Essay No. 3: On Continuity and Canon

(What happened to Essay No. 2 you may ask?  Nothing.  It was just kind of obsolete, so rather than port it from my old website, I just dropped it.  I might add it back in with new formatting... maybe.  But probably not.)

Because I think these types of games, their characters and their settings represent a foreign (namely, Japanese) interpretation of the modern superhero story line, I often make comparisons to superhero comic books. If you think of Ryu, Terry or Kyo as analogs to the X-men, or Spiderman, then they kinda work, and if you think of Rugal or Bison as Magneto or Dr. Doom, you can see striking and obvious parallels. If you think of the plot to take over the world by NESTS from King of Fighters '99 through King of Fighters 2001 by holding a martial arts tournament, gathering data from how the champions fight, and channeling that data into a clone army, you can easily see what I'm talking about in terms of "comic book" plots too. Heck, Heidern serves for the King of Fighters games (and Chun Li and Charlie/Guile's bosses for the Street Fighter games) almost like S.H.I.E.L.D.

However, I specifically want to talk about one issue and discuss it a little bit in relation to my story, and that is continuity and canon. Comic book fans the world over were excited when Sam Raimi filmed the first Spiderman movie with Toby MacGuire and Co., yet nobody expected it to be a faithful reproduction of the origin of Spiderman as originally written by Stan Lee in the early 1960s. For one thing, the media was completely different. For another, the audience was considerably more sophisticated. And for another, there've been too many changes in the world over the last forty years for that to still be even a little bit credible.

So what did Raimi do? He retold the story. The spider that bit Peter Parker wasn't radioactive, it was the result of genetic manipulation by Norm Osborn. Parker's look and powers changes slightly; Osborn changed even more significantly (the Halloweenish original Green Goblin wouldn't look anything other than extremely cheesy in a big budget action movie meant for a general audience, after all) and many of the details of the origin of Spiderman story, as well as the relationship between Spiderman and the Green Goblin were changed fairly significantly.

This of course, wasn't the first time this happened. Marvel Comics a few years back kicked off an extremely popular line of comics called the Ultimate comics where popular characters and series were "rebooted" and restarted, the stories retold and the character redesigned, with a more modern and sophisticated audience in mind, and without all the baggage of forty years of accumulated back story. There are some very significant differences between "regular" Spiderman and "ultimate" Spiderman, which in turn are quite different from "movie" Spiderman. If you keep in mind that there are at least five animated series of Spiderman, each also with their own separate "canon" of continuity and details of how the stories were told and the characters developed, you can see that some major changes were made to accommodate different media and different audiences.

What does that have to do with me and this story? Well, frankly, I'm doing the same thing. I'm referencing the "original" canon when it works for me, I'm even giving a nod here and there to the UDON comic books, because they had some great ideas, but I'm retelling these stories my way to make it work for me. I have a few more significant challenges than most others who've tried to write fan fictions about these games; I'm combining incompatible plot lines from several different games with well over a hundred potential characters, and setting a goal of meeting as many of those characters as reasonably possible without it feeling forced or fake. This means, of course, that I'm going to have to make a fair number of changes to plot points as well as character description and development.

One way in which this will happen is in the arena of romantic entanglements. Maybe I'm just a bit of a softie, but a good romantic relationship makes any story better. Sadly, most of the interesting prospects from SNK at least are already tied up with other characters. This is problematic; for many reasons, cross-source material pairings are more interesting than in-game pairings. I've also decided to make some rather major consolidations and changes to, again, further facilitate the mingling of various story lines. With three story lines from King of Fighters to contend with, one from Fatal Fury, a few from Street Fighter and even some nods towards Darkstalkers, anything else would be a confused mess. If you don't like to see established video game canon changed like this, I can only suggest that you avoid this story, then, and read the paragraphs above; my changes aren't any more significant than having Spiderman date Shadowcat from the X-men, for example. To make the story tell-able, I had to make changes, and I'm creating this note specifically to justify them to the fans.

On a slightly less serious note, exactly what stories am I retelling, and which stories are being relegated to the background? That's a good question.

I'm going to assume for the time being that the plots of the original Street Fighter and Fatal Fury video games happened more or less exactly as described, in the "distant" (i.e., at least a year or two ago) past, while the events of the Street Fighter Alpha series and the original Rugal headed King of Fighters games ('94 and '95) happened in the very recent past (i.e., just a month or two tops before the stories start.) Geese Howard is missing and presumed dead (cf. the Fatal Fury ending), as is M. Bison after the explosion of his Shadowloo headquarters in Thailand (cf. Cammy, Chun Li, Charlie, Ken, Sagat, Ryu and Sakura's endings from Street Fighter Alpha 3) and even Rugal is presumed dead after the crash of the Black Noah (cf. Kyo's team ending for King of Fighters '95.)

The story lines that I intend to weave together, with a fair amount of changes to fit them all together, are:

1. The later Fatal Fury games (although these stories tend to repeat themselves over and over again; Geese falls from his tower no less than three times before finally being declared "officially" dead, so the Fatal Fury story lines are an amalgam of Fatal Fury 2, Fatal Fury 3 and Real Bout Fatal Fury. The other two Real Bout titles are "dream matches."
2. The "NESTS" story line from mid-era King of Fighters games.
3. The "Sacred Treasures" story line from current King of Fighters games (although granted; since the resolution isn't yet out, this story line is a bit confused at the moment. When King of Fighters XII is released, hopefully it will make more sense. Of course, by then, it'll no doubt invalidate what I've written. NOTE: Since this is an Orochi based story line, I'm dropping the original Orochi story line and telling this one instead. It could feature characters from the Original Orochi story line re-imagined here (i.e., Leopold Goenitz and possibly others. But not the New Faces team; I think those guys are incredibly cheesy.)
4. The Street Fighter 2 story line.
5. Possibly a few ideas from the Street Fighter III, Final Fight or Darkstalkers story lines as well.

