitive way most people played those games. </p><p>I don't play this much anymore because at the end of each saga, the "definitive" game that gave you the best gameplay experience for the entire saga came out. Why play '95 when I had '98 on the Dreamcast, and later '98 Ultimate Match on the PS2? Well... that's a good question. Occasionally I'll still whip it out just for old times sake, although to be fair, even then I'm more likely to play this now on my PS2 Orochi Collection. The old PS1 '95 title is just been made obsolete on more than one front. Which is kind of a shame. I'm not going to say that this is one of my favorite titles in the series or anything, because it's not. But I have a lot of good memories playing this when I didn't have very many other options yet. Although a little stiff and primitive looking in some ways, the backgrounds were amazing and impress me even now. The sprites look a little Street Fighter 2 vintage, though. Most of the characters would be redrawn soon.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters '99</u> This doesn't really seem to be a fan favorite in many ways, and I saw it for sale cheap all over the place. I really quite like it, though. I think its a fabulous game. The menus and select screens were, admittedly, kind of ugly. I'll be honest; I wasn't a huge fan of the striker system. You have to select a striker even in 1x1 play, because a striker is an integral part of the game play (although to be fair, I don't necessarily use my striker all that often either.) I've said before that I think 99 has more atmosphere than almost any other game in the title. Its look is tons better than even the sequels within the NESTS saga (which sadly, often featured a number of really ugly backgrounds, even if everything else about the games seemed to work OK), the kind of vaguely cyperpunk EDM soundtrack for many teams really enforced the atmosphere... There's a lot to love about this game. When the only two KOF titles I had were 95 and 99, both on this system, I greatly preferred this one. </p><p><b><u>Dreamcast</u></b></p><p><i style="text-decoration-line: underline;">King of Fighters '98</i> Of course, the actual Dreamcast title was <i>King of Fighters: Dream Match 1999</i> because they didn't want to sound out of date, but the game itself was actually 98. One curious thing that the King of Fighters series did was that it had "sagas". Several games made up a continuous story; four in the case of the Orochi saga (94, 95, 96 and 97.) Once the saga was over, they did a "dream match" which brought all of the characters that had been in the saga at all back together again for a dream match. It had no story significance, but it was the best gameplay and the best roster. In short, unless you were specifically playing for the story or to see a specific background or something, it made all of the games within the saga that preceded it kind of obsolete.</p><p>Now, this game didn't <i>literally</i> (at least in this release) feature every character who had been in any game of the series, although it certainly had most of them. For many years, this was considered the pinnacle of King of Fighters development, and many fans even considered it a real contender for best game in the <i>entire genre</i>. I can't argue with that. While I doubt that I would have ever picked it over Capcom vs SNK 2 or even Street Fighter Alpha 3, I can certainly say that I liked it nearly as much as those. The Advanced Mode, from 97, is a great improvement over the older Extra mode (like 95 had) and made it play quite a bit more like a Street Fighter super gauge, quite honestly. Which is OK. I always preferred that mode to any alternatives I've yet seen. The 1x1 mode works as well as the 3x3 mode, and I naturally played that more often. I even thought the awkward Dreamcast controller worked decently well for the four button King of Fighters layout. I don't actually know that the Street Fighter six button layout is an improvement on the SNK four button layout, especially now that we're in an era of home console playing, not arcade cabinet playing, and four buttons is the standard face of any controller for any console I've ever seen. In fact, for many years, this was by far the Dreamcast game that I played the most of. </p><p>I also have 98 on the Orochi Collection, although it's not, I don't believe, the slightly upgraded Dreamcast version, and is more like the AES version. However, the game that makes it completely and totally obsolete is the King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match for the PS2. Getting, finally, <i>all</i> of the characters involved, further tweaks to the gameplay and a bunch of new stages (some of which are great, but some of which aren't actually improvements on the originals—and the game seems to prioritize new ones in arcade mode, unfortunately) the game is even more a contender for best in the series. Of course, by the time it came out, Capcom finally got their act together and released Street Fighter IV, which ended the long hiatus, kind of rebooted the genre into a more modern age, and threw out prior rankings of what was and wasn't the best that the genre could offer. But the Ultimate Match is still a great game today, and is still a serious contender for best King of Fighters game, if not best SNK fighting game. If not best game in the entire genre.<br /></p><p><b><u>Xbox</u></b></p><p>For whatever reason, I ended up getting an original Xbox long before I got a PS2 (the Sony entry in the same generation.) Technically the Dreamcast is considered the same generation, which means that all of the major systems for this generation are systems that I owned. Sadly, my Xbox stopped working long ago, so I haven't been able to play the titles that I have <i>only</i> on this one, but I haven't gotten rid of them, on the off-chance that I either buy a new box or install a good emulator to run the discs on my PC. Both of which are, of course, possibilities. This ended up being a good choice for a time, because there were a number of SNK titles that <i>only</i> got Xbox releases, and fighting game fans were pretty irritated that Sony was reluctant to approve some of their titles for fear that they would make the console look backwards or primitive, because the SNK titles weren't exactly graphical marvels by any means, especially in the day and age of 3D graphics. After my Xbox died, I did end up replacing most of my Xbox fighting game titles with the PS2 versions of them, often on collections when I could get them, but there were a few that I either didn't or couldn't replace, either because the price point just didn't seem worth it, or because they never got a PS2 release in the first place. I'll cover only those titles here.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters 02</u> This game is similar in many ways to 98, being a retrospective "dream match" that combines the supposed best of the NESTS saga. Curiously, the whole striker system was ditched, making it play much more like a traditional KOF game. This game (as well as the one prior) were developed by Eolith, a South Korean company who had picked up the KOF assets when old SNK went into bankruptcy. Playmore, a company formed by the remnants of some SNK staff, is also credited, although I'm not sure exactly what the relationship between the two of them was; I think Eolith was the developer and Brezzasoft, later Playmore was the publisher/distributor. I've heard other reports that it was the other way around, which in most ways makes more sense. Playmore ended up rebranding itself as SNK Playmore, and became the emergent, post-bankruptcy version of old SNK, but I think they actually had to fight for a while to get some of their own brands back.</p><p>That isn't to say that Eolith did a bad job on these two games. I do think that they lack some visual punch. The sprites were mostly already the same sprites that had been used for several years, but the backgrounds were mostly kind of terrible. (To be fair, they were worse in KOF01.) The gameplay, balance and roster here were, on the other hand, pretty good, and this is yet another contender for best game in the KOF series. This is especially true once the Unlimited Match version came out. I'll talk about that here, even though I have that on my PC (my version is from Steam, but I can't find it on the Steam store anymore. You can, however get it from <a href="https://www.gog.com/game/the_king_of_fighters_2002_unlimited_match">gog.com</a>.)</p><p>I would say that unless you really loved the striker system, that the NESTS games are, on average, not as good as 98 anyway. This game doesn't do strikers, but it does for the NESTS saga what 98 did for the Orochi saga. A few minor details from 99 that I like, probably as much for nostalgia reasons as for any other, I miss, but otherwise, I think this completely and totally obsoletes all of the games in the NESTS saga, and there's no reason to revisit them anymore at all. This is mostly true of 98 Ultimate Match too; once you have 98 Ultimate Match and 02 Unlimited Match, there's very little reason to ever revisit any of the games between 94 and 02 vanilla versions ever again.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters 03</u> I was really excited about this game for what is probably a stupid reason; Terry made his debut in the King of Fighters game in his leather bomber jacket Mark of the Wolves sprite. Sadly, the game hasn't aged quite as well as I'd have hoped. The game makes two significant changes to the way King of Fighters had been done previously:</p><p>1) It started a new saga, since NESTS was done. This is called the Ash Crimson saga. While the storyline and the villains seem kinda cool, they introduced a new protagonist again (Kyo being the protagonist of the Orochi saga and the flagship character, in a way, of the KOF series overall; K' being the protagonist of the NESTS saga.) Ash Crimson is, to put it bluntly, not a very likeable or attractive protagonist character, and he doesn't even play all that interesting. His moves feel like an abbreviated version of Guile. SNK was notorious for designing very "SNK-looking" characters, i.e., stylish in a charitable description of the word, and the word that SNK designers themselves prefer to use. Most normal people just say "super gay and stupid" instead of stylish. Ash, although supposedly a man, looks like the blonde girl from ABBA and has a smirky, smarmy, gamma attitude. If he's the protagonist, why design him in such a way that the only thing anyone will ever want to do with him is punch him in the face and get him out of your sight? That said, the storyline was pretty good, kinda complicated and interesting. Of course, because it was told by Japanese writers of a fighting game, it's almost impossible to actually figure out without going to someone else who's interpreted it online and can summarize it for you, but still; a good attempt at storytelling was always one of SNK's strong suits relative to Capcom, until Capcom stepped up their game in the Alpha series to match them.</p><p>2) It introduced a tag-team approach, which felt like a lame attempt to rip-off Capcom's own vs. Marvel games. I actually don't love that in the Marvel games, so seeing a lesser iteration of the same idea here was a poor choice. But not to worry! I prefer 1x1 play anyway, right? Well... the 1x1 play kinda sucks too. Instead of having best two out of three Street Fighter style 1x1 matches, you get three health bars as if you were doing a three man team, and you just fight the one round. Speaking of this team approach, you had a pick a team leader, and only the leader got the maximum super combo, the so called "leader desperation move." Everything about this tag team system was really screwed up, and I never liked it. And because it made even the 1x1 play not really work, this game was always disappointing to me. Which is a real shame; from a presentation standpoint, I quite liked it. The characters were great, it introduced a lot of new characters to the series from other games that had never really done KOF before, the backgrounds were beautiful. This was especially true for the 3D backgrounds developed for the PS2 and Xbox ports. But the gameplay just isn't there.</p><p>The game is available for the PS2, so I could replace my unplayable Xbox copy, but for whatever reason, it sells for no less than $50. I'm not paying that much for an 02 game that I don't want to play anymore because I already have an advanced version of it available instead, and an 03 game that is flawed to the point that I'll likely not play it very often if at all. I'll work on getting a decent Xbox emulator first, and then maybe I'll throw my old Xbox disc in and try that out just to say that I can every once in a while.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters Neowave</u> This was an odd game. It seems that it was developed mostly just to test new hardware, and it is the first KOF game to move off of the now very aged Neo Geo hardware; to Sammy's Atomiswave system. Of course, this is a bit of a moot point for home ports, but this didn't get a lot going on there either; in Japan and Europe there were PS2 ports, but in North America, it only got an Xbox port. Given that the game was (mostly) just a remake of 02 with few slight tweaks and new backgrounds, you're not missing much by not picking it up. For whatever reason, I didn't really get into this game as much as I did my other KOF titles; I'm quite sure I played the very similar 02 much more often than I did this one. This is odd; there's nothing really <i>wrong</i> with this title, it just feels like it offers very little. I remember thinking that many of the backgrounds were boring, the music was flat, and I just never got excited about playing it. I don't overly miss not being able to fire it up right now, and if you never picked up a copy, you're not missing much. Just get 2002 Unlimited Match instead, and don't look back.</p><p><b><u>Playstation 2</u></b></p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters 94</u> As part of the Orochi collection. This title is, sadly, almost unplayable nowadays compared to its more advanced relatives. That's an exaggeration, of course, but stuff that we take for granted from better members of the series often weren't present at all here yet, the character selection is pretty Spartan. It's kind of fun to occasionally revisit where it all started, but there's very little gameplay reason to ever go back to this.