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...

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.

KOFXIII

Well, it's still not available in the states, as near as I can tell. I guess maybe it's lurking in some arcades somewhere, but arcades are a dying breed, and I don't know where one even is near me that would be likely to have a game like this. And even if I did, I wouldn't have the time or means to visit it frequently, most likely. There still isn't any sign, as near as I can tell, that the game has a home release scheduled, even in Japan much less here in the States. Although there is vague talk about some kind of home release sometimes within 2011. We'll see.

Meanwhile, it is at least out, and if good video and screenshots are rare, there's a fair amount of stuff up on youtube and elsewhere that is hand-held recordings of someone playing, at least. And the resolution of the second Orochi story has been translated and disseminated across the Internet. The nature of "Those from the Past" has also been significantly fleshed out and further elaborated.

And its this last that I want to talk briefly about. Given that I've blogged several times before (including earlier today) about the importance of story to give the fights context as an important element in causing these games to be classics rather than simply fads, it shouldn't be surprising that it's something that I find particularly interesting.

"Those from the past" are revealed to be a time-traveling, non-human, "devilish," European counterpart, in some ways, to the "Hakkesshu" or the original followers of Orochi guys from the '96-'97 titles. But while the Hakkesshu guys were all interested in breaking the Orochi seal to unleash their master on the world, "Those from the Past" are interested in doing so to steal the Orochi power for themselves. Or, more specifically, for the master of the group, who is Saiki. Like Orochi and the Hakkesshu, they are said to be followers of the "will of Gaia" but what exactly that means is not exactly clear. It seems that they are counterparts to Orochi itself, and his followers, rather than counterparts merely to his followers. While Orochi decided that humanity was bad for "Gaia" and needed to be eliminated, it's not clear that "Those from the past" had that aim. Rather, they seem more concerned with their own power, and the magnification of it, and if that means cannibalizing power from their Orochi counterparts, they don't seem to be too concerned with that.

In fact, it seems that they need exactly that--the backstory suggests that they, like Orochi and the Hakkesshu, made war upon humanity, and although their individual power was great, the cumulative effect of all that humanity was that they were gradually losing. This is where the time travel plot came into effect; they were to go to the future, marshal their resources, and then go back further in time after having stolen the power of the Three Sacred Treasures and gone back in time again to defeat their foes when they were still weak and relatively powerless. If this doesn't make tons of sense, remember that this is a beat 'em up fighting game and just go with it.

Ash was their agent who was supposed to run around stealing the power of the sacred treasures and giving it back to Saiki so he could complete this plan. However, Ash decided to turn traitor; he kept the power for himself, defeated and absorbed Saiki himself. Was he trying to merely take his power for his own, or was he trying to save humanity? Not clear. I never was a fan of Ash, and I'm also not a fan of time travel plots. Anyway, Saiki was a strong enough personality, that even absorbed he pretty much took over Ash, and "Dark Ash" ended up being Ash possessed by Saiki. The story kept on going, "Dark Ash" was defeated, and Ash refused to return through the gate. Saiki (and Ash himself) faded away as the time stream was altered--since it turns out that Ash was a descendent of Saiki, and Saiki no longer existed in the past time stream.

Unlikeable protagonists and time travel paradoxes aside, I really like the concept of "Those from the Past." Even without understanding it exactly, I had independently worked up the idea of them that's very similar to what ended up being revealed; they were a shadowy conspiracy group that wanted to steal the Orochi power for its own sake. I had them as more of an Illuminati-like group composed of powerful mortals and immortals alike, riffing off of the Dark Stalkers-like vibe that King of Fighters 2003 and XI had already hinted at.

For very sensible reasons, these various King of Fighters threats are treated separately; it started off with the great but single boss Rugal back in '94, the Hakkesshu and Orochi in '95-'97 (especially '96-'97). The NESTS threat was '99-2001. 2003-XIII was the "Those from the Past" threat. '98, 2002 and XII were "dream matches" that have no canonical implication.