As you can hopefully see, this is a bewildering tangle to try and unwind and remake into anything that's coherent or interesting, so a little patience and forbearance if you see changes that are obviously "wrong" from the canon is requested here.

Essay No. 1: On the Nature of Setting

What does it take to adapt the actual, modern, real world to make room for games like Street Fighter, Fatal Fury or King of Fighters to actually exist? This essay attempts to analyze some of the things that are necessary for them to all fit together.

The first goal is to mostly minimize the changes. There's no reason to make very big, sweeping changes to the "real world" setting if I'm not forced to. At the same time, though, some changes, some of them actually fairly broad and sweeping, do certainly facilitate the genre. But I'm going to try to be as conservative as possible. I'm also going to point to actual in-game situations or scenarios to justify changes. Overall, though, the changes aren't too big a deal; no more than is necessary to incorporate superheroes into the modern world, as Marvel and DC Comics have done, for instance. Anyway, here's a list, with discussion:

• Very few of the characters look Asian, despite the fact that many of them are. Large, round eyes, fairly light brown hair, and relatively white skin are all very common. A lot of this can be attributed to art style, but not all of it; characters like Karin Kanzuki or Benimaru Nikaido are clearly born and raised Japanese, yet have curly blond hair, blue eyes, and other hallmarks that point to a classic Caucasian; even Nordic, physical type. Iori Yagami is similar; with his bright red hair, for instance. The best explanation for this is simple: the fictional world of superhero martial arts games (and many anime too, for that matter) is a much more racially cosmopolitan and mixed society than we currently have. If so, it's totally possible for a Japanese born and bred girl like Karin to be blond, blue-eyed and Caucasian in features, and not attract too much undue notice. Many of the other Asian characters are also at least partially Caucasian in their features too, I'd think, if the high frequency of Caucasian coloration and physical features seen in character artwork is any guide.

• Along those same lines, there are also physical types that we currently don't have. Of course, it's always possible that a girl with blue or purple hair or eyes is wearing a wig, dye, contacts, etc., but I think it's pretty implicit in the characterizations that that's not really what's going on. Some variations that are rare in the world at large, but not too uncommon in games include purple/lavender hair, green or greenish hair, blue hair, and a type of towhead coloration that is literally white or silver, but on young people. If the default colors for the characters isn't enough to convince you, check out some of the alternate colors for some real wildness. Or just look at characters like Blanka. It's possible that the chi that powers these metahumans also kinda evolves or mutates them sometimes, causing new physical times to spontaneously arise, but I don't know that it's strictly necessary to say anything like that.

• Governments around the world seem to be more lax and hands-off than in the real world, for the most part. Characters don't think twice about traveling around the world, often penniless, to participate in martial arts tournaments. Not only are borders not that open in the real world, but martial arts tournaments of the type being held in these games are generally illegal in almost any country in the world today. These tournaments aren't usually taking place in controlled environments either if the stages are any guide; in front of famous landmarks, in the middle of the street, in restaurants and bars, or in the more conventionial boxing ring type of environment all seem to feature, and apparently governments are not cracking down on these activities--some of them are even very official and formal and broadcast around the world like the Olympics, i.e. King of Fighters of the Orochi time-period. Apparently, the governments are also unperturbed by the fact that minors participate in these tournaments from time to time; there are plenty of teenage characters, and even a few like Bao seem to be pre-teens. Another example of laid-back governance is the fact that Southtown can be literally taken over by a criminal syndicate, and seriously talk of seceding from whatever nation it belongs to (presumably the U.S.?) which in the real world are both quite impossible. Criminal organizations aren't just like the Mafia; they can actually set up small rogue nation-states, and do so relatively unopposed by the rest of the world, i.e ., Shadaloo in the Golden Triangle and Brazil.

• Along with the rather hands-off government, a lot of the real-world conflict that makes travel to many areas of the world dangerous for some people seems to be completely glossed over. My preference to resolve this conflict with the real world is that almost all of the world's governments are small, and relatively centralized. If you imagine all of the world running more or less like the American West of the later 1800's; territorial governors manning vast stretches of land with a skeleton crew bureaucracy, then it works. Have all of the world's nations hand over a fair amount of their sovereignty to a world governing body helps too; imagine if all the world belonged to an organization somewhat similar to the E.U., for instance, and you've got the right idea. For a story, I don't think this needs to really be dwelt on, though--government interference can simply fade into the background, i.e., the government doesn't really actually ever make an appearance except as a plot device.

• The final point that needs some addressing is the question of--if we have all these superhuman warriors running around, what changes does that have on society and history? And this one, more than any other, I want to gloss over without changing the real world any more than necessary. So, first of all, they have had an impact on history; but it's the same impact other famous warriors and whatnot have had. In other words, historical figures like Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, etc. most probably were metahumans. Legendary figures like Hercules, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, etc. are almost certainly all based on metahuman prototypes as well. But, they've always been very rare; one that really has the ability to change world history doesn't even come along once every few hundred years.

• However, given the cast of characters in even one company's roster (say, SNK) to say nothing of combining them (adding in Capcom, for instance) makes you wonder about that; there are over 100 characters in the King of Fighters series alone, about fifty or so in the Street Fighter games, and many more if you start adding in other series that have popped up over the years and are clearly related, such as Rival Schools, Final Fight, Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, etc., then we've got a lot of characters, and there's no indication that these characters are so unique that there aren't many more in the setting that simply haven't been in the games yet. One way around this is that the proliferation of some modern technology has accelerated the growth of these techniques. With fast, safe and easy global travel, finding a martial arts master to teach you has never been easier. With the sharing of techniques and knowledge over the Internet, or by global post, even, the spread has been even faster. Many characters, such as Shadaloo's Dolls, or the Ikari Warriors, or the N.E.S.T.S. agents, literally have had their powers scientifically and/or genetically engineered for them. Populations themselves are much higher around the globe; why not just assume there's been a sharp rise in the numbers of metahumans over the last generation or two? Is this sharp rise explained by all the factors I just listed? I don't know, but I actually think it's intriguing to say that no, it's not. Something else is going on too, but what could it be exactly? Is Mother Destiny stepping in and preparing the world for something big that's coming; spinning out more potential heroes than normal? Hmmm...

