Arcade Edition

Capcom was always notorious about tinkering with their titles and releasing various iterations of it as separate games. On my Xbox collection, I have no fewer than four versions of Street Fighter II, and there are several that I don't have as well... there are at least seven or eight significantly different official versions, the latest and greatest (and probably last) of which is given the jaw-cracking title of Super Street Fighter II Turbo High Definition Remix. Even the acronym is long--SSF2THDR.
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Since I still haven't managed to pick up a Playstation 3 or an Xbox 360, I still don't have any of the Street Fighter IV titles, but I just read today that there is a pending release called the "Arcade Edition" of Super Street Fighter IV which is meant to be the "last word" on the IV titles. In today's day and age, of course, you can get this as a DLC add-on to your existing copy of Super Street Fighter IV, or you can buy it as a complete package all on its own. All characters, including the new ones, will be unlocked from the get-go. The game will also be available on the PC, which is where I might buy it (although I need to get a new graphics card first, I think.)

Anyway, all that's really neither here nor there; what struck me as slightly unusual about the announcement, which is actually a few weeks old at least by now--I'm a little behind paying attention to what's going on with the world of SS4--is that one of the new characters being added to the game is a fella named "Oni."

See, that seems like an all new character, with a name like that, but it's very obvious from the screenshots, game videos, and concept art released to date that Oni is actually the final, ultimate, "fully evolved" version of Akuma. And curiously, he looks an awful lot like a custom color edit that I used to have on my old copy of Capcom vs. SNK Pro! Given this new announcement, I'm actually quote jazzed to see if I can make time to create a custom edit on my Capcom vs. SNK 2 PS2 version (although I still haven't unlocked Shin Akuma or Ultimate Rugal--I haven't had much time to play this last week in the evenings...). I can't do a few of the details, of course, including the longer hair, the shirtless outfit, or the flying beads, but I can get the white hair, black/blue skin and dark clothes easily enough.

Anyway, feast your eyes on some artwork, including one that's actually for SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos's version of Shin Akuma, which is probably a graphical precursor to Oni anyway.

Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves

Although online it's almost always called Garou: Mark of the Wolves, my Dreamcast copy clearly says that the title is Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves. I hadn't played my Dreamcast in quite a while. I actually only have four games for it--Street Fighter III: Third Strike and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 by Capcom (neither of which I like all that much), King of Fighters '98 under its alternate title, and Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves. Since I don't like the Capcom titles that much and since King of Fighters '98 for the Dreamcast is completely obsolete since I also have King of Fighters '98: Ultimate Match for the PS2, I really only need it to play MOW, or occasionally dabble in the Capcom games.

In order to play, I had to be a little handy, too. The little mechanical switch that indicates that the case lid is closed doesn't work all that well, and I had to open the case up and tape it down. The tape had worn a bit loose, so I had to open it again today and re-fix it. I couldn't remember if I needed the switch up or down to work, and then I put the case on slightly wrong at one point, so the power switch wasn't registering as on. After three times opening the case, everything was working like a charm again, and I played through with Terry (of course), played around with Kevin Rian, an interesting character that I like to dabble with, and messed around just a bit with the Kim brothers.

Interestingly, several MOW characters have made it into the King of Fighters series with only minor changes. Tizoc, Gato, and MOW Terry were in 2003 and XI, Rock was in Capcom vs. SNK 2, and King of Fighters XI also picked up Hotaru, and Bonnie Jenet. One of the things I always liked about this game is it's depth. Although the character roster is a bit thin, there really aren't any losers in the entire roster. Well, except maybe that stupid monkey ninja kid. Seriously, enough with the non-translatable comic relief, guys.

What's also fun is that although the Fatal Fury series is dead (Long live Fatal Fury!) a number of the characters from that, and other could-be forgotten SNK games are still making appearances from time to time. First we had a lot of obscure characters making cameos in backgrounds (and that still happens), then King of Fighters 2000 and 2001 gave us even more obscure characters making cameos as strikers. Starting particularly with NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, King of Fighters 2003 and King of Fighters XI, a lot more were added.

Although the resolution and sprites of those old games has now been dropped for the King of Fighters XII and XIII games, SNK is still digging deep into their archives to treat us with a blast of nostalgia--Mizoguchi from Fighters History Dynamite made an appearance in the Maximum Impact games, and King of Fighters XII and XIII bring back Raiden and even Hwa Jai, of all people. I'd love to see SNK get their hands on the rights to use the old Breakers Revenge characters, just for fun, although I'm not holding my breath.