For my glacially slowly budding fanfic effort point of view, I'd want to collapse all those threats into happening simultaneously, though--or at least right on the heels of each other. The Hakkesshu, NESTS, and "Those from the Past" are all out there simultaneously. How do I tie them all together? And how do I include Street Fighter villains to the mix as well?

Here's my thought. The Hakkesshu and Those from the Past are already at odds. Good guys don't want either of them to win. Shadowloo and NESTS are very similar organizations, with very similar aims--cloning, AI, criminal syndicates, take over the world plans, etc. Combine them and Bison and his organization--basically the main Street Fighter villains, are fully integrated into at least one KoF stream. What if the psychic energy that powers the psychodrive and that that Hakkesshu and Those from the Past is trying to use to unseal Orochi is the same power? Suddenly Bison/NESTS have a very important reason to be at odds with the other two supervillainic organizations. And, of course, the good guys still have every reason to stop all of the groups.

In fact, the whole set-up reminds me in vague terms of the Galactic Storm storyline from The Avengers, not that I'm a huge comic book guy, but still. The good guys step in to keep earth from becoming collateral damage in a vast war between the Kree and the Shi'ar, which was engineered by the Skrulls. And, once again, I relate karate supers to modern, post-silver age superhero comic books and the derivative media based on them. I can't help it.

Bosses

So... last night, I discovered that my Xbox titles are plagued with problems. The life expectancy of Xbox controllers seems to be downright abyssmal. I still have fifteen year old original controllers with my SNES (ironically, the machine itself stopped working recently, and I haven't had time to try and figure out what's wrong with it) but I've gone through nearly a dozen Xbox controllers in much less time. I do have some third party controllers, but I find that the d-pad and buttons on those often has a very different feel, making pulling off the kinds of moves that karate supers games require often quite difficult.

In addition to that, my favorite Xbox game of this genre, Capcom vs. SNK 2, has long struggled with some kind of condition where it often "hangs" between matches on the yellow cross-hatch screen. Even though I got the disc resurfaced, this problem has gotten worse, to the point where the game is almost completely unplayable. I'll probably have to buy it for the PS2, unlock some of the extra characters and extra modes and whatnot all over again, and migrate it entirely. I may have to do the same for my other Xbox titles when I can, including King of Fighters 2002/2003, and I may have to write off completely SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos and King of Fighters Neowave, although I won't miss either of those too much, honestly. That's certainly a frustrating development.

But I didn't post just to gripe about my hardware woes. What I'd really rather talk about is bosses. There are a few iconic bosses that stay with entire series for iteration after iteration, and remain classic and... well, iconic time after time. And then there are bosses that are forgettable. And thirdly, there are bosses that are perfectly fine and serviceable, but which somehow remain less iconic and their appearances are limited. Finally, to create a last category, there are bosses that are meant to be somewhat disposible--they belong to "boss families" and as the series progresses, you're not meant to fight literally the same boss over and over again, but rather related or similar bosses.

From the first category, I'd say certainly that Bison and Rugal are the standouts (from the Street Fighter and King of Fighters series, respectively) with Geese Howard from Fatal Fury right behind them. Their personality, their look, their moves, their whole "schtick"--they're iconic, popular, and they repeat over and over again because, let's face it, the designers can't top 'em. Rugal has been the boss in no fewer than four KoF titles (even if two of those were non-canonical "dream matches" and he's actually supposed to be dead) and may well make an appearance again in a putative KoFIV dream match. One hopes, anyway. Bison is the boss in the Street Fighter II series and the Alpha series, and he makes plenty of appearances in the vs. Marvel series, he was redesigned for the vs. SNK series, and yet again for the Street Fighter IV titles, although not as the boss. Those two have an enduring legacy as nightmare bosses that is probably never going to be matched. But let's not leave Geese out of the discussion. While Fatal Fury might be a "lesser" title compared to KoF or even SF, he is definitely the definitive boss from that series. When SNK replaced him with Krauser, it just wasn't the same at all, and Geese had to come back in subsequent games. Geese also has made very notable appearances in other games, including King of Fighters, Art of Fighting, the vs. SNK games, and more.