Southtown: A Brief Geography, part III

Part I
Part II

The river running southward from the hinterlands marks the far eastern boundary of "original" Southtown locations, but it marks the western boundary of the locations that turn up in Mark of the Wolves' Second South. The map here, taken from the game itself, and labeled (not by me; I found this online) has all the locations that turn up in that game. Notably, you can see the river that runs near the edge of mainland Southtown, as well as East Island and Geese Island. While the Port town island and the bay area aren't shown in the map, because we know them well from other maps, that's not a big deal. The majority of the locations are on yet another island, about twice the size of East Island, and farther to the east (ironically) connected to the mainland by several bridges, at least one of which is a train bridge--if you fight Terry on his moving flatcar, you can see the train run along the beach at sunrise, stop in the station, and then cross the bridge from the mainland to the island (or vice versa--can't tell from the stage art.)

While Second South's relationship to Southtown is difficult to ascertain from the games, certainly they are close neighbors and probably work together in many ways. Like Southtown itself, Second South seems to be a large city with high rise districts, ethnic neighborhoods (Korean, in particular), and apparently gambling has been legalized. That's actually not that amazing of a claim to make now, but in 1999 when this game came out, it's important to remember that gambling was rare in the US other than in Vegas or Indian-owned casinos. Second South is also a crime-riddled city. Kain Heinlein grew up in the worst neighborhood in Second South, and rose to become a criminal kingpin. Oddly, Second South seems to be a bit more anarchic than any real US city could possibly be--it talks of seceding from the US, for instance, and Heinlein's goals of fomenting chaos so that the residents have to fight for their lives in some kind of Darwinian survival of the fittest test couldn't possibly ever fly. Of course, I've said before that that's obviously one of the main conceits of this genre overall, though--a very hands-off, laissaz-faire government that allows folks, including foreigners and minors, to travel around getting into super-powered fist-fights in all kinds of public places. Freedom!

Here's the known locations from Second South.

• Live House "Old Line" - Rock Howard's stage, and apparently his favorite hang-out. Although it supposedly welcomes hard rock musicians, based on the look, the stage BGM, the small size, and the older classic cars and hot-rods, I'd expect it to be the kind of place where middle-aged fans of Jimmy Buffet go to get drinks after work.
  
• Philanthropy Belfry - Far enough away from the Pioneer Plaza cathedral that it attracts a completely different clientele, the Philanthropy Belfry is named for the fact that the it was built on funds raised from charity. You can just see the front of it in the second phase of Terry's train stage, so it's near a passenger train station on the mainland. Although it looks nice, and has a peaceful relaxing feel (and BGM) I can't believe it's very fun to be up there in the Belfry when those giant bells are ringing. Hey, I still have a copy of The Amazing Spiderman #300 where Spiderman and Venom face off in the Belfry. Nice issue. The first real appearance of Venom was in that story arc, actually.
• Sarah Forest - The Sarah Forest is geographically quite close to the National Park swamps seen in Joe's Fatal Fury 3 stage, but it looks very different. This is probably attributable to its higher elevation--its a bit drier and cooler, and therefore looks like a typical temperate forest. Curiously, I think the karate bears are not meant to be taken too seriously, but the presence of a bald eagle sitting on a fallen tree is very atypical for the southern Florida climate.
• 5th Avenue and 2nd Street - A rather typical junction in the busy downtown area of the island portion of Second South. Also, a dramatic demonstration of why karate supers fighters should be careful about where they throw down--innocent people could be hurt in these car accidents!
• Oriental Casino "Woo" - Very close to the Korean Quarter, Oriental Casino Woo is a typical example of that particular attraction--a bit tawdry and full of flashing, blinking lights, and cheap superficially beautiful women. As casinos often are, this one is under the thumb of gangsters. Geese's criminal empire doesn't really go too far into Second South, but up and coming relative of his by marriage, Kain R. Heinlein, has been putting the squeeze on Mr. Woo for some time.
  
