The Lost Street Fighter characters

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.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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. 
• The characters have potential but Arika do absolutely nothing 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, any 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.
• The game looks 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.
• 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.
• 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. 

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.

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.

SF2 clones: Breakers series

Following my generic discussion about SNK, I want to hit on the Breakers series by Visco Games. Although a prototype in a few locations was released to Beta markets called Crystal Legacy in 1994, the real start to the series was in 1996 when Breakers was released. Two years later, in 1998, a slightly tweaked version of the game called Breakers Revenge was released. All on the Neo-Geo platform. Because Breakers Revenge just tweaked some balance issues, added one new character, and made the boss playable, I don't really consider it a "new" game in the series, but rather a polishing off of the same game. The differences between the two are no greater than between Street Fighter II and Street Fighter II: Champion Edition.


The video I've included is probably made available because as a Neo-Geo title, this is easily (and probably frequently) emulated. This is probably the only way the game gets played much, other than the occasional MVS cartridge. Apparently, it never even got an AES release.

While the video will show that this is very much in the vein of Street Fighter 2 in terms of graphics, even to the point of having almost embarrasingly similar character designs, the gameplay has some more nods to an Alpha like gameplay, with super combos being important in the game, and each character having at least two to choose from. What makes the game stand out from others that came out at the same time is the fact that it was painstakingly and very carefully balanced. In fact, to this day, there are still championships held for it in Japan (reportedly) because it has just held up that well. Also because the combo and breakers system is kinda original and fun; not too unlike the concept of the Alpha counters, just implemented a bit better.


In any case, I think it's a little bit unfortunate that this game didn't get a little bit more attention, although it's not at all hard to see why it didn't. Maybe someone could show the title a little TLC on the internet, and make it ping on the radar of genre fans yet.

Although... good luck scoring a copy.

As an aside, there is some embarrasingly bad Engrish in this title, including the character Pierre (who is mispelled Pielle---yes, it is supposed to be Pierre. That's how he appeared in the prototype.) There's still an official site lurking around on the internet, and it's got even more spelling errors; Condor becomes Condol, for instance, and Dao-Long becomes Dao-Rong. Presentation-wise, this lags behind the better efforts of Capcom and SNK, which no doubt contributes to its obscurity. As you can imagine, a game that looks like SF2, except even less visually striking, coming out in 1996 or 1998 (depending on which version you're looking at) couldn't have been very visually exciting either.

SF2 Clones: SNK

I had earlier said that I was going to give SNK a pass on being SF2 clones, for a variety of reasons. I've changed my mind on that... sorta. Let me begin by listing the reasons that I was initially going to give them a pass, then I'll give a list of reasons why I think that they could be counted after all. Then, I'm going to discuss them in more general terms rather than specifically calling out their series. There are three series that apply here: Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and King of Fighters. I do like my lists.

• First of all, the first Fatal Fury was already under development before Street Fighter 2 was released. Sadly (for SNK) it wasn't released until some months after SF2 was already sweeping arcade owners by storm, so it appears to be a SF2 clone attempt. However, a careful examination of many of the properties of the first Fatal Fury show it to be an improvement (although very similar, still) on the first Street Fighter title, and one that went a different direction than SF2 in many ways. Fatal Fury concentrated instead on some presentation issues, including adding a bit more of an integrated story to the game.
• SNK was not a flash in the pan SF2 imitator. Although some of their titles certainly pass muster as SF2 clones, they managed to stick with it, develop some real leverage with their titles, and frankly, some of them continued long after the Street Fighter series had faded away (discounting the rebirth of that series with Street Fighter IV.) These weren't quickie copies that faded away into obscurity shortly afterwards, which was really kind of the point of the series. Fatal Fury had no less than eight mainline titles and two spinoffs. King of Fighters has twelve mainline titles (with a thirteenth under development) and several spinoff titles. Art of Fighting only had three titles, but even that's quite a bit for a "copy."
• SNK was never content to simply copy anyway; even some of the very earlier "SF2 imitators" had innovative content, much of which later became standard for the genre, including the first true "super combos" (called Desperation moves in Art of Fighting, and later also in Fatal Fury and some King of Fighters titles), spirit meters (useful for using super combos), hidden characters that you needed to unlock, and more.
• Of all the developers who made these ripoff titles (Atlus, Visco, Data East, Noise Factory, etc.) SNK is the only one who's still in the game. Heck, a couple of years ago, SNK was still in the game while Capcom itself wasn't.
• The developers for many of these titles were the original developers of the original Street Fighter title: "Piston" Takashi and "Finish" Hiroshi. Well, that doesn't exactly make them not ripoffs, but it still means something.
• SNK used to also make a bunch of other fighters that were much less similar to Street Fighter in many ways, including the Samurai Shodown series, the Savage Reign/Kizuna Encounter series, and the Last Blade series.