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters 96</u> I'll skip the PS2 version of 95, since I've already talked about that in the PS1 section. This is a transitional title. There were a few memorable new characters that became iconic that were released here (Vice, Mature, for instance) and a few gameplay tweaks like hops and evasion, which became standard for the series. But because every game after it had these too, it seems like only a minor update to 95, really. Although I have to give this game credit for having some of the best stages in the series. Some of them are still beautiful even by today's standards.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters 97</u> This is the end of the Orochi saga in terms of story, which makes it important (although sadly, the main villain characters that represent this Orochi threat were... supremely underwhelming, to say the least.) The gameplay had a number of advancements, most of which were carried forward as is to 98, so I've already discussed them above I also have the original 98 on PS2 as part of the Orochi collection, but I won't be discussing it again either. Sadly, except for the story, 97 offers us almost nothing that 98 doesn't. 98 has all of the characters 97 does and more. 98 has all of the gameplay improvements and tweaks that 97 has. 97's presentation wasn't wonderful; it probably has the worst soundtrack in the entire series, and only a couple of stages even rise to the level of being adequate, much less beautiful. It's hard not to recommend just playing 98 Ultimate Match instead and reading a summary of the Orochi saga, or watching a YouTube video of the cutscenes or something instead of subjecting yourself to having to go through the experience of playing lesser entries in the series just to get the story. I would say that in general, that's a major problem with the King of Fighters series overall. I have the Orochi Collection... but I never really play it. Why would I, when I have King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match right there next to it, and it's everything that's good about every Orochi game and then some all in one game? The only thing that I wish that it'd done was add all of the backgrounds from all of the games as selectable in vs or training just for the heckuvit. The same is true of the NESTS saga to a great degree. I don't really love the striker system, so I'd much rather just play 2002 Unlimited Match rather than fire up any of the games of the saga itself. They've all been made completely obsolete by their own successors.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters 2000</u> I never really got into this game as much as I did 99, although from a purely objective standpoint, it's certainly an improvement on it. It added a few more iconic new characters, like Kula and Lin. The striker system was vastly improved, including adding a whole bunch of interesting cameo options; characters from other games that otherwise probably wouldn't ever merit a KOF release. I suppose the reasons I don't like it as much are emotional and non-objective: I think 99 is a much prettier and more atmospheric game, and I played it a lot on the PS1 when I didn't have access to a lot of other KOF games; by the time I got this one, I had access to better KOF games already. Made for a somewhat disappointing experience, where I just kinda only played it a bit to say that I had, rather than because I was really enjoying it.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters 2001</u> Everything that I said about 2000 goes for broke on 2001. Gone were the cameo strikers in favor of a tactical order system, which tried to make more tactical implications for who and how you designated your strikers—which were back to being just selectable characters again. The music was OK, although the NESTS music in general was very different to what had been the case for KOF before in most respects. The backgrounds were almost uniquely unattractive and bland. The game is notable for 1) finishing up the NESTS storyline, and 2) being the first (of two) games developed by Korean company Eolith after SNK's bankruptcy before SNK Playmore, the new company that replaced SNK, was able to reacquire the rights to make their own games again. While I appreciate the story implications of this game, other than that, I find it rather forgettable. Again, 02 Unlimited Match makes this game completely and totally obsolete; there's no reason to play it when I can play 02 instead. To be honest with you, even the vanilla version of 02 did that.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters XI</u> Curiously, this is one of the better KOF titles, and one of the ones I come back to most frequently, even with lots of other options to choose from. Commentators make a big deal out of the arcade hardware change for this one; like the Neowave test game, this was on the Atomiswave arcade board; the first "mainline" KOF title not on the NeoGeo. Since I play it on the PS2, as does almost everyone who plays it at all, I don't know why that matters very much. It still uses the same sprites as before, and the backgrounds are 3D like the Xbox and PS2 ports of all of the last several titles. What's the big deal about arcade hardware when arcades hardly exist anymore?</p><p>Rather, the game is fun in its ported state in part because it has pretty solid options for play; a modified tag team still carries forward from 2003, but it's <i>much</i> better than it was. Of course, you can also ignore that and play a classic 3x3 team form, or they have a really good, solid 1x1 mode too (guess which one I play most?) The new characters have that overly SNK-gay vibe to them, but what makes this one fun is the wild variety of characters from SNK's past that haven't really ever had a KOF release before. Bringing Duck King and Tung Fu Rue from Fatal Fury back? Brilliant! Odd mid-bosses from obscure titles like Buriki One and Savage Reign to add a lot of variety to the roster? Excellent! In general, although it's not literally the largest roster from a KOF game (without double checking, I'd guess 02 Unlimited Match has that honor), it is <i>one</i> of the larger rosters, and it's certainly the most unique and interesting roster.</p><p>That said, the backgrounds and music are a bit on the bland side, and the boss is super cheap. But then again, the whole concept of the "SNK boss" didn't come from nowhere.</p><p><b><u>PC</u></b></p><p>While all of my PC games in this series were picked up on Steam, they're not available as near as I can tell in the steam store anymore, and have to now be bought via Good Old Games, as mentioned above. I have two titles from this series from Steam, 2002 Unlimited Match, which I've already talked about on my 2002 entry above in the Xbox section, and XIII. XII seems to <i>not</i> be available at all, but that's totally OK as it isn't a part of the storylines (curiously) and seems, if anything, like an overpriced beta for XIII, which is the "full" game XII should have been. As near as I can tell, owning XIII makes owning XII completely and totally superfluous.</p><p>Sadly, the art and visual direction XII and XIII went was abandoned with XIV which went 3D. I've rented that for the PS4, but I don't see much need at this point to buy it; but I'm sure eventually I'll get around to it. It's relatively cheap. Somehow it just didn't grab me, though. Since XIII finished the Ash storyline, maybe I'll just wait it out for a few years and see where it all goes from here.</p><p><u style="font-style: italic;">King of Fighters XIII</u> One sad thing about buying the Steam edition is that I have no way to upgrade this to the "galaxy version" which you can buy in Good Old Games. That's OK, I think, since it doesn't seem to have added too much to the game other than two or three characters that I don't really care about anyway. While still using hand drawn sprites in this game, the hand drawn sprites were completely <i>redrawn</i> in high resolution. A lot of them have really significant graphical overhauls, not just in the technical aspects but in terms of how they look, too. All in all, I think the look of this game is certainly one of its stronger traits. </p><p>The lack of a 1x1 arcade mode is it's weakest. Maybe most fans aren't bothered by that, but I find its absence both inexplicable and inexcusable. Games that don't have this type of mode, or don't have a good one (like 2003) are ones that even if I otherwise would be well inclined towards, I struggle to feel motivated to play much. And both 2003 and XIII would be among my favorites in the series with that mode, but drop significantly without it.</p><p>I will also state that I think it's a shame that the Ash Crimson saga didn't get a "capper" game like the Orochi and NESTS saga did. In both of those cases, the capper game; the "dream match" that came out after the saga was over, bringing everyone back with the best mechanics for the best gameplay experience, are considered the best games in the series; 98 and 2002. Especially in their updated "Ultimate Match" and "Unlimited Match" versions. I understand why they didn't and couldn't; all three games of the Ash saga were on different original arcade hardware; MVS for 2003, Atomiswave for XI and Taito Type X for XIII. In addition to that, the complete redraw of the sprites between XI and XIII is a deal-breaker; and after XIII, they abandoned even those new sprites for 3D models. </p><p>But knowing and understanding why something couldn't be done and being happy about it are two different things. I think they should have kept the XIII sprites for one more venture and made an Ash Crimson saga dream match. Although given all of the crazy characters brought in for XI, that would probably have been prohibitively expensive, because they would have had to draw tons of new character sprite sets. Ah, well. I can dream about dream matches that we didn't get, right? And while I'm dreaming, I'll dream that Terry's bomber jacket version was the one that they used in XIII instead of his very dated ripped sleeve Levi jacket. What a step backwards there. (I notice that SNK developers have a real thing for various Kyo looks too. They keep wanting to bring back his Orochi version, even though it's by far the worst design. And even XIII actually has two Kyo versions; the Ash saga outfit and the NESTS saga outfit.)</p><p>In summary, King of Fighters is an interesting series. Capcom is my favorite in the genre, and Street Fighter specifically among Capcom, but King of Fighters has always been a worthy alternative. During the 00s, when fighting games were on a bit of a hiatus in most respects, I actually started almost liking some of the better KOF titles better; had there not been the unexpected rebirth of Street Fighter and the release of SF4, I might have eventually started liking some of the KOF titles better. Of course, that also assumes that other might-have-beens would have happened, like an uninterrupted progression of KOF titles without SNK's bankruptcy and the chaos that that introduced into the series, not to mention all of the farting around with different types of graphical styles; old fashioned legacy MVS vs newly drawn hi res sprites vs boring 3D models that look like every other game out there. It also might have helped had SNK not gone really hard into bizarre, androgynous characters. Wokeness is a thing of Western civilization, and to a lesser extent in Latin American civilizations, but it doesn't really have a direct counterpart in Japanese culture. But if it did, I'd say the wokeness of the character designs is a major flaw in more recent SNK offerings. Ah, well. Mistakes were made, and the timeline we got wasn't the best timeline we could have gotten. What're you going to do?</p><p>If for some reason you're a fan of this type of game, but haven't ever dabbled in King of Fighters, I recommend going to Good Old Games, following the link I posted above. You can get both 98 Ultimate Match and 02 Unlimited Match for $12.99 each, and both of those are almost certainly the best games in the series. After trying those, maybe you'll still be interested in some of the Ash Crimson era games like XI or XIII. The former is available on Playstation 2 if you can still find a used copy kicking around, the latter can also be bought on GOG.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-64877017521691127022021-08-05T07:29:00.011-07:002021-08-05T08:30:47.841-07:00SFA3 and CvS2<p>I recently watched some Top Hat Gaming Man YouTube documentaries. I've actually seen these before months ago, but I'd kind of forgotten about a handful of specific conclusions he reached. Now, he's got his finger more on the pulse of what fighting game fans think than I do, presumably, although of course there might be selection bias in terms of the data input he receives. He also (as well as some other fighting game YouTubers) make reference, particularly in regards to the Street Fighter fandom, to a distinction between the "FGC" or fighting game community, and casual fans. I'm not 100% sure that I fit very well into either of those buckets; I don't feel like my fandom is necessarily all that casual, and yet I certainly don't compete online or do much with any "community" other than watch YouTube videos and stuff like that. I'd say I'm a casual fan who's casualness is suspect because I'm a bit of an obsessive collector sometimes, and because I do a lot of stuff when not actually playing related to my fandom, but who's behavior is otherwise quite similar to a casual fan in many respects.</p><p>Anyway, either way, THGM made a few conclusions; two major and two minor, that I 100% agree with yet I thought that the fandom in general did <i>not</i> agree with. What's more, he implied that these same conclusions were fairly general. Not everyone, of course, agrees with them, but a significant plurality if not majority does. This is both surprising and also somewhat gratifying if true. The "if true" being a big limiting factor, because I don't know that it is. But if it seems to be true to him, I'll trust that he's in a much better position than I am to see that, and trust in turn that it's much more likely to be true than I had previously suspected.</p><p>Anyway, what are these shocking conclusions? First the two major conclusions that he discusses.