• S. S. P. Maneuver Field - Short for Second South Police Maneuver Field, but no municipal police force has the wherewithal to have a training facility like this, and those choppers are not police type choppers, those are military. Actually, the SSPD only lease a small portion of what is otherwise a fairly secretive government base run by the military. The headquarters of the multi-disciplinary task force to contain and control criminal superhuman fighters is also located here. Members of that organization include SSPD, like SWAT team member Kevin Rian, as well as federal agents (Mary Ryan, Vanessa, Seth), international agents (Hon Fu, Cammy White, Chun-Li), the US military (Guile, Charlie), and even mercenaries (Heidern, Leona, Ralf, Clark, Whip, etc.) In fact, former military now mercenary colonel Heidern is the head of the multidisciplinary task force, so his office is located here. Not that he's always in it, by any means.  In addition, the vast base has a number of other buildings, basement levels, and other hidden and top secret experimental facilities. While there's no warehouse housing the Ark of the Covenant in a crate, the Jin Scrolls have been relegated to just such an ignominous fate--lost in a bureaucratic paperwork shuffle and buried under hundreds of other, identical crates. Experiments and research into the illegal cloning and AI technology that the supervillain organization NESTS is so fond of takes place here as well, and when Cammy, K' and Maxima all defected from NESTS, they were debriefed here first.
• Slam "Free Field" - An extremely dangerous and run-down downtown district, full of criminal predators and the desperate. Second South also has an L-train or people mover of some sort, as demonstrated by the depiction of this neighborhood in Mark of the Wolves.
• Universal Arena - Second South has a large athletic complex that is used most often as a pro-wrestling venue. However, like all such arenas, it's frequently re-purposed for other events, and when Athena came through town on tour last, she played here as well (stages from console version of King of Fighters XI.)
• Blue Wave Harbor - This stage is under attack by a pirate band in a submarine when illustrated, but normally, it's a quiet marina and harbor, for commerce as well as personal pleasure craft. In this, it's a rival to the harbors and marinas of Sound Beach and Port town, but it staunchly faces away from them on the far side of Second South Island, as if unwilling to even look at its colleagues. This harbor is poorly patrolled, and because it's the closest to the open ocean to the east, drug smugglers on smaller yachts and other pleasure craft tend to favor Blue Wave Harbor over those in Southtown.
• Barbaroi Falls - While the Barbaroi River seems to be the final, most eastward boundary of the original run of Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting and King of Fighters locations in Southtown, it's the westernmost boundary for Second South. As the waters rush down from the cooler mountains of the Sarah Forest to the swampy delta of National Park and the river's mouth on the coast, it changes elevation rapidly, and Barbaroi Falls is the most scenic and dramatic of several falls.
• Yok Chong Market - In the Korean Quarter, this is an open air bazaar and market. Livestock and ethnic food can be purchased here, and most of the signs and conversation is in Korean. In addition, there are Taekwando dojos located here, and rivals from the various schools, easily set apart by their different-colored uniforms, often meet in this open air plaza for demonstration matches when the weather is good.
• Freight Express - Part of the same railway system that runs through Southtown, the Freight Express, it's motto "Running Wild" is a local branch of the nationwide railway, Orion Pacific. Seen in Terry's stage, this is really three different locations completely--the first phase is a sunrise ride along the mainland coast, showing the rural suburbs and environs around Southtown and Second South to the east and north. Stopping briefly on the mainland, near Philanthropy Belfry is a passenger train station, where commuters board to head to Second South Island. And the part mapped here (and shown in the third phase of Terry's stage in MOW) is on the long bridge that crosses the channel leading to the island. The Freight Express continues westward to Southtown as well. Besides passengers, one of its most common loads is lumber, from the forested foothills and mountains around Southtown and Second South to Port town, where it will be shipped around the nation and the world.

Southtown: A Brief Geography, part II

Part I
Part III

Let's go through town, now, and take a look at known locations in and around Southtown. Let's start with the map below, which is a slightly modified and labelled take on the Fatal Fury 3 map, incorporating all of the known Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury locations. Second South will be the subject of a separate annotated map further down the page.

1. National Park - The National Park is the location of Ryo's horse barn stage from Art of Fighting 2, as well as Joe's swamp stage with the prominent alligator from Fatal Fury 3. Although the coloration of the Art of Fighting 2 map seems to suggest some terrain relief, Joe's stage in particular seems to show that there are large areas of low, flat wetlands. This national park probably also extends to the other side of the river, at least as an undeveloped area if not actually administered by the park service. As it gets into the foothills further east, we come to Barbaroi Falls and the Sarah Forest from Mark of the Wolves.
2. Pioneer Plaza - It seems unusual that such a large cathedral would be located on the outskirts of town, far from where the majority of the people can easily use it. Of course, perhaps that's exactly why Mary Ryan hangs out there so much--it's quiet and lonely. Named for the early settlers of the area, this relic reflects a time before the center of commerce migrated south and west, or south and east, to the Central City district, or to Second South. Although religious Southtowners no doubt have many other options for more local churches, the cathedral in Pioneer Plaza is still the largest in town, and serves as a popular spot for Sunday Mass and for weddings of the rich and famous.
3. Garcia Mansion - Robert Garcia and his family live in this wide open quiet suburb, with bay side views, and large estates. Only the very rich can afford the exorbitant price of land here, and because they are very rich, they don't just buy plots, they buy acres and acres and build mansions surrounded by park-like gardens, forests, and other buffers that keep the hustle and bustle of Southtown itself at arm's length.
4. Southtown Airport - This international airport has flights coming in from all over the world, particular from Latin America, Europe and the Far East, as well, of course, as from other areas within the US. In addition to bringing fighters into Southtown to compete in the King of Fighters tournaments, and for other reasons, the airport itself has often become the scene for battles between super-powered fighters. Luckily, these fights tend to take place out on the tarmac, or occasionally within the vast airplane repair and construction facilities housed on the airport grounds.
   
5. Karate Gym - In point of fact, there are two karate gym locations, one from Art of Fighting and one from Art of Fighting 2. Not only that, there's a bonus area that looks just like a karate gym that would be right smack in the middle of the map where no numbers are but several streets cross. Other gyms and dojos pepper the town, of course, an artifact of the important Asian minority population on Southtown.
6. Kaluta - A Japanese garden and park, where the Todoh's train.
7. Crawley's Airfield - This small, private airfield has small, crop-duster type planes. It's located outside of the city proper, and is in a fairly rural location, not far from the National park. That said, Joe Crawley, a former military pilot, and his small airfield are well positioned to smuggle things into Southtown, willingly and knowingly or otherwise.
8. Boxing Gym - This seedy little dive is where Mickey Rogers trains. For a reforming villain and gangster, Mickey is patriotic, with a large American flag on the wall of his gym, and he manages to stay under the radar of the new wave of crime headed by Howard Connection, probably because it's a private, not a public gym.
9. Delta Park - Delta Park is east of the thickly concentrated downtown area, but because it's on the main through way headed towards East Island, a lot of traffic heads by it routinely. Delta Park is most notable for it's large statue of a Chinese dragon, shaded by balconied terraces. It was also famously the location of the showdown between Terry Bogard and the Jin boys, who were manhandling the secrets of immortality in an attempt to rule the world.
10. Mac's Bar - Mac's bar is a typical biker dive. It's dimly lit, the patrons and service are surly and world-weary, there's crackling neon signs and pool tables, and fights break out fairly regularly.
11. Chinatown - Just east of the downtown cluster is Chinatown, a densely built and packed district with a far Eastern flavor. Although it's called Chinatown, and resembles Hong Kong superficially in some respects, it's really more cosmopolitan than that, featuring lots of Japanese and other Asian residents as well as, of course, Chinese. The Southtown tourism board has purchased a few multistory buses that provide public transportation throughout this district at a low price. It's bustling open-air markets are a major tourist attraction from elsewhere in the city as well.
    
