Technical vs casual

I've been thinking about a lot of the games in these series lately (mostly because I've gotten my PS2 down and played a bunch of them recently.  I haven't played much if any of the games I have for other systems.)  My wife doesn't really understand why I want so many titles when to her, the games all look pretty much the same.  And even my kids, who get that the games are very different, often wonder why I care about the older titles when--to them, at least--the newer ones mostly clearly make many of the older ones obsolete.  This is especially true with the King of Fighters series, where there are a number of possible obsolesence points within the series.  You could reasonably argue that the recent KOFXIII with its migration to a much more powerful hardware and greatly improved graphics makes all the previous iterations feel obsolete.  You could argue that the dream match capstone games at the end of the various subseries make all of the games in the subseries obsolete too--and you'd be a little hard-pressed to even get me to not kinda shrug and say, "yeah, you're right."  Because honestly, I almost never play KOF 94-97 anymore, especially since I can use KOF98:UM to "replicate" earlier versions of the characters through the EX characters, and it has all of the characters that ever appeared in any game in the subseries.  This isn't quite true for KOF02:UM because it's not a striker-based game like 99-01 were, but honestly I was never a huge fan of the strikers anyway.  It turns out that the only reasons I have for turning to some of those older games are to get a closer look at some of the stages again, or some other nostalgic or "research" purpose.  You could make the claim that with KOF98:UM, KOF02:UM, KOFXI and KOFXIII you are completely covered in terms of KOF titles.  There are practically no important characters or game-play options that you are really missing that way.

You could probably make similar (although not quite as clear-cut) cases for the Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, Marvel vs Capcom and Fatal Fury series too; in fact, I pretty much have made exactly that case for Darkstalkers and MvC (although I was also driven by lack of availability of ports on systems that I own to some extent too)--and I rarely play any FF game other than RBFF2 anymore too.

Part of the reason for this is that I'm a rather casual player.  I'm honestly not that good, nor am I much interested in getting significantly better at playing these games.  I don't even care to play competitively at all, really.  I'm interested in game that I can, when I'm in the mood, sit down and play for a while against an interesting but not too frustrating or challenging CPU opponent.  I don't know what the rest of the market is like, but I imagine with the mainstream success of games like SFIV or MvC3, that there's a lot of newer and casual players out there.  So I think that a developer has got to be careful to not cater to the niche of harder-core players.  Those who like really technical play that's too fast, or with complicated air juggles, or deadly-rave type supermoves that are unlikely to be learnable by casual players.  This is even true with unintentional technical issues--grapplers, for instance, that have 360° motions that are doable on an arcade cabinet with a joystick, but which are a complete pain in the butt with a standard hand-held controller of a console game.  If developers aren't careful about this, then what they've managed to do is create a game that appeals to a hardcore niche audience that values system mastery but have created massively impenetrable barriers to entry to newer and more casual gamers.

In fact, I suspect that to some extent SNK has suffered due to this syndrome.  I think much of what they have developed rewards system mastery, and excludes casual players.  And I think that's at least part of their story of struggling to find a big US market comparable to that which Street Fighter and Capcom were able to find.  Only part, as I think console availability, localization and presentation issues and more were at least as big if not bigger issues for them.

I do have to say that MvC2's popularity in the US kinda sorta refutes this, but my response to that is that while its possible to play that game very technically, you can also play it reasonably successfully as little more than a button masher too.  Not competitively against a really good player, of course, but against the CPU, or against other casual players, sure.  It's not hard to actually pull the moves off, at least.  Plus, the presence of all the Marvel characters was a big draw in its own right.

Protagonist characters

I've said for a long time that my favorite characters aren't necessarily the same as the developer's favorites, as the protagonists from the point of view of the games, or even fan favorites.  That's not always true, of course, but I do have some esoteric tastes on occasion.