Sadly, there have also been fairly forgettable bosses--even if they make repeat performances, players don't much care, because they have little personality and little legacy. Wolfgang Krauser, unfortunately, seems to fit this profile. In his case, it's not exactly his fault; he just couldn't live up to the standards set by Geese. Street Fighter's Gill and Seth also seem pretty forgettable, and even silly in many respects, compared to Bison. Some of the King of Fighters bosses could also qualify, but I'm going to put them in the families section instead--their association with other related bosses makes them more than just what you get in that particular game.

By this, I'm largely referring to the bosses of the ongoing miniseries within the King of Fighters series. While Krizalid himself, for example, is certainly a "lesser" and perhaps forgettable boss on his own, his association with the greater NESTS saga elevates him somewhat in estimation. Rather, it's fair to say that NESTS as a whole is an iconic and memorable foe, even if the individual bosses within it--Krizalid, Clone Zero, Zero and Igniz--are individually not much to write home about. This phenomena is particularly notable with the original Orochi storyline of King of Fighters, which featured mostly in King of Fighters '95-'97. In '95 itself, the storyline was merely hinted at and the sensible decision to recycle Rugal as the boss from the mostly unrelated King of Fighters '94 was made. In '96 the storyline really started coming together for the first time, though. Goenitz was given a token relationship with Rugal or sorts, and the concept of this big conspiracy stretching back generations was unveiled. Goenitz was himself a pretty cool boss, and he's made a number of appearances for no other reason than because he's kinda cool--officially he's supposed to be dead. This was all brought to a head in '97 with the Orochi New Faces team as sub-bosses, evolving into Orochi himself as the final boss. But... '97 kinda had lame bosses. The Orochi storyline is a classic in the genre, but Orochi as a boss is shockingly underwhelming. His association with a greater threat that spans several games gives him a gravitas of sorts that his actual appearance doesn't support.

This is also true to some extent of the "new" Orochi storyline; the so-called European counterparts to the Heavenly Kings, the "Those from the Past" group. Mukai, Magaki and Saiki (these are supposed to be the European counterparts? Oh, well.) In fact, it's leader, Saiki, isn't even the final boss of the series... kinda. Ash Crimson, that totally lame and unlikeable "protagonist" character for this subseries, steals his power, can't control it, ends up being possessed, and at the end "Dark Ash" is the final boss. But the team as a whole; the NESTS bosses, "Those from the Past" etc., benefit from their association. They're cooler and more threatening than they would be just on their own.

There's a few other bosses that have made appearances here and there and done a serviceable job without turning into classics. Kane R. Heinlein, for example. Mr. Big. Maybe Krauser really belongs here, instead of in the "forgettable" bosses. A lot of the "alternate" and sub bosses, like Adelheid, for example.

All in all, good bosses make a good game. While for most, the actual tactics of playing are the most important part of the game, in other cases, the presentation and the context is hugely important in making it all come together. The tactics sometimes aren't enough by themselves--the story, the human drama--that's what makes the best of these games really come alive, and of course, the nature of any human drama is conflict. And conflict requires great antagonists. Quite honestly, games with underwhelming bosses tend to be underwhelming games that don't become the classics.

Game feature: King of Fighters XI

This seems like an opportune time to indulge in another game feature post. My son, while playing with this the other day, accidentally deleted the savegame file (he inserted the memory card after it was already running, which caused the autosave to rewrite the file with no data to speak of) so I've had to spend a little bit of time going back through and attempting to unlock all the hidden characters again. As of the time of this writing, I've got everyone except Mai and Geese done, and I should be able to have them complete the next time I'm able to sit down with the game... which hopefully, but not necessarily, will be tonight.