12. Downtown - Downtown has known better days. While there are still active office buildings and skyscrapers throughout the district, downtown is a seedy and dangerous place, and the businessmen and women who work here don't stop for anyone or anything--they head straight to their secured parking garages when at work, and straight home in the suburbs otherwise. As East Island has become much more developed, and even Second South turned into a major high-rise district, they have done so largely at the expense of the original Southtown downtown.
13. Port Town - Although it's difficult to tell from this map, the original Art of Fighting map, as well as this other image (from the Kula team ending of King of Fighters 2000) show that Port town is really an island district, and that fat connection should be rendered as merely a slim bridge. The Port town district is, as you can imagine, mostly a working district. Docks, cranes, warehouses and factories cover the entire small island and dockworkers, crane operators, truck drivers and more keep this district bustling at all times of the day or night. Although crime has taken hold of this district, as it has all of Southtown, this is also still the district that is most capable of earning a semi-honest profit, and many folks who work here are simple and honest people. Whether in the grip of the gangs, the protection rackets, the unions, or otherwise, most people here try to keep a low profile, earn a paycheck, and go back to their homes across the bridge. The construction elevator where you can fight Hon Fu, as well as get a scenic view of the entire city is located here.
14. Docks - The stage where Temjin hangs out with his coworkers putting stuff from the ships onto trucks and vice versa. The crane scene from King of Fighters NeoWave is located near here too, as is Kula's stage on the rusted waterfront.
15. Factories - The stage where Mr. Big hangs out, as well as factory stages from King of Fighters 2000 and King of Fighters NeoWave.
16. U.S.S. Guardian - Nestled just on the mainland side of the channel that separates downtown Southtown from the Port town district is a small military base. I say small, but it's large enough to be the home berth of the carrier U.S.S. Guardian. The military keeps to itself and doesn't involve itself much in the affairs of Southtown, although they do have to cross through it frequently--if nothing else the S.S.P. Maneuver Field is on the far side of Second South, and they cooperate closely with that base as well.
17. South Station - South Station is final stop on the mainland of the Central City district. In fact "stop" is no longer accurate; as the importance of this stop has faded, most trains just rumble on past without even slowing on their way across the rail bridges to the Port town island. Because of this, South Station is generally deserted and weed-grown, and if anyone is seen here at all, they're probably up to no good. Considering this is where Ryuji Yamazaki hangs out in the game where he makes his first appearance, that assessment is even more likely to be true. Yamazaki is always up to no good. It's curious that the rail lines make an extraordinary use of steam engines still, many decades after they faded away elsewhere. The Southtown tourism board, again, keeps them on as a tourist attraction. Although railfans certainly don't come to South Station to see the steam engines (unless they want to get mugged) as the trains steam back and forth between Southtown and Second South, making their way along the coast and through the hilly lands of the National park, the Sarah Forest and passing within sight of Barbaroi falls, crossing bridges from island to island, they do indeed make a nice tourist attraction, and several times a day trains with local passengers who come just to ride the rails pass all through the metro area. Another curious fact; when fighting Yamazaki, you may notice that timber is a common load on the trains, making its way to the ships where it is an important export from the Southtown region.
18. Fitness Club - Yuri Sakazaki works as an aerobics (and possibly Zumba) instructor at this fitness club. It's pretty typical for that kind of establishment; with wide open windows to let in the sunlight, lots of lifting opportunities, tanning beds and more. While I've seen it claimed that Mr. Karate's stage is the same as the fitness club, that's nonsense. Mr. Karate's stage is an old fashioned dojo lit by basketed open fires while the fitness club is a very modern facility. They are, however, very close to each other.
19. Karate Theatre - Mr. Karate's stage from the first Art of Fighting game.
20. L'Amor - While I've focused on many of the seedier places in Southtown (not surprisingly given that both the Art of Fighting and the Fatal Fury games are gang-driven stories) the entire town isn't a cesspool. The restaurant where King worked as a bouncer, and then later as owner, L'Amor, is one such place. The rich and famous in Southtown frequently find their way here for an evening of fine dining, and listen to the piano of the highly professional musicians that King keeps on retainer. Of course, even L'Amor isn't immune from the gangs and their protection rackets, and while King hates and despises the criminals, she's occasionally been unwittingly forced into working with them from time to time. Perhaps because of this, King has gradually phased out her direct involvement with L'Amor, and opened up various more "common" establishments across town, in friendly rivalry and competition with Richard Meyer and his Pao Pao Cafes.
21. East Side Park - Although the other interpretation of Southtown that I've seen has the East Side Park and Southtown Park as two separate entities, although really close to each other, I think this is a much better and more likely arrangement--Southtown park is just a generic name for East Side Park, which is just one place. Sporting a large Ferris wheel, a castle, a fortune teller, a roller coaster on a large fake mountain peak, an aquarium, and a large greenhouse and shopping area underneath a massive glass roof, East Side Park offers a variety of entertainments for Southtowners. It can be seen from Hon Fu's stage after the elevator rises high enough above the roofs of the warehouses and factories, it's also a stage in Art of Fighting 2 and Real Bout Fatal Fury. The Aquarium for Mai's stage in Fatal Fury 3 is located here, as well as, probably, the aquarium from King of Fighters 2000. The greenhouse from King of Fighters Neowave, where the blimp flies overhead, is also here, and although the Ferris wheel from King of Fighters XI is no doubt meant to be the London Eye, I'm going to rule that the East Side Park essentially copied their design, so that that can be in Southtown too.  The view from Hon Fu's construction elevator shows that there is a rocky hill or small mountain here too, and that East Side park nestles right up in its lap.
22. Pao Pao Cafe 2 - The Pao Pao Cafe is a fixture of Southtown, so Richard Meyer hired his associate Bob to open this Central City Pao Pao 2 on the mainland. Instead of a Chinese theme with a massive statue of a dragon, this one features a Polynesian theme, with changing lights in the face of a giant tiki idol. The exterior back alley of this cafe can also be seen in King of Fighters XI, which shows us a number of young delinquents loitering about long after they should be somewhere else, but highlights the dangerous sport of bullet bike racing through the Southtown alleys in the predawn hours. Because super-powered fighters frequently hang out in (and get into fights in) the Pao Pao cafes, they have a tendency to do so outside on the streets as well.
23. Geese Tower - Leaving Central City and the mainland behind, Geese tower is located on a small island east of East island, along with a number of other high rise buildings. This island, as well as most of East Island, is hyper developed, looking like a south Atlantic version of Long Island. Geese Tower itself is the most important landmark here, to the point where the small island has acquired the common nickname of Geese Island. Geese Tower itself is the tallest building in town, and his office takes up the entire top floor. On top of his office is his open air roof, decorated like a Japanese temple (although oddly sporting numerous American flag motifs as well) including several very large statues. Both the office and the rooftop have been pictured several times as game stages by SNK--the former in Art of Fighting 2 and King of Fighters NeoWave, the latter in Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury Special, Fatal Fury 3, Real Bout Fatal Fury, Real Bout Fatal Fury Special and Real Bout Fatal Fury 3, not to mention it being a prominent location in Capcom's Capcom vs. SNK. In Fatal Fury 3 the roof caught fire and was significantly damaged, having to be rebuilt.
24. Southtown Bridge - On the map this looks like a fat connector again, but it's not--this is the Southtown bridge, a large suspension bridge (the largest of many in town) that connects East Island to Geese Island. Fights have happened both on the bridge itself (Fatal Fury, King of Fighers NeoWave) as well as at the base of its pillars (Real Bout Fatal Fury, King of Fighers '94, King of Fighters '98).
25. Pao Pao Cafe - The original Pao Pao cafe, which has featured as a location across all three main SNK fighting game series. Again, the map makes this look like it's on a fat land bridge; it's actually a slim man-made bridge, or series of them more accurately, that connect East Island to the Central City mainland.
26. Parking Garage - There's lots of parking garages throughout Southtown, as in any major urban downtown area. The one where you meet Mr. Big happens to be very close to the Pao Pao.
27. Howard Arena - Named after Geese, after a donation from him restored this park, Howard Arena is Japanese garden and temple, not unlike the Byodo-In temple on O'ahu in Hawai'i. It's frequently very quiet here, and few people visit the "arena." Possibly that's because fighters like Andy Bogard and Tung Fu Rue are often here, and as sworn enemies of Geese Howard, folks are worried about getting caught in the crossfire. For whatever reason, it seems more prone to rain on the Howard Arena than in the rest of town, although I'm sure that's an artifact of perception rather than a reality.
    