</p><p><b>Street Fighter Alpha 3 is considered the best SF game of the <i>entire</i> greater series by many fans.</b> I don't actually think this anymore, because after I got Ultra Street Fighter IV back in 2014 or 2015 or whenever I got it on Steam, I came to believe that one was the best one. V is still growing on me, and it's TBD what I feel about it long term. But I seriously can't ever imagine that it would pass up IV in my esteem, and after IV, is <i>definitely</i> SFA3. I don't hesitate to recommend it to anyone as a timeless example of the pinnacle of karate supers development, or even fighting games development as a whole. </p><p>It's important to remember the context in which this game came out too, though. The revolution caused by SF2 felt like a long time ago to us (although it wasn't really; less then ten years.) SF2 clones that were a dime a dozen were out there. Street Fighter itself had had a lot of development. The Marvel vs. series was in full swing by this time, and in fact, the alleged pinnacle of that series, Marvel vs Capcom 2, was not far away from being released at this point (about 18 months or so.) The 3D fighting game revolution was also in full swing; Virtua Fighter, Tekken and Soul Edge had been in arcades for years already. In another direction entirely, so had Mortal Kombat by this point.</p><p>That said, the PS1 release of SFA3 (which is the one that I played the heck out of for years, by the way) was considered a great release by most, and was immensely popular. I guess I didn't realize that the Alpha series was considered so good by fans, though. I hear all kinds of noise about the classicness of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, or the finely honed tactical, technical, competitive gameplay of Street Fighter III: Third Strike. I consider both of them significantly less fun to play than SFA3, however, and that they apply to a niche market within SF fandom. I guess I'm not as alone as I thought in that opinion.</p><p>To be fair, plenty of people <i>don't</i> think it's the best of the SF series. Heck, there are people who don't think it's the best of the Alpha subseries, and who prefer SFA2 still. But, although I don't change my mind because of this kind of thing, it <i>is</i> still somewhat gratifying to know that there's a significant plurality that agrees with me on this one.</p><p><b>Capcom vs SNK 2 is considered the best 2-D fighting game of the <i>entire</i> genre by many fans.</b> Although kind of a quiet "sleeper" hit compared to the Marvel vs Capcom 2 game which came out the same year, it's more serious, Street Fighter-like gameplay, great roster of characters, and general vibe appeals to fans of the genre in many ways more than the hyperactive Marvel vs. games do. I think it's worth pointing out that to the majority of Street Fighter's audience, SNK was not really a rival, but rather a distant second who made some games that they were vaguely familiar with. Not saying that this is fair, but I think it's still true. The SNK fandom is concentrated in 1) certain parts of Asia, 2) South America. In Europe and North America, the only ones who knew SNK well were 3) people who are a bit less casual about their 2-D fighting game fandom and went out of their way to become familiar with series like King of Fighters and Fatal Fury, etc. During the 90s, I'd offer up the observation that most arcades had a few Neo Geo cabinets, probably because they were a good deal for arcade owners. I rarely saw large crowds around these cabinets, though, like I did when a new Capcom, Namco or Midway game was out. (Samurai Shodown's release being a notable exception.)</p><p>So I suspect that the portion of the fandom who thinks this is a bit less casual than the Joe Blow who buys a Street Fighter title for his Playstation, plays it a bunch, but then kind of puts it aside and forgets about it when new stuff comes out. It's more for the kind of fan who returns to this type of gameplay time and time again over long periods of time, because he really likes this kind of game more than just about any other kind of video game. Guys like me, in other words.</p><p>I also suspect that the people who think SFA3 is the pinnacle of Street Fighter development overlap a lot with the people who really esteem this title. In spite of a few characters who don't really fit the vibe of the game because they come from different enough types of games that they don't really fit (this problem was orders of magnitude worse in the Marvel vs games), it's really Street Fighter vs King of Fighters, and both were really very similar types of games with a very similar vibe to them. The gameplay is heavily based on the SFA3 style of gameplay, and while there are other options you can mess with with the groove system, I still think it's fair to say that the default is very much like playing a SFA3 game except with a bunch of SNK characters thrown in too. It's no wonder that I consider both of these games the very best of the pre-hiatus titles by Capcom if not by <i>anyone</i> (which I might think too, but I do have to acknowledge King of Fighters '98 in particular as a contender there) given in many ways how similar they are, and how both seem to be tailored specifically to my own taste. But again, it's nice to think that my taste maybe isn't such an outlier out there after all. </p><p>Anyway, let's move on to the two minor conclusions which, again, I didn't think very many people agreed with, but which were certainly true for me.</p><p><i>The 2.5D style of 2D sprites fighting over a 3D background isn't very attractive, and looks very dated. The well-done 2D backgrounds of earlier games actually look quite a bit better and more timeless. </i>This is, in particular, a feature related to Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Capcom vs SNK 2. Most of the titles up to that point had still used 2D backgrounds. It doesn't help, of course, that the actual stages weren't really all that attractive to begin with. They were simply poor designs. Of course, there are plenty of 2D backgrounds that are also poor designs and which I don't much like over the history of the genre. However, <i>none</i> of the stages from Marvel vs Capcom 2 stand out to me as even vaguely interesting, except possibly the boss stage, and <i>none</i> of the stages from Capcom vs SNK 2 stand out to me as attractive at all except, again, the two boss stages (the rainy castle roof and the fiery destruction stage.)</p><p>Of course, I don't really think that this is necessarily a problem with 3D stages, just that at the time these 3D stages were made, the technology and context for the artists wasn't there to make 3D stages that actually looked good. They certainly look good in Street Fighter IV and V. In fact, in V they made a deliberate effort to recreate, in 3D, a number of the classic 2D stages from the past. This includes loads of the Street Fighter II stages and a few Street Fighter Alpha 2 stages.</p><p>In fact, in general, I think my copy of Capcom vs SNK Pro has much better looking stages than Capcom vs SNK 2, even though those are 2D stages, and they're on the PS1 (the Dreamcast versions look even better.) Granted, I don't love the design of all of these stages either, but the ones that are good are <i>really</i> good. To be honest, I've often kind of liked some of the SNK stages better than Capcom. I think they have a slight edge in making really attractive stages compared to Capcom. Although it's not really super dramatic or anything, I still absolutely love the stage progression of this little neighborhood park from King of Fighters 99. I think stage design doesn't get much better than that, and since you usually play this game in teams of three, the stage will advance through all three "morphs" before you move on. This is the kind of thing 2D stages could be, and it is a kind of timeless look. These animations aren't actually all of the animations that playing the game would show you, but you get the idea:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0a13GO3Yrxo6mu511fgZwYIIHWblytyjmn0cCGyOdx0oLxJAjAifhZWbTqAA53ZWwFnBY_nV47f1g_ZUuxJGi3DPkCMF4vw3Q6_E7PxlafPX1nJb3VawwBZNB-DN8TA0qvyFZzO9fFKt6/s768/kof99-stage-park-animate.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="768" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0a13GO3Yrxo6mu511fgZwYIIHWblytyjmn0cCGyOdx0oLxJAjAifhZWbTqAA53ZWwFnBY_nV47f1g_ZUuxJGi3DPkCMF4vw3Q6_E7PxlafPX1nJb3VawwBZNB-DN8TA0qvyFZzO9fFKt6/w640-h214/kof99-stage-park-animate.gif" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha7B3Qlw5Qkm5lTsIE9kVkutIGYVDq7JPIA90TXjhBUOdsZiTtbLm0-36V6TLRbSf_f5lWX9t1Itna1Vdqw07-NvDlETUCSKR7EP0qcEY_q0otY5HFaVbxMiq7CPyqOBourfGFu7PDy9UP/s768/kof99-stage-park2-animate.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="768" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha7B3Qlw5Qkm5lTsIE9kVkutIGYVDq7JPIA90TXjhBUOdsZiTtbLm0-36V6TLRbSf_f5lWX9t1Itna1Vdqw07-NvDlETUCSKR7EP0qcEY_q0otY5HFaVbxMiq7CPyqOBourfGFu7PDy9UP/w640-h214/kof99-stage-park2-animate.gif" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuk_ccLmq5waihVEvhX4FWHE6zz6WLsHRVOtrnFwOtrqFSxF8Ij4E8eEmKIPki3t7P2HeaIdHOrSyfhxDpEjK8dpkR0TThQI_OZbuGBLSA1m9BCYHmn8DPxegyUGVaySwXNjmGEYwOMISi/s768/kof99-stage-park3-animate.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="768" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuk_ccLmq5waihVEvhX4FWHE6zz6WLsHRVOtrnFwOtrqFSxF8Ij4E8eEmKIPki3t7P2HeaIdHOrSyfhxDpEjK8dpkR0TThQI_OZbuGBLSA1m9BCYHmn8DPxegyUGVaySwXNjmGEYwOMISi/w640-h214/kof99-stage-park3-animate.gif" width="640" /></a></div><p>That said, I think the stages is one of the presentation areas that Capcom vs SNK 2 really botched, and it does tend to depress my enjoyment of playing the game. The other minor conclusion is also a presentation issue, and it does the same thing as the stages; make me wish for a way to fan-sub it out for something else. That is:</p><p><i>The music from the late 90s games, specifically Capcom vs. SNK 2 is really bland, uninteresting and "Dreamcasty" and really dates the game; also not timeless like the earlier Street Fighter II themes. </i>To be fair, this may be mostly THGM's opinion rather than one that's shared overall. Even in the comments to his video that he posted saying this, he got a lot of flack from the "This is true love we're making" fans. Blegh. The worst track from the game. That said, I suspect that the fans who like that like it in a kind of ironic way rather than a legit fashion, just like they like "Gonna take you for a ride" theme of Marvel vs Capcom 2. Nobody actually <i>likes</i> that song, but they do laugh at it and can become fond of it because of association. I don't; I dislike the music from most of this entire era. Marvel vs Capcom 2 has the worst music of any fighting game that I know of. Street Fighter III Third Strike also has pretty terrible music with only a few standout tracks that I don't mind, like the Yun/Yang "Chinese James Bond" music being a good example of one that I do like. Sadly, when ported into SFIV to accompany the characters that came from Third Strike, their music wasn't rearranged enough to dilute the terribleness of it. Dudley, Ibuki, Makoto, Elena, etc. I'm looking at <i>you</i>. Of this era, I'd actually probably suggest that the Capcom vs SNK music was generally the <i>least</i> offensive and dated sounding, but that isn't to imply that it isn't pretty bad. </p><p>This is another arena in which I think SNK might have had a leg up on Capcom. Granted, SNK were prone to do a lot of experimentation with lots of different styles, and the smooth jazz soundtrack of Blue Mary, for instance, might have been a poor fit for a fighting game, but I do kind of appreciate the willingness to take risks and really put out there some intriguing types of music. Again, from King of Fighters 99, check out this boss theme. It's about the same vintage as Capcom vs SNK 2, but nothing on Capcom vs, SNK 2 sounds as good as this.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="298" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MZR25PXHukc" width="538" youtube-src-id="MZR25PXHukc"></iframe></div><p>To be fair, maybe my own personal fondness for certain types of EDM make me prefer some games' BGM to others, but I think that really classic tracks from the SFII era done in the SFIV EDM style sounds kind timeless too. The late 90s early 00s style of music is just a very dated sound, with its weird Eurodisco rap and hip-hop influences. But again, dated or not, I hated it when it was new. It's just not my style at all.</p><p>And comparing it to King of Fighters 99 might not be entirely fair. While the vintage of the games is about the same, King of Fighters 99 was probably <i>the</i> most atmospheric of all of the KOF games, which makes is more atmospheric than any other fighting game. Nobody else has managed to compete in that particular front. The dark, secret society cyberpunk edge lurking just under the surface of what appears to be the normal world that we were familiar with is just brilliant. I do think that 99 is a criminally under-rated entry in the KOF series, unfortunately. The problem with the KOF titles, if I can be allowed a small digression at the end of my post (and of course I can, because it's my blog; I can write whatever I want) is that they tend to overwrite themselves. There was a clear progression from 94 to 98 where once the newer one came out, there was little reason to look backwards at the earlier entries, and 98 in particular was meant to capture the best of the entire 94-97 run in a single game. This is especially true of the Ultimate Match re-release. The next phase is kinda sorta treated this same way by KoF02, especially the Unlimited Match re-release. But what gets missed if you do it this way is the atmosphere and story of each individual game in the series. Sure, if what you mostly want—and I'd wager most fans, even me, do want this—is all of the characters and gameplay in a single game, then Ultimate Match 98 and Unlimited Match 2002 are all you really need to have for the entire run of King of Fighters between 94 and 2002. But that's a little bit of a shame, because you miss out on some cool little details here and there that way. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-11648766594952312052021-08-04T12:55:00.001-07:002021-08-04T12:55:12.696-07:00Season V<p>Just in the last 24 hours, Capcom announced some updates for Season V and also issued a 25% discount on the season V pass. I went and bought it. </p><p>On August 16th, we'll get Oro and Akira and the new Akira-themed stage, although it's just a derelict underpass scene at sunset supposedly near the school of Rival Schools where Akira made her debut. </p><p>They also announced the final character and it's.... Luke! Uh, who? Exactly. He looks like a fairly routine MMA style young fighter. Hopefully there's <i>something</i> interesting about him, but y'know, whatever. I didn't get Geki, and lots of other people didn't get what they wanted either; instead we got Akira who wasn't on anyone's radar, and Luke who they just made up for this update and otherwise nobody knew who he was supposed to be.</p><p>I've only got a couple more things left <i>to</i> buy, and then I need to figure out and pay better attention to the extra battle mode costumes, because I'm kind of at the point where that's all that's left.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-91105705593786680362021-08-03T21:17:00.002-07:002021-08-04T07:15:55.160-07:00SFIV vs SFV<p>I reinstalled SFV on the PS4 the other night. I'll play through the General Story again, and I fooled around a bit in the arcade mode, including using a character that I haven't really played much since Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES (Charlie. Or Nash, I guess, as they call him in this game.)</p><p>There's a lot of ways to "count" which games follow which games as successors/sequels. One obvious way is in the numbers: Street Fighter is followed by Street Fighter 2, which is followed by 3, 4 and 5, etc. The Alpha series don't really fit into this scheme since they don't have a number, but I'm sure most people would sandwich them in between 2 and 3, since that's where they fit in release order as well as technology.</p><p>Another way, of course, is release order, which is similar to the above with the Alpha series officially mixed in.</p><p>Another obvious way is the chronological order that they take place. Street Fighter, the Alpha games, the II games, the IV games, V, and then III last.</p><p>I actually think that an interesting way to see them is to see what game play they seem to be trying to channel out of the past of the series. One of the secrets of Street Fighter II's runaway success was that at its core it was a relatively simple game. Anyone could sit down and play it (at least up until the last few iterations of it) and expect to win at least a few rounds, no matter you're skill level, against the CPU. On the other hand, simplicity doesn't mean that it lacked tactical depth that could be learned and exploited by the more serious gamers. One (of many) reasons that Street Fighter III failed to resonate with the same audience is that the devs lost their vision of making a game for everyone, and focused on more on creating a game with a lot of technical depth for players to explore and master, and one that has seen a fair bit of success in the competitive circuit scene. Of course, exactly what made this successful in this scene is what makes it get a big meh from non-competitive circuit scene players.</p><p>The Alpha series can perhaps be seen as somewhere in between, and maybe heading off in a different direction altogether. Because it uses the same engine and graphics (and sprites, ultimately) as the Marvel games and later the Marvel crossover games, one could possibly say that the direction they went was less on the tactical side and more on the gratuitous wahoo side for button mashers and the hyperactive. This isn't really fair, though—while certainly playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 (or 3) feels like what an out of control ADHD kid who missed his dose of Ritalin must go through, the Alpha games were tactically very good. While the depth may not have been quite as focused on clever uses of regular and special moves and modest combos and focused a bit more on setting up the big super combo or chain combo finishes, Alpha 2 Gold and Alph 3 Upper are among the best games in the greater Street Fighter franchise, and the Alpha series overall is one that I see as hugely successful. Both in terms of their actual success, I believe, but also in terms of their "classicness" even today over twenty years after they came out.</p><p>According to this scheme, you could say that the Alpha series and Street Fighter IV were both more trying to be direct sequels to Street Fighter II, and Street Fighter V feels more like a sequel to Street Fighter III. It's no wonder, then, that after all these years, I actually still prefer SFIV to SFV.</p><p>Anyway, <a href="https://www.thegamer.com/street-fighter-every-game-ranked/">I found this recent</a> (recent<i>ish</i> anyway) article ranking the better Street Fighter titles. I'll do the same, although I'll rank less of them, and the ones I don't rank will just kind of sink into the morass below those that I do. This article ranks obviously non-Street Fighter games. Sometimes its because of a tie-in title, like Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight, even though it's obviously not a Street Fighter game. Sometimes it's a similar game with a crossover character or two, like Rival Schools, even though that's also obviously not a Street Fighter game. I'm going to allow myself one non-Street Fighter game to be entered into the mix, although it is made by Capcom, plays like a Street Fighter game, and utilizes tons of Street Fighter characters. Literally Street Fighter Alpha sprites in most cases. It'll be obvious in the ranking below. For some titles that got iterative updates and literally replaced the files on your hard drive of the earlier versions, it's hard to rank "sub" categories within them. So, for SFIV and V, for instance, I'm only ranking the final version with everything unlocked that you wouldn't have had early on.</p><p>9.<b> Street Fighter</b>. While this is old and primitive enough now that it's frustrating to play it for too long at a time, I spent many hours on cabinets wherever I could find them playing this back in the later 80s. I loved everything about the concept when I first saw it, and only after better games that followed it up came out did I move on from it. It deserves a place here for starting it all, and for being a very good game for the time in which it was made. </p><p>8. <b>Street Fighter III: Third Strike</b>. While I agree with the article linked above that this is really the only version of Street Fighter III worth bothering with, I've never been nearly as enchanted with the Street Fighter III subseries as some other fans have been. The lack of a compelling story, compelling characters, a compelling villain, as well as the botched roll-out, the ugly music, etc.—while I can recognize the technical acumen involved in this game, it's an academic recognition rather than something that I really appreciate or even like, sometimes. I do have this game on the Dreamcast, and I've been thinking of buying the 30th Anniversary edition so I can have it on Steam as well (I don't even know for sure that I can get my Dreamcast to play anymore. It's obviously pretty old and has some mechanical issues. I've been able to overcome in the past, but I haven't tried for years.) But the reality is that I don't really miss this game all that much. I never really got all that into it, and never saw very many good reasons to do so either.</p><p>7. <b>Street Fighter II</b>. Arguably this is the game that kicked off the entire <i>genre</i>. It's not the first game in the series, but it's the one that made it count. Not only did this game keep arcades in business for the better part of half a dozen years after they should have folded as an industry, it was a killer app on some of the home systems it was released on. It was a "launch" title with my SNES when I got it way back in 1994 and the title that I played the most (I only played Link to the Past long enough to finish it, for instance.) I give the nod to the original rather than Champion edition, because Champion edition (and Hyperfighting) were obviously iterations on this rather than new games. Super Street Fighter, on the other hand, felt like it went out of its way to be more than just a little tweak, but a more significant overhaul, so it'll get referenced separately. </p><p>6. <b>Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold</b>. In some ways, this game has been overshadowed by its own immediate successor, but let's not forget that this was a <i>really</i> good game back in the day. Alpha 3 actually fairly significantly overhauled the game system, so Alpha 2 was kind of "peak Alpha" style gameplay, in at least one way of looking at things. It's true that with Alpha 3 Upper, I'm not very likely to actually play this game anymore all that often, but let's also not forget that this game got a tremendous SNES port. It's kind of astonishing that they were even able to port it to that hardware, but because I was a very late adopter of the Playstation hardware, I played the heck out of my Alpha 2 SNES cartridge. It really opened up a whole new world of Street Fighter gameplay to me personally, so it has a fond spot in my heart even so. I do have it also on the Alpha Anthology for my PS2 (and I can't ever imagine parting with my PS2; I've got so many great titles for that system still) but like I said, I don't actually play it very often.</p><p>5. <b>Super Street Fighter II</b>. I <i>loved</i> this overhaul of the classic Street Fighter II game. It didn't <i>just</i> give us a few more characters and colors and stages; it made some pretty significant changes to all of the other characters as well. Most people would ask; why not Super Street Fighter II Turbo; isn't that the obvious end point of the Street Fighter II trajectory? Well, yes, I suppose. I didn't get that until quite late on a Capcom Collection for the old Xbox, though, and to be honest with you, I was surprised that even on the lowest difficulty setting, it never seemed to play like the Street Fighter II arcade experiences that I'd had for years and years. Every other version of Street Fighter did, but either SSF2Turbo was wildly unbalanced for Arcade Mode vs. CPU play, or I'm much more of a terrible scrub than I ever thought. But again, given that it <i>only</i> happens with this title, that doesn't seem like the likely answer. </p><p>Besides, this is the game that I had in my arcade and put who knows how many dollars worth of quarters into, as well as the game that I had for my SNES (beyond the original SF2 game) so also the one that I played at home a ton. I never even saw Turbo until I got it on collections long after the fact.</p><p>4. <b>Street Fighter V: Champion Edition+</b>. As with the Street Fighter III subseries, V's release can probably pretty fairly be considered a "botched" launch. I actually had no real interest in this game for years after renting it early; not until the Champion Edition came out with an arcade mode included, and a much stiffer roster of characters to choose from. Although to be fair, the somewhat unusual (for a fighting game, anyway) general story mode is usually the most likely mode to bring me back jonesing to play again a bit more. But when I do, I always go through the arcade mode a bunch too. Even so, in many ways I see this as a step back from Street Fighter IV. It doesn't even look better, which I'd think the developers would be ashamed of. (Then again, I'm one of those kinds of guys who doesn't necessarily think that Street Fighter III necessarily looks better than Street Fighter Alpha either. Yeah, yeah—frame-rate, I get it. But that's not the only thing that contributes to the look of a game.)</p><p>The Arcade Mode is actually quite clever too, if embarrassingly late to the party. Sometimes the character selection is interesting too; there's some real unexpected and interesting choices here and there, although of course that also means that there's a few glaring misses. Some of the character redesigns are really quite good ("hot" Ryu being especially notable here) while others are laughably stupid ("dandelion" Akuma being especially notable here.) All in all, after it finally finished releasing all of its content (actually, as of this writing I'm still waiting on a few characters from Season V before I buy it) it ended up finally fixing its badly botched launch, but the real question was; was it too little too late to save it from customer apathy?</p><p>3.<b> Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper</b>. A much better game than anything Street Fighter III was doing, even though both subseries were released during the same few years. It's got a better story, a much better roster of players, I actually prefer the gameplay as much more reminiscent of "classic" Street Fighter rather than spergy catering to a niche market of overly technical players. And as I mentioned above, even with a lower frame-rate and a few aging sprites that could use an overhaul, I actually think it looks at least as good as Street Fighter III does. Maybe I just prefer the style a little bit more.</p><p>This is one of the early games I got for my PS1 when I could, and while lots of people complain about frame rate and a few other graphical sacrifices on that version, I think it's a fantastic port even so. I also have it, of course, on the Alpha Anthology for the PS2, but I do sometimes miss the World Tour mode; a kind of early prototype, if you will, for the General Story mode in SFV. I've had my Dreamcast (and therefore Third Strike) almost as long as I've had my PS1 and therefore this game (as well as a few other Capcom PS1 ports of more or less the same vintage, like Marvel Superheroes and Darkstalkers 3.) I think by far this game is the best of the era, with one exception (see below.) and still one of the absolute best titles ever to sport the Street Fighter name explicitly.