This is the first game from the King of Fighters series that I'm featuring, and it's in most respects an unusual entry in that series. A little background: the King of Fighters series used to come out with a new entry every year. From 1994 through 2003 that was the case, even when SNK went belly-up, a new title came out every year, but increasingly, they barely squeeked in under the date, and the games were (almost certainly) rushed in at least some respects. King of Fighters XI is the first in-sequence game to abandon this schedule; the year was dropped from the title, and it was released when it was ready to go. The poorly recieved King of Fighters Neowave was also released prior to this one; really it was a lightly tweaked adaptation of King of Fighters 2002 on the new hardware. This game, then, was the first real new game, on new hardware, with a new titling scheme.

That said, it was a continuation in every other sense of King of Fighters 2003. Not only is it part of the same "saga"--miniseries within the greater King of Fighters series, but it also continues to build on the tag-team mechanics of that game. In XI, there are new tweaks to the tagging--you can get out of combos with a timely tag team, or jump in and complete combos. Like 2003, you pick a leader for your team, and the leader is the only character who can get the so-called Leader Desperation Move, your big supercombo. This is unfortunate, but there are ways around it.

For example, although you can play it in arcade mode with the tag teaming, you can also play it in a mode that more closely resembles "classic" King of Fighters gameplay, and you can also play in a mode that more closely resembles classic Street Fighter play; i.e., instead of a team, you pick a single fighter and play best two out of three (or three out of five, if you set it up that way.) Needless to say, based on my already well-established preferences, that's usually how I play. In 2003 that mode was rather poorly executed; instead of having rounds, the battle was collapsed into a single round and each character has three health bars. Lame. Here, it works exactly as you'd expect.

The character selection for this game is unusual. While many classic characters that have been in almost every chapter of the series so far are conspicuously missing, at the same time, the game is packed with a number of unusual characters that have made only sporadic appearances before, and even characters who have never been in any King of Fighters title before. So frankly, even though it seems maybe a little weird to not have Joe Higashi or Andy Bogard show up (and the exclusion of Mai from the standard version of the game--she's a PS2 exclusive who has to be unlocked--was very controversial amongst fans) I've got them already on every other King of Fighters title I've got; it's kind of nice to see instead more esoteric characters like Duck King, Eiji Kisaragi, Mr. Big, or Silver, Gai Tendo, Jazu and Tung Fu Rue make appearances. One odd thing of note; once you get beyond the basic character color and start exploring the other three, there are some really weird ones out there. Of course, there's also a color edit so you can create two custom colors. These are also interesting; as in the PS2 Ultimate Match version of KOF98, you can also edit the colors of the character's "special effects" so that if, for example, you wanted the flame effects around Terry's Buster Wolf to be white and blue instead of yellow and orange, to give them a colder feel, well, you could. It seems a lot of work, but it's doable. Although I still haven't finished unlocking everyone again after losing my original savegame file on the memory card, I did go in and create an edit of Athena that looks more like her KoFXII version--just for fun. I actually quite like Athena in this game, after not liking her much in several recent ones. Her "deadly rave" style supercombos are replaced with a simplified and graphically quite astonishing move that makes me wonder if the designers are familiar with the classic X-men "Dark Phoenix" saga.

The presentation of the game is otherwise also very good; menu is perhaps a bit too small to easily see the character portraits when you're looking for your favorite, and the hidden characters are all off screen. The backgrounds are very nice, and higher resolution than the old Neo-Geo hardware was able to provide (although the more recent ports of Neo-Geo titles still had upgraded backgrounds anyway. 2002 simply redid the backgrounds in higher res, while 2003 did that to a few stages, and then created a whole bunch of new stages that were only loosely similar to their Neo-Geo counterparts.) Notably, there are fewer changes to these backgrounds as you advance--not much of the going from daytime to sunset to night time, for example. Given that the game is meant to be played in a single round format, with tag-teaming fighters, this is certainly an excuseable lapse.