28. West Subway - The west subway is the busiest stop in Southtown. Oddly, it's the only stop we know of, although clearly a subway that doesn't go anywhere isn't of much use to anyone, so the lack of detail does not imply an actual lack of other stops. As well as the actual subway stop, made famous in Real Bout Fatal Fury, there is an above-ground L-train or People-mover type train can be seen in the background of Duck King's stage in the original Fatal Fury, proving that such transportation exists in Southtown as well.
29. Dream Amusement Park - The Dream Amusement Park is a complex with lots of different attractions, including a pirate ship, a Big Thunder type roller coaster on a fake mountain spire, a large ferris wheel, a cowboy town, and an Egyptian themed area complete with sand and pyramids and other ruins.
30. Sound Beach (Sand) - Although many fans discussing the geography of Southtown seem
    
    confused by the location of Sound Beach relative to Happy Park you have to keep in mind that the original Fatal Fury map was not meant to be an accurate image of the layout of the city, just an iconographical representation of the various areas in which you had to go to fight opponents. The image of Happy Park shows that it's clearly not on the waterfront itself--Sound Beach therefore wraps around most if not all of the southern shore of East Island. It needs to--it's been illustrated in game stages many times and always differently, meaning that it needs to have enough geographical differentiation to allow for wide, white sandy beaches, marinas, piers, and waterfront shopping areas and more all along the beach. Surfing is obviously a popular pastime, so it must face the Atlantic and get decent waves. There is also a Jeep-based lifeguard service on the beach, although it's not clear how extensive an area they cover. And, according to King of Fighters XI, there's even a shop where you can buy, rent, or have repaired surplus military vehicles like jeeps. Sound Beach is usually one of the very first stages you encounter in the very first Fatal Fury game, where you fight Michael Max next to a surf shop right on the beach itself. Sound Beach returns again as a sheltered marina as Terry's stage in Fatal Fury 3, as a nightlife hotspot in Real Bout Fatal Fury, and as an idyllic white sand beach in Real Bout Special and King of Fighters XI.
    