While my own fan faction moves glacially slowly (I've been tinkering with it for four? years and still don't have much to show yet) I'm feeling a bit more motivated than normal right now, so I'm thinking again of who I want to use and who I don't.  Part of that is the Marvel movies--The Avengers in particular.  I've spent plenty of time talking about why I think American style superhero stories and karate supers are analogous, and when I get excited about one, it almost inevitably leads me to the other.  The other is that after considerable time not even thinking about it at all, I'll probably actually pick up either an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in the next few months (and then store it until Christmas, but that's neither here nor there.)  Although it'll be for "the family" meaning mostly the kids, frankly, the younger boys are as excited about getting Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as they are any other title.  And if they're doing that, then it's no big deal for me to pick up Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition (which is already very cheap), King of Fighters XIII (which will be before Christmas, I bet) and even Street Fighter x Tekken or something.  This all is, of course, turning my attention back to my long-neglected fan fiction efforts.

So, who are the characters I really like?  As protagonists, I mean?  Terry Bogard is probably my absolute favorite of all the characters in all the games.  And as the main protagonist and hero of the Fatal Fury series, as well as a very prominent member of the King of Fighters series, he's a natural to include.  If I'm going to use Terry, I also want to use Blue Mary.  I'm also including Alice Bogard--who isn't really even a character in any version of the game that I know of other than some pachinko game in Japan--just because she's a nice foil for Terry in many ways.

Because NESTS is going to be important to the story, K' (and probably Maxima and Kula) will be important.  They also become important characters for bridging the Capcom and SNK divide on the "good guys" side, since I'm combining NESTS and Shadowloo.

Orochi is also important, in many ways because the Orochi storylines are not only pretty cool and iconic for the King of Fighters series, but also because they have exactly the same "feel" as a kind of Darkstalkers vibe, which means that I can use the concept as another bridge between the Capcom and SNK universes.  This means that Kyo will probably play a significant role at some point--even though I'm actually not as big a fan of him personally as SNK clearly is.

I can't ignore the street fighters, and Ryu (teamed up with Ken and Sakura, I think) make a great protagonist team.  I'm always wanting to set Chun-Li up with someone, and I'm not sure who's the best candidate (given that the SNK fighters already seem to come pre-paired off, for the most part.)  I also like Guile as a protagonist character, plus he gives me an easy connection to the various military style characters from SNK.  In fact, given that Guile works with Chun-Li, he also gives me an easy connection to the very many law enforcement type characters too--Heidern, the Ikari warriors, Kevin Rian, Mary, Seth, Vanessa, and more.  Cammy, as an agent type character, also fits in there, and I've always thought she was an interesting character to write about.

I'm not quite sure what to do with some other characters who I also like, but who don't have an obvious story waiting to be told.  Athena, for example.  I think Mai is over-rated and over-exposed (in more ways than one) so I'll probably pass on making her an important part of any story.

For villains, I'm actually having an easier time combining them.  As well as Geese's organization, which will be important because my version of Southtown will feature as the main setting for the stories, I've got three basic supervillainic organizations.  NESTS, which includes Shadowloo, is ruled by Bison, who is presumed dead after the events (more or less) of SFA3.  The events of SF2 will kinda be folded into my narrative, so he'll obviously have to come back.  Other important leaders of NESTS include Igniz, Zero, Krizalid, Vega, and Sagat.  Both Cammy and K' are defectors from NESTS, from an earlier AI programming experiment, and from a cloning experiment respectively.  I love how that one's all nice and intermeshed between SNK and Capcom characters.  The second is the Hakkesshu, or Orochi cult.  These are the guys who want to raise Orochi as a new god amongst humanity.  I don't really like a lot of the characters from the original Orochi sagaline (Chris? Yashiro? Shermie? These are supposed to be the ultimate villains?  Give me a break.)  I'll keep Goenitz, and otherwise look for alternative Heralds--including Urien, Jedah and Krauser.  Jedah will in fact be the ringleader, and his stage from Darkstalkers 3 with the god-fetus will in fact be Orochi, struggling to be born by stealing the psychic animus of humanity--especially their "negative" emotions.  Of course, this is also the source that powers Bison's psycho drive.  Instant conflict between the two organizations.  Brilliant!