</p><p>2. <b>Capcom vs SNK 2</b>. While not explicitly a Street Fighter title, it's worth pointing out that almost half of the characters come from the Street Fighter franchise, and the gameplay is a slightly updated version of the Street Fighter Alpha 3 gameplay, with a few other features borrowed from other games that can be optionally layered in by picking a different groove. (It should be noted that other than a few trials, I don't play any groove except C, the Alpha 3-like groove. N-groove, the King of Fighters 97-like game mode is the one I'm second most likely to attempt. It's also the one that's closest to C-groove in how it plays.) I also don't really play with ratios or even three on three teams, preferring most of the time to simply pick the same character for all three, so it plays even more like a Street Fighter game. And as such, well—it's one of the best Street Fighter games. One that also happens to have a buttload of SNK characters in it to make it even more fun. </p><p>That said, there are a handful of missed opportunities. Most people remark on the laziness of reusing some of the oldest and least advanced sprites as looking really bad. The 3D backgrounds are actually not very attractive or interesting, with only a couple of exceptions. I think the inclusion of the Last Blade and Samurai Shodown characters don't really fit the modern martial arts vibe that the rest of the characters do, and they should have been replaced with someone else that fit better. (Plenty of choices in the King of Fighters or Fatal Fury series.) And the music, while not actively offensive like the Marvel vs Capcom 2 music from about the same era, is still really quite bland and boring. Top Hat Gaming Man is really on to something by pointing out that curiously the older style 2-D "hand" drawn stages have aged better than the 3D ones, feeling more classic and timeless, whereas the early 3D stages of Capcom vs SNK 2 (and Marvel vs Capcom 2) really date the game to the turn of the century and make it feel stuck there.</p><p>1. <b>Ultra Street Fighter IV</b>. Great gameplay. Great visual and musical presentation. Great character selection. Great timing and a well-done release that kept hype up well into the life cycle of the game. There's very little about this game that I can complain about. Almost everything that it's done is really great. It's also notable for being the first game, since it was 3D graphics throughout, that allowed radically different alternate character looks, which was tons of fun. In some ways, it's still better at this than SFV is, although there's some real stinkers in the roster of alternate looks out there, of course. In fact, one whole series, the animal costumes series, was a misbegotten terrible idea from the get-go. Although I suppose it comes across as a very Japanese idea.</p><p>In fact, the only thing really that I have to complain about is that very late in the game's life span, literally its last update, in fact, it introduced <i>half</i> of an update, but it feels half-assed and half-done. The Omega mode was such a serious overhaul of how many characters played, that it feels like a major update... except that you can only use it in a couple of game modes, and they never even entered the movelist into the game; you have to refer to a separate pdf to know how to play the Omega moves!</p><p>This feels like teasing an update which never actually came, and now that we're seven years and a whole new entry in the series out, never will. We would have been perfectly satisfied with Ultra Street Fighter IV, but I, at least, feel kinda gypped that we were teased a vaporware Omega Street Fighter IV update. All they had to do was add the moves into the movelist and make them playable in arcade mode and a few other of the modes. Wouldn't have hurt them to add a character or two, while they were at it. They could have used models that were already in the then current Marvel vs Capcom title, like Mike Haggar, who was a perfect fit. I wouldn't have complained if they'd had an "Easter egg" character who didn't completely fit the tone, like Morrigan or Strider Hiryu, or even someone like Dante or Jill Valentine. And they could have done it on the cheap, since those characters were already in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. </p><p>Speaking of the new characters, though—pretty hit or miss. Characters like Crimson Vyper or Juni are pretty awesome, and characters like Oni, Decapre and Gouken were interesting and further develop the mythos of Street Fighter. On the other hand, characters like Hakan, Rufus and El Fuerte are embarrassingly stupid. And then we have Abel, a boring cypher of a character who is sometimes held out like he's supposed to be a kinda sorta protagonist. Like Alex was for Street Fighter III; another boring character that most people that I'm aware of never really got into or cared about.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-42350572478031068702021-07-27T19:21:00.005-07:002021-08-03T18:38:53.363-07:00SF Characters<p>I still haven't reinstalled SFV, much less gotten the season five, which I guess is pretty old now. Honestly, after the wonderfulness that was SFIV in it's full version, SFV just feels like a disappointing missed opportunity. Even when it did things relatively well, it was only... relatively.</p><p>In the end, SFV ended up (unless something else still gets added yet) with 46 characters, one more than SFIV ended with. Of course, as much as I like SFIV, I don't love <i>everything</i> about it, in particular, I think the character selection could have been somewhat tweaked. (And a lot of the costume options were really stupid.) Other than that, I'd make a few small tweaks to some of the modes. I'd make stage selection possible in every mode, I'd make stage or character music selectable in every mode. I'd make the Omega Mode movelist available in every mode and viewable in the system. It's really bizarre that they didn't do that, actually, and that you have to read the moves off of a separate pdf. What is this, 1995 all over again? (Well, to be fair, if it was, the moves wouldn't be in a pdf movelist. It'd be a text file on Usenet.) I'd have added the Mike Haggar sprite that was already in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, which is another bizarre shame that he still hasn't appeared in any Street Fighter title as a playable character. Ugh.</p><p>Anyway, I'd like to post what <i>my</i> ideal character roster would be, drawing from any and all games that makes sense to draw from. This is my own personal list. And I wouldn't want this to be a "dream match" kinda nonsense. I'd like a good story mode. That's one of the good ideas SFV had, although the execution was... still coulda been better. Given that SFIV had 45 and SFV had 46, I'll shoot for about that number of characters, but honestly, I'll just keep adding until I get to the point where I'm "meh" about remaining characters that then quit, regardless of the number.</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Ryu</li><li>Ken</li><li>Chun-Li</li><li>Dhalsim</li><li>Blanka</li><li>Zangief</li><li>E. Honda</li><li>Guile</li><li>Balrog</li><li>Vega</li><li>Sagat</li><li>M. Bison</li><li>Akuma</li><li>Cammy</li><li>Geki</li><li>Adon</li><li>Guy</li><li>Cody</li><li>Rolento</li><li>Rose</li><li>Sakura</li><li>Evil Ryu/Kage</li><li>Dudley</li><li>Ibuki</li><li>Oro</li><li>Dan</li><li>Crimson Viper</li><li>Gouken</li><li>Oni</li><li>Necalli</li><li>Menat</li><li>Mike Haggar</li><li>Strider Hiryu</li></ol><div>Well. I guess I came up pretty short after all. One of the advantages of lots of options is that you can afford to not care about a lot of them. Honestly, I only included all of the original crew because it seemed kind of sacrilegious not to. I don't honestly care about playing Dhalsim or Blanka anymore. Or any charging character at all, frankly—they're a real pain with a normal controller.</div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-91466439475757127062021-02-19T22:36:00.002-08:002021-02-19T22:36:32.496-08:00SF StoryI had to uninstall SFV from the PS4 to make room for some games my daughter got, which is fine. I've been playing a bunch of other stuff anyway (Star Wars: The Old Republic, mostly) and haven't really cared too much about Street Fighter lately, although because I love them and always have, I'll come back at some point. And I do want to pick up the Season 5 stuff eventually. The remainder of the new characters have been announced, and while I'm not really all that excited about any of them (except, curiously, I kinda want to see what they do with Oro), it's Street Fighter. How can I not eventually get around to it? That's sort of like saying that I won't eventually get around to watching a Star Wars movie, even though Star Wars movies suck nowadays and are obviously made by people who hate me and spite me on principle. <div><br /></div><div>Anyway, what I'd like to talk about is the metastory of the Street Fighter franchise. It's a little hard to figure out, because the game treats everyone's endings as if they were canon; you have to sift through them, see how they connect, look for patterns, and even then, go find statements, interviews and whatnot from Capcom that helps clear it up. But let me do my best to lay out the chronology of the Street Fighter story, which I think takes place over the course of about a dozen years. We're told in biographical stuff what Ryu's birthday is, but I don't think we're meant to "believe" that exactly; rather, I think that like Marvel superheroes, there's a sliding scale. I.e., time doesn't move as quickly in game as it does in real life. If Ryu was meant to be 23 when Street Fighter was first released back in 1987, which was 34 years ago now, he's not meant to be pushing 60 years old now. Plus, the games have not been released chronologically; the game that's the "most recent" in terms of in-game chronology is Street Fighter III: Third Strike. It was released in 1999, and given that that's about 12 years after the original Street Fighter, that was probably more or less OK when it was released. But now even that was over twenty years ago, and we're still getting new Street Fighter content. In none of it does Ryu look over mid-30s in age. </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, like I said, we <i>know</i> for sure that Ryu was supposed to be 23 when Street Fighter came out in 1987. Let's divorce that age from the year, and just talk about the chronology of the series from that anchor point of Ryu's age in the first game. We'll call that Year 23 since that was Ryu's age. It's the first thing that happened in the Street Fighter chronology. My advancement is somewhat arbitrary; there's only a handful of anchor points that are official, like Capcom stating outright that two years takes place betwen Street Fighter Alpha 1/2 and Alpha 3, the general order of the subseries, and dead reckoning by estimating how old characters like, say, Mel are based on their size (I've had four kids, and my wife has babysitted a great deal more than that. I'm pretty good at estimating kids' ages.)</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Year 23</b>: <b>Street Fighter.</b> There's no mention of Shadaloo or any of the supervillainous organizations; there's just Sagat who's a martial arts champion and all-around mean guy. Ryu and Ken, feeling that their training has advanced to the point where they can consider themselves "graduates" want to go out and test their skills in the world, so they enter the tournament. Ryu wins, Sagat is defeated, etc. </li><li><b>Year 24</b>: <b>Street Fighter Alpha and Alpha 2. </b>Although not released until 1995; eight years after Street Fighter and four years after Street Fighter II basically invented the fighting game genre as we know it, this is the next one from an in-game chronology, and takes place not too long after Street Fighter. I'm rounding it up to a year, but it's feasible that it takes place even considerably sooner than that; maybe even only a few months at most after the first game. 1996's Street Fighter Alpha 2 isn't actually a sequel to this game, rather it's a rewrite; Alpha can be considered almost a first draft that was perfected in Alpha 2. Ryu comes home from the tournament he won to find that his master's brother, Akuma, has murdered his master. There's other stuff going on too; Shadaloo and Bison are introduced. Of course, they were actually introduced in 1991's Street Fighter, but this is their first appearance in the in-game chronology. Curiously, while Shadaloo was played up as a kind of gangster enterprise in Street Fighter II, here they're shown more like a rogue state almost; a kind of supervillainic organization that is directly analogous and in fact almost identical in scope and scale to HYDRA as shown in the Captain America movies, or Cobra Command from the old GI Joe stuff. The Alpha series has a lot of Final Fight characters in it, although they make their biggest bunch of appearances in the next game. I'm not exactly sure when the Final Fight's are supposed to take place, but I think it's pretty clear that they take place <i>before</i> Street Fighter Alpha 3. I tend to think it likely that they are in this range between Year 23 and Year 25 or so.</li><li><b>Year 26</b>: <b>Street Fighter Alpha 3. </b>One of the few anchor points we have in the chronology is that Capcom have told us that two years takes place between Alpha 1 and 2 (which, again, was the same storypoint, just perfected in a better version of the game) and Alpha 3. Alpha 3 was not another rewrite of Alpha 1, but a genuine sequel. Capcom have retconned a few things; Ryu now didn't actually beat Sagat, he actually <i>lost</i> to him, but then he drew on the Dark Side of the Force to sucker punch Sagat after already losing and scar Sagat, for instance. Ryu now seems more concerned with figuring out his fatalistic relationship with the Dark Side of the Force than anything else. Ken meets Eliza in this game. Or maybe that's Eliza in his ending in Street Fighter Alpha 2, although if so, they never mention it. Bison is HUGE in this game, and plays a major role in everybody's story, just about. But Bison is pretty much meant to have been killed and his psycho drive destroyed. Which is odd, because this is a prequel game to Street Fighter II where, of course, Bison is the boss character and he mentions the psycho drive. Based on the appearances of some of the Final Fight characters, especially Cody, we know that the Final Fight games have already taken place by now, too. Mad Gear is broken up, and some of the Mad Gear bosses like Rolento, Sodom (or Katana), etc., are out trying to figure out what to do with their lives, while Cody is in prison for his vigilante fighting, which supposedly went out of control at some point after Final Fight. Although he's arrested by Edi E. who was a corrupt cop on the payroll of the Mad Gear Gang, so it's entirely possible that the whole arrest and felony conviction are not justified. That might explain how he's in prison in Alpha 3 and even Street Fighter IV, but he's the new mayor of Metro City already by Street Fighter V.