I'd hope to see a few more MOW characters show up again. Like I said, I've always kind of been fond of Kevin and the Kim boys. I don't know if the Kim boys are likely to ever show up as long as their father is still a regular in King of Fighters, though. Oh, well.

Southtown geography

While I'm not 100% finished, I'm impatient to go ahead and link to my discussion of Southtown's geography. I still need to add all the Second South locations, from Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, and I'll go through and gradually add more small images of the locations too, just for fun, but this is it. For that, I'll have a separate map, based on the in-game map from that game.

It's nice to have Southtown laid out, with all the sites highlighted in the games shown in their proper context. I've also made a somewhat radical and no doubt controversial proposal that incorporates a lot of King of Fighters locations into Southtown--although some KoF locations in Southtown aren't controversial at all--clearly King of Fighters 2000 had a major event happen in that city, and clearly some of the stages from King of Fighters XI are meant to be Southtown locations too.

Anyway, here's the link:

http://jdyal.webs.com/SFKOF/southtown.htm

Capcom vs. SNK again

Well, it turns out that I did erase all the color edits, at least for the characters that I was looking into. But I did have all the characters and EX characters unlocked. Strange. Anyway, I ended up spending some time while I was waiting for a repairman to arrive playing around with making two new Akuma color edits on the old Capcom vs. SNK Pro game that I have, and then playing through it just for fun. I had thought that with Capcom vs. SNK 2 in hand, the older game wouldn't have much charm for me. I guess with a few characters, there's actually not a lot of differences between them one to another. Since I prefer playing C-groove in CVS2, which is identical to Capcom Groove in the earlier game, and since I can pick the same character twice in pairs mode, just with a different color scheme to remind me if I'm on my first or second "life", for certain characters there really isn't much difference after all. And I do remember now how much I really liked a few of the stages, especially the train-ride on the fictional Orion Pacific railroad through the butte and mesa country of the American southwest, the car wreck and flame at night in a crowded Japanese street, and the craggy cliff-like coastline of somewhere in rural Japan with the big statues looking out of the surf. And I love Capcom's take on some traditional SNK arenas, like the top of Geese tower, or the Pao Pao Cafe.

I also picked up on a few little details; like the Orion Pacific railroad, for instance, or the News Combo 7 anchor, which carries forward to the sequel game as well. And I've always liked that soundtrack better than its sequel's too--even though much of it is blend together generic electronica.

One thing I don't like about both of them is that the SNK characters feel really dated. Although the movelists are not necessarily, the look of the characters comes from earlier games that were already going out of circulation when these games were released, and which have become even more dated looking since. Athena is wearing her '94 or '95 outfit, for example. Kyo is wearing his Orochi style school uniform. It's inevitable, no doubt, but as time marches on, they feel more and more outdated, making the experience of playing this game feel more and more like a relict. Too bad, really.

Again, I'm left asking myself if maybe mugen isn't something I wouldn't be interested in trying out. I'm not interested in some of the really crazy mugen matches that I've seen on youtube and elsewhere; what I'm really interested in is creating a game that has my favorite stages, my favorite system, and my favorite characters from Fatal Fury games, King of Fighters games, Street Fighter games, Darkstalkers games and maybe a handful of characters from the Marvel line-up as well, and have that be my gold standard in fighting games. Can mugen even do that? I don't know. Probably not without a lot of work. And probably not completely to my satisfaction even then.

Capcom vs. SNK

Well, I've been playing with my new PS2 copy of Capcom vs. SNK 2, mostly in an effort to unlock the two bosses. Either I got really lucky with the Xbox, or I've just forgotten that it took me longer than I thought to qualify for and unlock the "good" bosses. It's hard to break the Groove Points total up into the 1500s, or get a Dramatic KO. Ironically, it might actually be harder, since I've turned the difficulty down in an attempt to unlock the characters faster... the opponents spend a lot more time just standing there instead of doing things that would help me get a Dramatic KO, for instance.

After playing around with it for a bit last night, I also put my old PSX Capcom vs. SNK Pro in the machine and played around with that for a bit. Apparently I've forgotten how to get my custom colors, or I've not saved them after all, since I couldn't get any of them to display. Yuck.