31. Sound Beach (Marina) - The Fatal Fury 3 map locates Sound Beach here, and has a sheltered marina.
32. Happy Park - The last location for Southtown proper, before we turn to Second South, is Happy Park, known only from a single appearance in the first Fatal Fury game. It's clearly not on the waterfront itself, and is notable for it's pleasant plazas and pedestrian traffic, it's old country Bavarian architecture, and as the location where the Real Bout martial arts store is located--a place where the fighters who frequently pass through Southtown get new martial arts uniforms, gis, fighting gloves, and more.

My old Street Fighter fanfic

Here's the fanfic I wrote many years ago (heck, in about 1995 or 1996 or so, I think.)  It was hosted on Geocities for a long time, but of course Geocities is gone now.  I copied all the text into a pdf document, sent it to my Gmail account and archived it... and then mostly forgot that it was there.  If I'd remembered, I would have uploaded it somewhere and linked it here long ago.

Anyway... here it is now.  I don't claim that this is wonderful.  And I wrote it a long time ago.  I'd like to think I'd do a much better job now, and that reading over this it's frequently somewhat obvious where weaknesses in the writing are.

That said, I think there's also some things that turned out very well, and that I'm still pleased with, over fifteen years after the fact.

http://jdyal.webs.com/SFKOF/Old_SF_Fanfic.pdf

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™.

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.

Nightmare Symbiosis

After thinking that it had completely disappeared from the 'net, I managed to stumble across a web archive version of Nightmare Symbiosis, the best claim I know of for a truly good fanfic based on karate supers. In this case, it's a Street Fighter vs. King of Fighters themed fanfiction.

It does suffer from spending a lot of time on set-up, and then almost slapdashedly finishing the story off, but... it's fanfic. It's still fun to read, and miles above the embarrassingly bad stuff one normally finds.

http://web.archive.org/web/20031203155746/sfvskof.highervoltage.net/intro.php

Personal History of Karate Supers, part 3

http://sfkofff.blogspot.com/2010/02/personal-history-of-karate-supers-part.html

Part 1, and

http://sfkofff.blogspot.com/2010/02/personal-history-of-karate-supers-part_03.html

Part 2. Ignore the URLs. They're automatically generated by blogger and clearly don't make sense. This post is post #3, not the last one.

Anyway, last time I blogged about this, I got through the 90s and the first coupla years of the 2000s, which found me enjoying the genre vicariously over the internet more than I did in actuality. When I left grad school, with a small family in tow, I no longer had easy access to even a poor arcade, so I could only play what I could get at home, and if you recall, that meant I was playing on an SNES at a time when the Xbox and PS2 were launching. I did, however, have access to more money and more free time, so after a little while of this, I finally was able to come into a PSOne (the smaller revised design) and wasted no time in picking up a few games, mostly pre-owned, and exclusively of the "bright and polite" karate supers variety. This is when I bought Marvel Superheroes, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Darkstalkers 3, a couple of King of Fighters titles ('95 and '99--the only two to get PSOne North American releases) and then a little bit later Capcom vs. SNK Pro. These purchases brought me into the semi-modern playing field for the first time. While the Playstation had to make a few sacrifices to get sprite-based animated games to run on its hardware, they were relatively minor sacrifices, and all of these games played relatively well and were tons of fun. Those of them that I had played in arcades previously, like Marvel Superheroes, for example, felt near enough to the arcade version that I was certainly happy with them.

By now, the internet was old hat for me; I'd been online for close to ten years, and I knew easily how to find in depth game FAQs, reviews, and more. So I was able to maximize my enjoyment out of these games, and for quite a while, that was the genre to me. It was all I had, but luckily much of what I had was the best there was to get: the Street Fighter Alpha 3 port on the PS, and the Darkstalkers 3 port in particular being notably good games that still hold up well even now ten years or so after they were first released. I also felt at this point like I had just enough games of the karate supers variety that I could start to call myself a junior level connoisseur and collector… a label that more serious gamers would probably laugh at, but having a large variety of games and playing them and comparing them, and thinking about them outside of just the moments in which I was playing became a major hobby (one among about half a dozen serious hobbies I indulge) that I enjoy to this day. Of course, I've since far outstripped my efforts back in the days when I had first acquirred those earliest PSOne games, but still… I felt a sense of belonging to the genre, of being a true fan, not just a fly by night faddish fellow who stopped by when it was popular and then flitted away to the next big thing afterwards.

Shortly after buying the PSOne, I also bought a Dreamcast. These systems had been out of production for a little while by this point, so it was easy to get one really cheaply. Almost immediately on the heels of that (actually, I had a couple of the games before I had the system) I picked up Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, King of Fighters 1999: Dream Match and Street Fighter III: Third Strike.

As you might expect, my opinion on a few things was starting to change and evolve as I was exposed to more games. I had said earlier that I saw SNK as merely the most prominent among many Street Fighter copycats, and therefore not really worth a lot of attention. The two King of Fighters titles I had for the Playstation started to change that. While they suffer from hardware limitations, as do all 2-D fighters on that system, they didn't do so more than the Capcom games I had, and it became pretty obvious that these two games were as good as Capcom games in most respects. As a bit of an old-school kinda guy, I preferred the one on one battle type, as typified by Street Fighter; the team modes of King of Fighters didn't appeal to me as much. Of course, both games had single player modes, so I played these games most often as if they were just alternate Street Fighter titles. And as such, they were as good as any Street Fighter title except Alpha 3.

If my Playstation games started to change my opinion of SNK and Capcom, my Dreamcast titles cemented it. Both of the Capcom titles disappointed me in many respects: Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was just too silly, too hyper, too prone to button mashing; I rather quickly burned myself out on it and haven't really enjoyed it the same ever since. Street Fighter III: Third Strike was supposed to be the Street Fighter III version that redeemed the title. I remembered playing the first one in arcades back in Texas, but like many, I was disappointed in the characters and several minor aspects of the gameplay and presentation. Third Strike did improve the series, but ultimately not enough to make it even nearly as much fun as Alpha 3, much less some of the competition that was now sitting there on my shelf for the same game system.