</li><li><b>Year 27</b>: <b>Street Fighter II (all versions.) </b>We don't know how much time passed between Alpha 3 and Street Fighter 2, but there are reasons to assume that it isn't <i>too</i> long. I'm going to round to a year. Those reasons include a lot of the information in the stories of characters like Chun-Li, Guile, T. Hawk, etc. who are clearly continuing efforts that were detailed in Alpha (again; they were detailed in SF2 first.) Given the general lack of progress that Guile has had in finding Charlie, Chun-Li in finding her father, or T. Hawk in finding Julia. This one is a bit speculative, but it works out well, and there's not much reason to assume more than a year's passage here. (on the other hand, Cammy developing from being a brainwashed teenaged girl Killer Bee in Alpha 3 and having already had a history as a Delta Red agent at the end of II seems awfully compressed.) However, we do have some more relative anchors put into place here. For one, it does seem likely that if Street Fighter, which was released in 1987 was supposed to have taken place in 1987, then Street Fighter II, which was released in 1991, was also supposed to have taken place in 1991. This was before prequels and timeline bending became normal, as well as before the plot got complicated, so this assumption seems likely to have been true at the time, and it also seems like Capcom have kind of worked around it. In fact, there's a vague timeline Capcom once published in Japan, and although I don't read Japanese, it's clear that only two dates are clearly given, 1987 and 1991. Ken and Eliza get married at the end (in Ken's ending) which also provides a useful anchor of sorts. Although Udon Comics had Eliza get married partly because she was already pregnant, that actually seems unlikely to have been Capcom's intention. This means that we can peg the timing between Street Fighter II's ending and Street Fighter IV's ending, when Mel is born, to have been unlikely to have been much shorter than a year. It could have been a little longer, but there's not much reason to assume that it should have been. Also; all of the versions of Street Fighter II are just iterations on the same story. None of them is a sequel to any other version of Street Fighter II.</li><li><b>Year 28</b>: <b>Street Fighter IV (all versions). </b>There's some vaguish comments from Capcom that Street Fighter II was supposed to take place in 1991; the year that the first version of it came out, and that Street Fighter IV, the next once chronologically, takes place in 1994. I don't know if this is really meant to be true or not in a literal sense, or even that it's accurate. I've only heard it second hand. Or more likely third or more hand. Street Fighter IV takes place at <i>least</i> a year after Street Fighter II, as mentioned above, but it could be three years. That gives Shadaloo, which was more thoroughly destroyed this time than it was after Alpha 3, time to regroup into SIN under new leadership, and it means that Mel isn't quite the honeymoon baby that he otherwise would have been. Keep in mind that this timeline originally had the final Street Fighter III game taking place in 1999, or "year 35." I'm trying to make the timeline fit that paradigm still. I should point out that the manual for Street Fighter IV suggests that it takes place "a short time" after Street Fighter II. I like rounding to one year instead of three years as "a short time", so I'm tentatively putting this at Year 28 rather than Year 30. Realistically, though, there's not a lot of reason to favor one over the other; you've simply got two potentially conflicting offhand comments from someone allegedly at Capcom, subject to translation, second and third hand distortion, and interpretation of what exactly "a short time" means, though.</li><li><b>Year 32-33: Street Fighter V (all versions).</b> Based mostly on Mel's appearance (although all characters are notably aged at least a little bit; Mel's is the best for dead reckoning, because going from newborn to a kid of 4-5 is a much easier thing to dead-reckon on physical appearance than going from late twenties to early thirties, this is about where I think the Street Fighter V games take place. This game also has the most clearly defined story, as well as finally tying the Shadaloo focused games to the Illuminati focused SF3 titles. There are decent reasons to assume that this doesn't take place too long prior to the first SF3 game. Most of the characters have about the same appearance, for instance. Mel seems to be a little bigger, but no more than a year or so.</li><li><b>Year 34: Street Fighter III: New Generation and 2nd Impact.</b> As with the Alpha series, III originally game out in it's first version, but was then "rewritten" and replaced with the second iteration of the series. Although, like with Alpha, the <i>third</i> game in the sub-series is a sequel to the first/second. For whatever reason, the storytelling really fell apart in this game, too. While there's lots of vague hints of stuff, it's almost impossible to actually determine what is supposed to have happened. And because Street Fighter III had very little to no mainstream appeal, only being popular with the competitive technical set, I suppose Capcom just decided that they didn't really care about clarifying anything going on in the story anyway. </li><li><b>Year 35: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.</b> Ryu actually looks older (especially in his bearded "hot Ryu" alternate) in SFV than he does in SF3, which is probably a good clue that they can't really be posited to take place too far apart from each other. We know that 3rd Strike takes place after 2nd Impact. When there's a "short time" between iterations, I'm rounding that up to a year, because there's never any reason to assume that it has to be less. There are good reasons to stretch the game out <i>some</i> too; Cammy for instance has a pretty intricate story and backstory that needs some time to develop. She can't go from being a brainwashed teenager Killer Bee assassin to a valued member of Delta Red who has a history and personal ties with her team in just a couple of months, after all. There needs to be some <i>time</i> for that type of story to develop. Of course, that is in contrast to what I said above that there are good reasons to presume that Alpha 3 and SF2 <i>aren't</i> that far apart. If there needs to be some stretch in the timeline, I'd put another year or two between those titles</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-82528150916440208012020-08-05T11:14:00.002-07:002020-08-05T11:14:58.011-07:00<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G07SJ0n2I_s" width="560"></iframe>
<div><br /></div><div>How well did I do? So far announced are four of the five new characters, and Dan, Oro and Rose are among them, as well as a character from Rival Schools (a game I never played and didn't know.) The fifth new character they're holding back on announcing for the time being. I figured Dan was likely, I thought Oro was one I wanted to see and thought the fact that he'd made several cameos made him more likely than I would have thought. Rose was one that I thought they'd pass on this time around, and I didn't see a Rival Schools character coming at all. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's several SF3 characters and at least one SF4 character that I thought were likely shoe-ins, although obviously there were too many for me to have expected them all to come in. I did expect to see Yun or Yang, Makoto and Dudley, or at least one of them, make the cut. And I really expected C. Viper to make the cut. I'd be very surprised if the 5th character isn't one of those.</div><div><br /></div><div>I also expected at least one of the missing SF2 characters to pop in, but then again, maybe I should have been so surprised. The fact that they were missing this long clearly means that Capcom doesn't think that they're essential anymore. This will be the first major title to have not had all of the SF2 characters, though.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-9909551677845413282020-07-10T08:19:00.001-07:002020-07-10T08:19:13.826-07:00New Season V charactersI haven't done anything here in forever, but... now that I've got my new desktop, and my own office to use it in that used to be my son's room before he grew up and left home, I've reinstalled Steam, I've put Street Fighter V Champion Edition on my PS4 (technically that belongs to my youngest two boys too; but like I said, one of them is out of the house for at least another year and half, and then he'll leave again after that for college out of state. And the younger one is kinda over video games and doens't care anymore. I'm the only one left that's regularly using it, which is weird, because I didn't touch it for a long time when we got it; not until one of my sons bought Red Dead Redemption II, actually.) So, I'm back in the saddle after a lengthy hiatus where I rarely if ever played one of these types of games, because I didn't have access to SFIV for a time, and I never liked SFV until I got it recently in its more fixed and updated form with enough content to not be embarrassing.<div><br /></div><div>Anyway, although SFV was considered a fairly dead or done game, the Champion Edition was sufficiently well received that Capcom decided to issue a final and fifth (Vth?) season and announced that there would be five (V) new characters added to the game still. While it's certainly possible that a new character will be among them, I think it's much more likely that we'll see the return of some characters that've already part of the Capcom roster. If we get anyone "new" it'll be one of the dolls; maybe one that hasn't ever been playable before. (We do know that most of them are in the game as opponents already, since we fight a number of them in story mode. That would be a quick and easy way to bring a character to the game without having to do too much work on it; you've already got a model and moves, they just need to be made playable. Which I don't want to underestimate the workload involved in doing that, but still--a fair chunk of the work <i>has</i> been done.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, the purpose of this post isn't to talk about who I think is likely to be brought in, but who I'd wish to see, and who I'd pick if I was in charge. Before I do, let me at least spell out who some of the potentially obvious adds are, just because. Then I can contrast (and a bit of compare, but it'll mostly be contrast) those obvious adds with my own wishlist. Street Fighter V is the first game since Super Street Fighter II that <i>doesn't</i> feature all of the characters from Super Street Fighter, at least in its final, fully fleshed out form. So, some obvious adds would be the three missing New Challengers: <b>T. Hawk, Fei Long </b>and <b>Dee Jay</b>. Yeah, yeah... those are the least popular of the New Challengers, I'm sure, but still, it's odd that they're missing. But I also doubt that they'd make three of the five be those characters. Probably at least one of them, though. Some of the more popular Street Fighter III characters also seem like shoe-ins. We have less Street Fighter III characters in V than in IV. <b>Dudley,</b> <b>Yang </b>and/or <b>Yun </b>and possibly <b>Makoto</b>. I hear a lot of calls from the fanbase for the latter, in particular, although I've never liked her as a character at all. Of the Alpha characters, I doubt that Rose or Guy will come back as we have Menat and Zeku to kind of represent them. It's the first game not to have <b>Dan</b>, though, so he'd be a kind of obvious addition too. Even if the joke is long past played out by this point. Of the IV characters, I was surprised that <b>C. Viper</b> wasn't already included; she does make a cameo in the story, at least. The same is kind of true for <b>Abel</b>, although he was a much less memorable addition to IV than Juri and Viper. So, that list of "obvious" candidates is obviously twice as long as it needs to be, but I wouldn't be surprised to see at least four of the five pulled from that list, if not all five.</div><div><br /></div><div>Who would I most want to see return? My list might be a little esoteric, but what the hey?</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><font color="#d52c1f">Geki</font></b>. Of all of the non-playable characters from the first Street Fighter game, he's the one who seems to have picked up the most mystique. I'd argue that he's probably more popular than SFI characters that we <i>have</i> had added to subsequent games like Birdie, Gen and Adon. Of course, I don't have much to back up that assertion other than his use in stuff like the Udon comics and whatnot, but I'd really like to see him updated. I know, I know, there are a number of ninja-esque characters in the game already, like Ibuki and Guy and Zeku. But they don't really fit the classic trope of the Shinobi that was super popular in the late 80s and early 90s when these games came out, and the little that we do know about Geki's potential moves is already very different than either of them, with throwing stars and teleportation, etc.</li><li><b><font color="#d52c1f">Edi. E</font></b>. (I don't know why he has a period in his name after Edi, but that's correct.) The only Final Fight boss (other than Belger himself, and a character in a wheelchair probably isn't feasible) to not make an appearance makes him a good candidate in my opinion. Not only would his rivalry with Cody make for a better story reason to include him than say, Abigail or Hugo, both of which <i>have</i> made appearances, but he'd be a significantly different type of character than any we've seen before, given that he always uses a pistol and a night stick. He'd probably be Zangief-sized too, which would be interesting, as we could always use another bigger character while we're at it. Maybe this time <i>he's</i> the one in a convict uniform, since after he framed Cody and sent him to prison, now that Cody is mayor, maybe he's been drummed out for corruption finally. Yet another reason to have an even more bitter rivalry!