Also; I remember thinking that the stages in that game were about 50/50--real hit and miss, with some great ones and some terrible ones. Turns out, playing around with it again, that I had been overly pessimistic on the game. There's maybe three or four stages that I don't much like, although they don't really actively offend or anything. Other than that, the rest are certainly better than average.

The graphics in general; the stages as well as especially the "special effects" of fireballs and stuff, are much more blocky and pixelated than I remember, though. The game didn't look nearly as good as I remember. It's probably not worth it to chase down a Dreamcast copy just to see if it has better graphics; with Capcom vs. SNK 2 out, I'm not likely to actually play this very often, other than to hear the BGM or see the stages. I still really wish I could get "sprite rips" of the stages. Since it's a PSX game, there should be plenty of emulation out there, for those who do sprite rips to go to town. But for whatever reason, it doesn't appear that anyone has done so. Disappointing.

Anyway, here's a screenshot from the game, of Ryu KOing Cammy in the nifty revised Pao Pao stage.

Backgrounds

I'm a huge fan of many of the really cool stages from several of the karate supers games. I've scoured the internet looking for "sprite rips"--animated gifs--of many of the backgrounds. There are always a few that I really wish I could find, but can't. To me, they add a lot of character to a game, like the background music, or the bosses, and are an important part of the games' presentation. Without good backgrounds, a game is a much lesser entry in the genre.

That said, few games hit all home runs here either. Sometimes backgrounds are too bland. Sometimes they're the opposite; they're too busy, and they distract from the action. Sometimes the backgrounds are quite beautiful in their own right and display a surprising amount of artistry; sometimes they feel very slap-dash and thrown together as an afterthought. Sometimes they support the tone of the game, sometimes they clash with it. They can also add significantly in other ways; Capcom and SNK both have had a history of filling their backgrounds with "easter eggs"--characters from other games as spectators, for example, or other things like that. Sometimes backgrounds are even active elements; several Fatal Fury games in particular had background elements that characters could smash into or destroy.

Mostly backgrounds are elements of character and color--and they should demonstrate some, but not enough to distract from the actual characters, or the action. While not comprehensive by any means, I'd like to comment on just a few of my favorites. Actually, I'm going to create an all new tag for backgrounds, so I can do so again when I feel like it too.

First up is the flaming car crash scene from Capcom vs. SNK Pro, which I have for the old Playstation. Great background. Lots of characters. Some action, but not too much. Dramatic color contrast between the roaring flames and the shadows. There's a little bit of story here, even... the police car with the flashing lights, and obviously the wreck itself. Sadly, this is not one that has been frequently ripped and I've never been able to find an animated gif of it. For that matter, it's apparently gotten more play as a MUGEN background, for which it was adapted, than in its original incarnation. The video below is actually a MUGEN rip, although with Bison and Shermie, it feels not too unlike Capcom vs. SNK after all.



Another of my absolute favorite backgrounds is this progression of changes that goes through the "park" in King of Fighters '99. Technically, it's three linked backgrounds (you can tell because between each round, my PSX goes to the load screen). For this one, rather than a youtube video, I'll post "sprite rips" of the three stages. The interesting thing about it, as well as the most obvious, is the evolving weather as the rounds go on.

Capcom vs. SNK 2 for PS2

Well, for whatever reason, it's not too difficult to find PS2 copies of this game. Since my Xbox version has pretty much died, and since my PS2 has become my main console for all these games (I only have a handful of games only for the Xbox now, and of them, only KoF2002 and KoF2003 are worth getting into very often) this seemed like a good move. On a whim, I went by Gamestop and picked up a copy yesterday.

Of course, my Xbox savefile had Ultimate Rugal and Shin Akuma unlocked already, as well as a number of custom color edits. I whipped up one of Ken (although it's not perfect; I'll need to tinker with it) that is the "ivory" Ken color from SFIII:TS, or something close to it, and played through with the difficulty turned down.

One noticeable thing about this: with the difficulty turned down, the game is really easy, even though I'm a bit rusty with this particular game. So it wasn't hard to qualify for fighting Ultimate Rugal. However, even with the difficulty way down, Ultimate Rugal is still terribly hard to play. Ugh. I couldn't beat him before I ran out of time last night. I probably won't have time tonight either. I'll have to see what I can do with that this weekend.

Also noticed that in Training mode, the two boss stages weren't available. Maybe I have to unlock them first? I didn't remember that.