Of course, on the other hand...

• SNK very obviously did ripoff SF2 once they saw that SF2 was more popular than its own offerings. Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special are exactly to Fatal Fury as Street Fighter 2 and Super Street Fighter 2 is to Street Fighter. Mai was an obvious Chun-Li clone, and the boss progression (both the idea of fighting four bosses, and the specifics of the bosses themselves) strongly resemble the SF2 bosses, including having a boxer, a Spanish fighter, the boss from the first game (Geese vs. Sagat) and a big boss who wears big shoulder pads. The resemblance between Fatal Fury Special and one of the later iterations of Street Fighter 2 are almost uncanny at times (although the same will be true for some of the other titles we'll review in this series.) While it's fair to say that SF as it developed took some ideas from SNK, I think it's also very fair to say that much moreso, it went the other way around. This actually became more pronounced over time, particularly if you compare the Fatal Fury series with the Street Fighter series. The later Real Bout Fatal Fury games have a strong resemblance in many ways to the Street Fighter Alpha subseries, and Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves has a strong resemblance to Street Fighter III. Then again, as King of Fighters turned into the flagship title for SNK, it underwent its own evolution independently more often than not (although the change from EX to Advanced super meter scheme was very reminiscent of how Street Fighter Alpha handled the issue,) and of course, Art of Fighting didn't really last very long anyway.
• Art of Fighting in particular looks to be a series that was developed to cash in on the SF2 craze, and since it wasn't in development at the same time as SF2 (at least as far as I know) that's probably exactly what did happen.

All in all, SNK gets a lot of credit for being, of all the producers of Street Fighter wannabes, the most consistent, the most innovative, the longest lasting, probably the highest quality (this is certainly true for the later titles, where the competition is long gone), the most serious, and the most successful. Over time, I've come to appreciate SNK as much as Capcom, and some of their titles are certainly more than a match for the best Capcom titles. Some of their characters are just as intriguing as the best Capcom characters. While I won't go as far as to say that they've ever bested the best Capcom titles, they were certainly toe-to-toe peers, a claim that no other karate supers producer can match.

SF2 ripoff list

I like making lists. Since I specifically said I'd like to do a series about games that were obvious attempts to cash in on the Street Fighter II arcade craze while it was hot, I decided to make a list of the specific games (or series) that I'm talking about here.

I excluded the games developed by SNK, although I did so kinda by fiat. Fatal Fury was in development before Street Fighter II's release (or so I've heard) so it gets by on a technicality, although otherwise it quacks exactly like a SF2 rip-off. That is an even more difficult sell to exclude SNK's Art of Fighting series, or the King of Fighters series that followed afterwards. However, I'm going to arbitarily excuse them because they were all long-lasting and influential enough to have developed beyond being merely a throwaway SF2 clone. Most of the rest of the titles on this list are much more obscure, if they had sequels, they were really just minor upgrades or freshenings of the original, or otherwise fail at some kind of handwavey notoriety test, as judged solely by me.

Despite giving SNK a buy here, their hardware system, the Neo*Geo platform, as it turns out, was host to a lot of the other clones that'll pop up on this list, due to the fact that SNK licensed the hardware to other development houses. But that's neither here nor there, really.

Here's the list of games I anticipate talking about in this series once I get it off the ground.

Breakers series (by Visco)

• Breakers
• Breakers Revenge

Fighters History series (by Data East)

• Fighters History
• Fighters History Dynamite

Agressors of Dark Kombat (by ADK)

World Heroes Series (by ADK)

• World Heroes
• World Heroes 2
• World Heroes 2 Jet
• World Heroes Perfect

Double Dragon series (by Technos and Evoga and Noise Machine)

• Double Dragon
• Rage of the Dragons

Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer (by Technos)

Power Instinct series (by Atlus)

• Power Instinct
• Power Instinct 2
• Gogetsuji Legends
• Groove on Fight
• Matrimelee