</li><li><b><font color="#d52c1f">Mike Haggar</font></b>. I know, I know. I'm probably leaning too much into the older games, but I'm an older guy, and I like my nostalgia. To be honest, I'd rather have seen Mike make an appearance with his Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 model in Ultra Street Fighter IV, and leave him off the roster for V, but since he didn't ever make it to IV, putting him in V is a must. He's <i>the</i> iconic character from Final Fight, and he's had a bit of a comeback since his appearance in the MvC series. He's primed for a re-appearance.</li><li><b><font color="#d52c1f">Oro</font></b>. A Street Fighter III character that never seems to get any love, although maybe that's because he's kinda dumb like Twelve or Necro, I dunno. At least he has more character, in my opinion, and he does make a number of cameos in Street Fighter V already, where it's shown that he's pretty good friends with Dhalsim. I think he could turn out pretty cool and interesting, especially if he gets some decent alternative costumes. It can also start to point towards his appearance in Street Fighter III; the inclusion of a bunch of Illuminati characters already starts that, as well as Sean's cameo since his sister is a playable character. </li><li><b><font color="#d52c1f">C. Viper</font></b>. Just because she's an obvious one doesn't mean that it's not one that I wouldn't like to see! I kind of like C. Viper, although I think she's a little bit underpowered in IV, and could stand a bit of minor updating. She's obviously kicking around, having made a number of small cameos in the Story mode, but as kinda the new protagonist specifically for the IV game, leaving her out is a little bit insulting. She's also a kind of rival to Juri, and picking up Juri but leaving C. Viper out seems incomplete. It'd be like having Ken in the game but not Ryu. Well, not quite, as those are the protagonist and deuteragonist for the entire franchise, but still, you get the picture. </li><li><b><font color="#d52c1f">Honorable Mention</font></b>. Oni should come back, not as a new character, but as a skin for Akuma. Akuma looks so terrible in this game, and only his "nostalgia" skin actually looks any good. Giving him an Oni skin would be perfect. I think it would actually be interesting to bring Gouken back too, although again, maybe as a skin or "cosplay" for either Akuma or Ryu is better than bringing him back as a complete character. For that matter, maybe that's a better way to bring Dan back than as a character; have someone dress as him in cosplay. Although, to be fair, he already dresses an awful lot like classic Ryu and Ken anyway, and just has a different head. I would have thought the same thing about it being fun to bring some Darkstalkers characters into the game, but given that most of the ones I'd want to see are already skins for someone or other in the game as is, it's probably fine as is.</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-113905957680878522017-09-12T08:46:00.001-07:002017-09-12T08:46:17.758-07:00All SF charactersAccording to my count, there are <i style="font-weight: bold;">77</i> total characters that have appeared in a Street Fighter game (as a playable character) so far. This is, needless to day, a <i>lot</i> of characters, and even if you look at titles like Ultra Street Fighter IV that have well over 40 playable characters, barely passes up the halfway mark. Let's go through them very quickly alphabetically and I'll give some brief background on each.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Abel</b> a Frenchish judo fighter that appears so far only in Street Fighter IV, Abel's story is that he was a body intended for Bison's use; a kind of male doll program, except cloned rather than kidnapped. For whatever reason, he went rogue and sentient and became Abel.</li>
<li><b>Abigail</b> I have no idea why Abigail is a man, but he was originally one of the later appearing bosses in Final Fight, and was added as a Season 2 download to Street Fighter V. He's absolutely huge; bigger even than Hugo, and reminds me of the Marvel mutant character Strong Guy. He's also a pretty stereotypical dumb jock</li>
<li><b>Adon</b> Originally the next to last boss in the original Street Fighter, Adon was Sagat's pupil. He later appeared in the Alpha series and Street Fighter IV, now rebelling against Sagat, and being a general nuisance.</li>
<li><b>Akuma</b> Originally appearing as a super secret character in the last version of Street Fighter 2, Akuma has become one of the most popular characters, and has appeared in just about every Capcom fighter since then. He's meant to be the dark mirror image of Ryu's old master, and a rival to Ryu himself—he eventually grew to become one of the most iconic villains of the series.</li>
<li><b>Alex</b> Originally meant to be the protagonist of the ill-fated Street Fighter III, Alex did finally come back in Street Fighter V. He's a kind of rock-headed wrestler type with really strange, gay suspenders and stuff. He struggles to find a place as a protagonist because he's not a very interesting character from a moves, personality, or plot perspective.</li>
<li><b>Balrog</b> Discounting the name-swaps between the US and Japanese versions of the game, Balrog was based on Mike Tyson, and was the first boss of the SF2 game. He's appeared in the Alpha, IV and V games as well.</li>
<li><b>Birdie</b> originally a character from the first Street Fighter, Birdie was revived for the Alpha series, and then later for V, getting progressively sillier as time goes on, for whatever reason. </li>
<li><b>Blanka</b> one of the original (and weirdest) of the World Warriors from SF2, Blanka has appeared in every series since except III. His connection to the rest of the cast is rather tenuous, so they've tried to imply that he was friends with Dan, and Sakura and others.</li>
<li><b>Cammy</b> originally an agent type with amnesia who was supposed to have been Bison's lover, Cammy later developed a much more complicated backstory as the lead doll agent from Shadaloo. She appeared in an update to SF2, and has been in every game series (except III again) ever since, and has become one of the more recognizable characters from the series, as well as having more plot importance than most.</li>
<li><b>Charlie (Nash)</b> originally merely a backstory element to Guile, Charlie (also called Nash; later determined that his full name was Charlie Nash) appeared in the Alpha series, and then as a weird Frankenstein character "rebuilt" and resurrected by Shadaloo in SF V.</li>
<li><b>Chun-Li</b> Chun-Li is one of the few characters to have appeared in III from the earlier series, and is an original SF2 World Warrior. Ironically, her plot importance has often faded over time.</li>
<li><b>Cody</b> one of the main protagonists of the Final Fight series, he was brought into Alpha—how as a psychotic convict imprisoned for being unable to ever stop fighting. He appeared again in IV. He has no plot importance beyond Final Fight, but is tied to a great many characters in the game.</li>
<li><b>Crimson Viper</b> a IV and V character; one of the few that seems to not be ridiculous. She's a secret agent with a battle suit that gives her super powers, making her a similar concept to Black Widow—although for some odd reason, it was decided that secret agents in SFverse can be 20 year old single mothers (!?) She's undercover, pretending to work with S.I.N. but really serving the CIA.</li>
<li><b>Dan</b> the infamous joke character that riffs off of Robert and especially Ryo by SNK in Art of Fighting. He appeared in Alpha, IV and there are brief references to him (although no actual appearance) in V. </li>
<li><b>Decapre</b> a IV representation of the doll agents. In this sense, she kind of replaces Juli and Juni from the Alpha series.</li>
<li><b>Dee Jay</b> a late appearing SF2 expansion character, who also appears in Alpha and IV. Like many of the original World Warriors, he actually has surprisingly little plot importance; I suspect that that is something that was developed later, and new characters were developed often with a plot imperative behind them; while other characters already existing, Capcom didn't quite know what to do with.</li>
<li><b>Dhalsim</b> an original World Warrior who appears in every series except III. He often plays a Yoda like mentor role, but originally he was just supposed to be a colorful Indian rubber man archetype</li>
<li><b>Dudley</b> the British posh boxer who first appeared in III and later became popular enough to migrate to IV as well. He's supposedly Balrog's rival and antipode</li>
<li><b>E. Honda</b> an original World Warrior that's appeared also in Alpha and IV. Like many ancillary World Warriors, his plot importance is negligible</li>
<li><b>Eagle</b> originally a SF 1 character who was revived as a sprite for a spin-off title, and was later added to a handheld version of the final Alpha game. There's not much to tell about him, really.</li>
<li><b>Ed</b> appearing in a IV ending, he was later brought forward as a V expansion character, and another Shadaloo cloning experiment gone somewhat awry. As a boxer of sorts, he's been one of the few characters tied to Balrog.</li>
<li><b>El Fuerte</b> this guy's a loon, from IV. He's too crazy to have caught on with anyone, really</li>
<li><b>Elena</b> a strange, "cute" character from III that was also in IV. She has a weird "Storm" (from the X-men) vibe, but for some unexplainable reason, fights in a Brazilian style. She's relatively non-serious, and Capcom has even joked that she became friends with Akuma. Probably to establish clearly the fact that she's a silly character, not to be taken seriously.</li>
<li><b>Evil Ryu</b> technically, this is an alternate character; a "dream" character, not a real one; a what-if. Appearing in Alpha, then IV, Evil Ryu has undergone a fair bit of development to his moves and appearance over time, to the point where he much more resembles an original character. Technically, however, he's not.</li>
<li><b>F.A.N.G.</b> a V character, designed to be one of the sub-bosses (and therefore important to the plot, and one who appears a lot), but he's pretty silly. I'm trying to think of what Hong Kong action movies he's clearly drawn from, and his poison abilities are kind of unique. He's really too stupid and caricaturish for my taste, though.</li>
<li><b>Fei Long</b> an expansion character from SF2 that is obviously the ersatz Bruce Lee. He's appeared in Alpha, IV makes a brief cameo in V. There have been some half-hearted efforts to tie Fei Long to more characters, but he's still ancillary to the plots of the games.</li>
<li><b>Geki</b> a claw-wielding, star-throwing, and teleporting ninja from the very first game, who represents the then-current supernatural ninja craze. He never appeared in any other game since, although there are hints that 1) Vega is a protege of some sort, and 2) a Geki II character may be in the works.</li>
<li><b>Gen </b>one of the few SF1 antagonists who got a fair bit of development, appearing in Alpha and IV, and being made out as fairly significant in the backstories of several characters, including Akuma himself. In fact, he makes a brief cameo appearance in Akuma's story, where its implied that he finally dies for real.</li>
<li><b>Gill</b> the boss of III, and therefore largely unconnected to anything else—although as V starts to take the 2, Alpha and IV stories and lead them to III, characters that relate to him and his organization start to take more shape.</li>
<li><b>Gouken</b> although he's supposed to have been dead all along, Gouken was brought back as a playable character in SF4 and makes a cameo in V. He's Ryu and Ken's master, and Akuma's brother.</li>
<li><b>Guile</b> an original World Warrior, who's been in every game except III (although he was a late appearing expansion for Alpha, where Charlie was supposed to have replaced him) who has been made significantly important in the Shadaloo story.</li>
<li><b>Guy</b> an alternate protagonist from Final Fight who's also been in Alpha, IV, and in cameo form in V. Like Geki, he's a stereotypical 80s/90s supernatural ninja, except the good guy version.</li>
<li><b>Hakan</b> a IV character who's another rather silly one. Partly because of this, he's been somewhat tied to some of the other sillier characters, like E. Honda. He's also meant to be about as exotic as Blanka or Dhalsim... which he is.</li>
<li><b>Hugo (Andore)</b> although under a slightly different name, Hugo is actually a Final Fight character who was ported into III and then appeared later in IV. Until the appearance of Abigail, he was by far the largest SF character, and is quite dumb.</li>
<li><b>Ibuki</b> a teenaged girl ninja; a weird Japanese cultural affectation. She appeared in III and then IV and V because she was relatively popular. She's got a little bit of that Spider-man "fighting crime incognito while also dealing with school" vibe to her, but honestly, I've also found her too culturally Japanese to really get.</li>
<li><b>Ingrid</b> a character from another game who was thrown into the final, handheld version of Alpha 3, because she could be, Ingrid has no ties to anyone else in SFverse, and is kinda weird. She's actually got a strange anime and/or SNK vibe to her in my opinion.</li>
<li><b>Joe</b> a completely forgettable fighter who only ever appeared in SF1.</li>
<li><b>Juli</b> one of the dolls, made playable briefly in the final version of Alpha. I'm considering <i>all</i> of the other Dolls as background characters, even though some of them can be fought as antagonists in SFV.</li>
<li><b>Juni</b> same as Juli; although her sprites and moves are slightly different</li>
<li><b>Juri</b> a villainous character from IV and V—one of the few IV characters who, like C. Vyper, is memorable enough to have moved on</li>
<li><b>Karin</b> an Alpha 3 character who later becomes an important plot character in V. At first, she's just a throwaway rival to Sakura, but she later becomes more like a more serious female analog to Ken. Not in terms of moves, just in terms of plot positioning.</li>
<li><b>Ken</b> the very second SF character ever developed; originally a red-clothed, American copy of Ryu, but one who later developed his own personality, moves and style. Sometimes he's treated seriously, but occasionally he veers into silliness (his Roy Rogers alternate costume in IV, for instance, or his III story)</li>