All in all, I don't know that King of Fighters XI will go down in history as a real classic title in the series especially given the unusual character selection and a few other oddities about its game sstem, but it's certainly one of the better ones, as well as one of the most attractive ones. Frankly, its one of the ones I come back to the most, along with King of Fighters '98: Ultimate Match, so I consider it amongst the very best in the series.

Gaming again

After struggling with an extremely stressful many-week run at work, I needed something that required perhaps a bit less thought than reading, and which was less likely to cause me to fall asleep on the couch than watching movies, especially ones I already own and have seen before. The obvious answer, of course, was to plug in my old consoles and breaking out my karate supers games again, which I had played very sporadically and mostly not very much at all the last several months. The last week or so I've given it a much more concerted go at playing more frequently and getting back into practice with the games and characters that I like. I haven't done much with my Xbox titles, and I haven't yet turned on my Dreamcast at all, so it's so far all been Playstation titles. King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match, King of Fighters XI, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Marvel Superheroes, King of Fighters '99, Real Bout Fatal Fury Special and Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 are so far the titles I've explored, which is really quite a lot.

I know it seems unlikely that at the rate I'm going I'm ever going to finish my fanfic in my lifetime (or get an Xbox 360 so I can play Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, Super Street Fighter IV, King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match or King of Fighters XII) I'd like to think that that prognostication is overly pessimistic. I've made a few minor tweaks to the fanfic actually already, and have started outlining some future chapters.

Anyway, I'm still a bit braindead from being so busy all the time with my real life, which means that my hobbies are suffering tremendously, but I do still need to occasionally get my thoughts out of my head and on screen, at least. Hopefully I'll get to blogging more frequently on all my blogs soon.

Fatal Fury

While I discussed last time, six weeks or so ago, that SFA3 is my "go-to" Street Fighter title; the one that I'm much more likely to play than any other title in the series when I'm in the mood for some Street Fighter action, it's a bit more difficult for me to say that about any of the games in the Fatal Fury series. I still regularly return to the original Fatal Fury fer cryin' out loud, and I sometimes have a hard time deciding if Real Bout Special is better than Real Bout 2 or vice versa. Mark of the Wolves is, of course, an excellent game too, and Fatal Fury 3 even gets some love. I don't often play Fatal Fury 2 or Special, and I don't have much use for the original Real Bout game, but still--unlike with Street Fighter where I've homed in on a single title as my favorite and play it most of the time to the exclusion of all other titles (except when I want to indulge some nostalgia) I bounce around a fair bit in the Fatal Fury series, trying to decide what I'm really in the mood to play.

Yesterday, for example, I played through Fatal Fury 3 (with Terry; yeah, it's kinda cheesy, but a few characters are really hard in this game!) I have to admit, I think one of the reasons I like this game so much is the little attention to detail; the backgrounds and stuff are really cool and fun to watch. Yamazaki's trainyard background in particular is one of my favorite scenes in any fighting game ever (train-themed stages are very popular in both Street Fighter, Fatal Fury and King of Fighters stages in general. There must be some railfans in Japan. Also; what's with the steam engines? They're cool, that's what. There's no other reason to have them except that they look awesome.)

The character sprites don't look quite as good; they were greatly improved (although also "cartooned up" a bit) after Real Bout, so going back to these sprites feels clunky and primitive. Granted, FF3 improved the sprites significantly from FF2 and FFS (which in turn did so to the FF1 sprites--those that represented characters who recurred, that is) so maybe I shouldn't be so hard on them. The FF characters in the early KoF games also looked quite a bit better, although KoF was usually a slightly more attractive game visually anyway than the FF games.

I had better luck this time playing through it than I sometimes do. Some characters are just harder for me than others; Franco Bash is harder than he should be (especially for for a "Tier 1" character) and Terry is surprisingly hard to get past without having to use a continue or two (or more.) Geese Howard is, of course, a maniac that consumes several continues every time I play, but I only used two or three on him this time, I think. Surprisingly, after defeating Geese, the next two characters are relatively easy.

Anyway, I included a youtube link to the second half of a playthrough of FF3. In Spanish.