The People of His Distant Land, or the Past, or whatever they call themselves, are another great organization (even if they can't seem to settle on a name.)  Using Saiki, Mukai, Magaki and with minor members Shion and Botan, I've already got a great core from the King of Fighters series.  There's a strong Darkstalkers like vibe to this group already, so I'm going to include Morrigan and Gill as part of the ruling caste too.  Gen and Rugal will be involved somehow too because--well, mostly because why not?  It also explains why Rose and Adel seem to be manipulated by this organization so much.  Because they want to steal Orochi's powers, they obviously oppose both Jedah and Bison's group.  And of course, the heroes don't want any of the three of these organizations to achieve their goals, because it would be Bad News™.

Old SNK commercials

Lately, when I pull out my PS2 and fire it up, the games I'm most in the mood to play tend to be Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury 3.  Why?  Not sure.  FF3 in particular seems to be considerably dated in look and control.  But for some reason, I quite like it.  I think it's somehow really familiar feeling; classic, with cozy, nice backgrounds and a decent story (even if it doesn't always translate well.)  I'll be the first to admit that from a technical aspect, it really doesn't hold up well next to newer games, but somehow it's just fun for reasons that I can't very well explain.

Anyway, while poking around youtube, I found this interesting commercial that SNK released in Japan to support the release of the game.  I don't know for sure why Terry is a scrawny, skinny kind of punk, but the idea of the commercial, at least, is still really cool.  Check it out.

SF4 mods

One curious effect of the PC release of Street Fighter IV is that once you've got the code in a PC environment, it's not too difficult, for those who know a little bit about such things (and I'm not one of them) to create some custom mods. Much of what I've seen on youtube as custom mods to the game come in the form of fan-made costumes.

Here, for example, is a Goth chick Sakura vs. a SFA Chun-Li (she actually has since gotten an official SFA costume released, of course.)



Here's Cammy and Chun-Li as DC villains Harley Quinn and Catwoman.



Perhaps predictably, most mods that I've seen tend to be around making the girls wearing something sexier than they already are. Here's Cammy and Chun-Li in fishnet bodysuits.



Needless to say, it's not too hard to find that some enterprising and predictably juvenile gamer has made skins that make the girls fight stark naked.

Here's a more complicated mod---one that creates Terry Bogard in SF4, including signature Terry moves. Kinda neat. Robert might just be a skin here; not sure.



Here's a Ryu vs. Ryu match, with Ryu cosplaying as Iori Yagami and Joe Higashi respectively. In Spanish, no less.

Mike Haggar

Alright, alright, one more update. I've said for a long time that it's a shame Mike Haggar never made it into a Street Fighter game. Most of the rest of the Final Fight crew was in the Alpha series, but Mike, as the star of Final Fight, was a notorious miss (although he made cameos in the stages, cheering on Guy, mostly.)

And I've said also for a long time, that I'm out of touch with the latest and greatest, since I still haven't picked up a current gen system--a situation that is starting to feel more and more intolerable over time, sadly. So I missed this--although Mike Hagger still hasn't made it into a Street Fighter game, he did get brought up to speed in the modern age in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Since he's been made, that opens up the possibility of him being a DLC character at some point in Street Fighter IV too.

And of course, there's an alternate costume for Zangief where he's in Mike Haggar clothes. Here's a video of Mike Haggar action from MvC3.

Street Fighter X Tekken

And, just to post one more video link, I'm a little torn on this one. I love Street Fighter, of course, and I've enjoyed Tekken games a lot in the past (although not since the PSX games--Tekken 2 and 3, basically.) They just seem so fundamentally unlike each other that it would be difficult to pull off. But, it looks awfully cool so far, right?

Satellite death

Well, while the satellite that killed Southtown is a famous one in the karate supers world, the "bad ending" from Street Fighter Alpha 3 has got to be my favorite. Check this baby out, in case it's been a while since you've seen it...