<li><b>Kolin </b>a V only character; an undercover agent for Gill</li>
<li><b>Laura</b> supposedly the sister of Sean, this V only character plays more like Elena</li>
<li><b>Lee</b> a completely forgettable 1 only appearance. He's been retroactively tied—tenuously—to some other Chinese characters, like Yun, Yang and Chun-Li</li>
<li><b>M. Bison</b> the boss of SF2, and a character in every single game since except III. He's still the most iconic SF villain, and replacing him with the strange Gill for III was probably part of it's failure to grab the audience</li>
<li><b>Maki</b> a Final Fight character who only appears in the hand-held Alpha 3 game, she's quite tall for a lady, and has ties to Guy and Cody and some of the other Final Fight guys. </li>
<li><b>Makoto</b> a III character who later appeared also in IV. She has, like many III characters, no connection to anyone else, and <i>appears</i> to be (although this is officially unconfirmed) to have been inspired by the Akane Tendo character from Ranma ½.</li>
<li><b>Menat</b> the very newest (so far) V character, she is an apprentice to Rose and has an Egyptian vibe to her (including an alternate costume where she's wrapped like a mummy.) Just in case you thought what Rose needed was a cute, teenaged apprentice girl. </li>
<li><b>Mike</b> a forgettable SF1 character who <i>may</i> have been a prototype version of Balrog, although Capcom tries to say, no, there's just two characters built on the exact same archetype.</li>
<li><b>Necalli</b> a strange V only Aztec demon-god character, who has a Darkstalkers vibe to him, or something. He could have been developed as a peer, if you will, of Akuma, but Capcom didn't really seem to know what to do with him from a storytelling perspective</li>
<li><b>Necro</b> a III character (with a cameo in V) who looks very bizarre, likes to sing opera in falsetto when he wins, and has Dhalsim's Indian rubber man stretchiness as well as Blanka's electricity. He's supposed to be a runaway experiment of the Illuminati, although why both the Illuminati and Shadaloo were so caught up in cloning/superhero experimentation I don't know. It does tend to make both organizations run together.</li>
<li><b>Oni</b> this is a dream version of Akuma in the same way that Evil Ryu is a dream version of Ryu. From IV only</li>
<li><b>Oro</b> a very strange III only character; an ancient man who wants to date Ibuki, and he looks about as freaky as Blanka or Dhalsim.</li>
<li><b>Poison</b> another Final Fight character who finally became playable in IV. She's also cameoing along with Hugo in III. There were some weird ideas floating around for a while that Poison might have been a cross dresser or even a post-op fake woman. </li>
<li><b>Q</b> a completely mysterious III only character, about which we know very little except that he looks like the Invisible Man</li>
<li><b>R. Mika</b> a rather dumb expansion Alpha and V character who is a groupie to Zangief. She's one of the silliest characters (non-III) in the series</li>
<li><b>Rashid</b> a swashbuckling V character who has been made out to be a semi-protagonist of that game</li>
<li><b>Remy</b> one of the latest appearing III characters; a skinny, androgynous, emo Guile clone. Blegh. He belongs in a King of Fighters game</li>
<li><b>Retsu</b> a disposable Japanese monk character from SF1</li>
<li><b>Rolento</b> originally a boss in Final Fight, Rolento has since appeared in the Alpha and IV games. Like many Final Fight characters, he really only connects plotwise to other Final Fight characters.</li>
<li><b>Rose</b> an Alpha and IV character who has strange ties to Bison. Unlike many of the female characters, she actually appears to be mature and composed rather than "cute" and kind of spastic.</li>
<li><b>Rufus</b> another one of the undeniably stupidest characters in the game, Rufus is a IV only character who supposedly has a rivalry with Ken. He's loosely based on Chris Farley's Beverly Hills Ninja, but dressed like a basketball stuck in Bruce Lee's Game of Death outfit.</li>
<li><b>Ryu</b> the protagonist of the game and series, the mascot for Capcom overall (along with, maybe, Megaman) and one of the few characters (only Ken joins him here) to appear in every single SF series.</li>
<li><b>Sagat</b> the boss of SF1, the sub boss of SF2, and a powerful figure in every SF game except III, and (curiously) V, where he is supposedly kind of retired. He has evolved over time from being an outright villain into being more of a respectful rival to Ryu.</li>
<li><b>Sakura</b> a popular Alpha creation who also appears in IV and V (as cameo); Sakura is a "cute" teenaged girl who idolizes and copies Ryu.</li>
<li><b>Sean</b> Ken's apprentice from III; an otherwise completely forgettable character who plays to Ken in some ways the same way Sakura does to Ryu</li>
<li><b>Seth</b> the boss of IV; a Bison clone who went rogue and became significantly inhuman</li>
<li><b>Shin Akuma</b> a "dream" version of Akuma; supposedly Akuma not holding himself back. In this, he differs from Oni, which is a future-state version of Akuma. He appears in the Alpha games, the version of Akuma from SSF2 Turbo was retroactively called Shin Akuma, and he's a secret boss in one of the of the III games.</li>
<li><b>Sodom (Katana)</b> another Final Fight boss that appeared in Alpha, and has (so far) never been moved from there. He's weird; an American obsessed with Japan, or something like that. Not very memorable.</li>
<li><b>T. Hawk</b> a SF2 expansion character who also appears in Alpha, IV and has an interesting story tie to Bison and the Dolls, actually.</li>
<li><b>Twelve</b> another dumb experiment from SF3; Twelve has no personality; no nothing. He's a shapeshifting android or something that can copy the moves of other characters</li>
<li><b>Urien</b> Gill's more human-like brother, a resentfull sub boss type character. While he was kind of a stupid foil in III, he's been made a more serious and significant villain in V</li>
<li><b>Vega </b>the spanish "ninja" sub boss from SF2, who's been in every series since (technically, he hasn't "appeared" in V yet, but his upcoming presence was already confirmed.) As such, he's got a lot of story ties to a lot of characters, including all of the Shadaloo ones, and Chun-Li especially. Ties to Cammy and Juri have been invented as well.</li>
<li><b>Yang</b> a popular Chinese teenager from III who has been brought into IV. Other than ties to his twin brother Yun, he seems to also know Chun-Li (because everyone from China knows each other or something) and otherwise has few ties to the storyline at all.</li>
<li><b>Yun</b> see Yang above</li>
<li><b>Zangief</b> an original SF2 world warrior who continues to appear in the game, but has devolved into silly comic relief. It's curious that most of the world warriors, who were seen as antagonists if not actual villains at first, have gradually become supporting protagonists and "heroes"—at least if the SF5 story is any guide. In spite of this, Zangief's probably biggest claim to fame is his cameo appearance in the Disney movie Wreck-It Ralf as a villain.</li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6648587905394453246.post-3403267656935633662016-12-21T10:33:00.002-08:002016-12-22T12:06:03.960-08:00Season 2<i>Street Fighter V</i> hasn't really grabbed me yet, although as it's been picking up more steam, I've become more interested. The first of the "Season 2" content just came out, it appears, although there is considerably more to come. By 2020, it's supposed to have the largest roster of any Street Fighter title... but for now, it's still a little on the skimpy side.<br />
<br />
I kind of really want SFV to have something like a simple "normal" arcade mode as opposed to those incredibly abbreviated and scripted story modes. I also really have enjoyed SFIV's ability to have vs CPU for when I just want to play around with the game (by <i>far</i> this is the mode I play most.) Although it's seen by its developers as a competitive head to head game, I've rarely played much Street Fighter of any series that way; back in the arcades in the old days, we'd usually play through against the CPU and somewhat rarely challenge each other. Then, of course, I had tons of console games, usually by myself, on older consoles with no internet connection. Because of that, I've rarely gotten involved in competitive battles, even though SFIV offers them. Nor am I particularly good at them, for that matter. I play Street Fighter to unwind, not to challenge myself with a really difficult challenge.<br />
<br />
SFV, on the other hand, offers relatively little to the player like me who mostly avoids 2 player games and requires a good single player mode that actually offers some good replayability. Sigh. So, eventually I'll pick it up. It could be years yet before I bother, though. That said, I still check in every few months to see what's going on with it, and try and get caught up on the SF world, and although I'm not nearly as good at this as I should like to be, I did manage to catch a whiff of season 2 and what's coming down the pike in 2017.<br />
<br />
First, let's set the groundwork. Although this wasn't obvious to me at first when I rented this title a few months ago, SFV is a sequel to IV (obviously) but a <i>prequel</i> to III—which remains the chronologically most advanced game of the series still. In other words; this is the order in which the series came out—and I've left off the EX series as a spin-off unrelated directly to the others:<br />
<ol>
<li>Street Fighter</li>
<li>Street Fighter 2</li>
<li>Street Fighter Alpha</li>
<li>Street Fighter 3</li>
<li>Street Fighter 4</li>
<li>Street Fighter 5</li>
</ol>
<div>
But <i>this</i> is the order that they take place in chronologically:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Street Fighter</li>
<li>Street Fighter Alpha</li>
<li>Street Fighter 2</li>
<li>Street Fighter 4</li>
<li>Street Fighter 5</li>
<li>Street Fighter 3</li>
</ol>
<div>
Street Fighter V is the game that starts to (meaningfully) introduce characters and concepts from Street Fighter 3 into the game. IV was, on the other hand, most definitely a direct sequel to II. Of course, IV and even V had plenty of Alpha characters making appearances too.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We'll see how it shakes out when all is said and done, but what I'm surprised by is the character selection. The original Street Fighter obviously had only one (two, if you're being generous) selectable characters: Ryu (and Ken as 2-player alternate.) Part of the secret of Street Fighter II's massive success was the selection of the original 8 World Warriors: <i>none</i> of whom (except Ryu and Ken) came from the first game. Even later, when the bosses were added as playable characters, that only gave us Sagat from the first game. The fact that the roster of characters (both playable and not) had so little overlap between the first and second games has always kind of fascinated me. Since then, of course, Capcom has not really had the same degree of success, and they've never done a Street Fighter game that didn't dip fairly deeply into existing characters since (except for the ill-fated Street Fighter III series, which did actually <i>eventually</i> get a couple more classic characters, but which was also no doubt seen as a commercial disappointment in many ways.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Alpha series deliberately brought back a fair number of the otherwise neglected original Street Fighter characters, as well as characters from Final Fight; a side-scrolling game that was originally developed to be a sequel to Street Fighter, but following the success of Double Dragon (by Technos/Taito) it changed it's focus. That said, the two were clearly occurring in the same "continuity" given the large number of Final Fight characters that eventually made their way into Street Fighter titles. </div>
<div>
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By the time the series reached their "final" chapter, both Street Fighter Alpha and IV had added every single one of the characters who ever appeared in any Street Fighter II game, and Alpha had four Street Fighter I characters (IV had two) and five Final Fight characters (IV had four.) Alpha also added a pretty fair number of characters that made their first appearance in this series: ten in all. III had sixteen characters that were new to it. IV and so far V have made generous use of many of these characters, although I wonder how many of the III characters that haven't already made an appearance in IV we're likely to see in V, given that they're often just too weird to really have picked up a fan following. IV had four of the Alpha characters while so far V has three; but there's no overlap on which ones are in each. IV ended up picking up <i>seven</i> of the III characters; probably almost all of them that are worth preserving, although V has rounded that out just a bit with three (again; so far) only one of which was in IV. V also has very few of the ten IV unique characters (only one so far).</div>
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I expect that we'll eventually see all of the rest of the original Street Fighter II characters make their way into V. I expect that a few stand-out Alpha and IV characters (especially Sakura, Crimson Viper maybe) are also inevitable, and it's curious that the III characters that have been added so far don't include many of the more obviously popular ones (like Yun, Yang and maybe Dudley.) They'll almost certainly make it eventually, but the rumors for five new characters through 2017 are all new V characters that if they've shown up at all, it's never been as a playable character before. And there seems to be a lot of the Dolls of various types in the game, although they're not playable as yet.</div>
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I also expect—or maybe this is just wishful thinking and I hope for it—that some more game modes are forthcoming before all is said and done.<br />
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By the way, the first of the Season 2 characters is Akuma, now with a bizarre lion-flower hair style (although there's a skin that recreates his classic appearance, more or less.)<br />
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