The two SNK games I got for the Dreamcast are widely considered to be two of the best karate supers games in existance, and as I delved into them, I found that to be entirely true. Mark of the Wolves at first fell a little flat with me. It seemed like just any other fighting game, and the character selection was a bit thin. In time, though, especially contrasting it with the spastic gameplay of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, I came to really appreciate the depth it offered. Not to mention the fact that the characters were almost univerally great. A small selection isn't nearly as much of a liability if everyone's a winner, right? King of Fighters 1999: Dream Match, which is really King of Fighters '98 with a handful of minor upgrades to port it to the console, suffered a bit from clunkiness and ugliness before and between matches, but when you're playing that game, man, it's hard to beat it. The character selection is top notch, the gameplay is nearly perfect; even the Dreamcast controller worked relatively well for King of Fighters titles, since at least it had the exact right number and layout of buttons.

In any case, my opinion on Capcom and SNK didn't exactly flip-flop, but I really came to appreciate SNK for their efforts, while seeing Capcom's as tired and burned out. Today, some of my favorite fighters are still Capcom games: Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper and Capcom vs. SNK 2 being the notable ones there, but I have at least as many favorite games by SNK now. The PSOne and Dreamcast titles I got can be credited with turning around that perspective.

I continued to move on into new hardware and games without fundamentally changing that perspective; all the Xbox and PS2 titles I've picked up since, which have at least doubled my collection, had affirmed that the SNK and Capcom parity in the ability to produce quality karate supers games remains in force. If anything, I think SNK might have a slight edge, but that could also just be because they've done more titles now. Take more shots, and you're more likely to score goals, as they say. Of course, as of this moment, I'm still talking without the benefit of an Xbox 360 or PS3, so I haven't yet sampled Street Fighter IV. Word on the street is that it's an incredible game (and it certainly looks like one from the many youtube matches I've watched) whereas King of Fighters XII is a very lackluster effort that scores points for looking kinda pretty, but not really managing to do anything else. So maybe the balance has shifted again, but I can only speak from my own experience.

Beyond the playing of the games, I was reminded of how much fun I had putting together that clunky old Street Fighter fanfic that I did in the mid-'90s. Of course, today I'd want to do more than Street Fighter; I'd want to incorporate King of Fighters, Darkstalkers and Fatal Fury characters, all mixed up in the same continuity, and as if they were all in one game, and tell stories about them. I think one thing that really inspired me to do this were comic books.

I'm not a huge comic book fan, but I've been a fan of superheroes as long as I can remember. I watched most of the superhero cartoons as a kid, and that probably informed my perception of superheroes more than the comic books themselves, but I dabble in comics too. Just as with karate supers I was solely a Capcom guy for years, I've been pretty thoroughly steeped in the Marvel side of comics, and have only occasionally ventured into DC or Image or other companies territory. There are two things that've happened to comic books in the last decade. The first one was the release of a whole slew of new movies. These new movies redesigned the look of most of the characters, updated and retold their origin stories, and basically just took the themes and important points of the original comic book continuity and worked them up into something new.

Marvel did something similar with their most popular lines in the Ultimate titles. For a while there, I followed Ultimate Spiderman, Ultimate X-men and of course, The Ultimates themselves, who could loosely be called the Ultimate universe version of the Avengers. Here again; the look of the some of the characters was updated, the origin stories were significantly updated, and the stories were retold. The basic gist of the stories was the same, but many, if not most, of the details were different. Although I'm too old to have caught them really, various animated comic book cartoon series have done the same thing, and as my kids have gotten old enough to watch the Spiderman cartoon of the 90s and the new, current Spectacular Spiderman, I've seen that they've also done the same thing. So, the basic gist of, say, the Spiderman story, has been told at least five times, with significantly different details each time: 1) the original comic book run and the late 60s animated show which followed that run really closely, 2) the '90s cartoon run, 3) the live action movies, 4) Ultimate Spiderman, and 5) The Spectactular Spiderman cartoon show. This is when it clicked for me: the secret of a successful fan fiction isn't to religiously follow the "canon" established in the various games; the secret is to take those characters, remake them slightly if needed, but keep the gist of them the same, and mix them all up together.

And why not be inspired by comic books, anyway? Another thing that occured to me is that the characters of Street Fighter or Fatal Fury or any of these other titles are basically just superheroes. Rather than being invented by Americans steeped in the pulp literature and science fiction tradition, they were invented by Japanese steeped in the martial arts cinema and science fiction tradition, but the difference between the two genres was only superficial, while the similarities are deep-rooted and thorough.

This actually clicked with me a couple of years ago, but I've done more fiddling with outlines and backgrounds than I have actual writing. But soon, I hope, I'll have enough material to "go live" with a fan fiction. Hopefully one that works well. I've seen at least one combination Street Fighter and King of Fighters fanfiction over the years, the "Nightmare Symbiosis" project (which sadly, seems to have completely disappeared from the Internet, except possibly in Internet archiving services) which was actually quite well done. It was perhaps a bit too ambitious and ended abruptly after a lot of set-up, but the concept has a lot of merit. Taking the lessons learned from the different iterations of the Spiderman tale, I've tweaked, borrowed, adapted and blended the backgrounds of the entire Street Fighter and King of Fighters runs, added in some Darkstalkers and Fatal Fury characters, and in general focused just on the characters I like, and I think the results will, hopefully, speak for themselves.

Fanfiction

Fan fiction has a bad name. Deservedly so, in most cases. There's so much terrible fan fiction on the internet that it's impossible to adequately convey the huge, sprawling, horrible mass of it.

However, not all fanfic is horrible. Some of it doesn't deserve the bad name it's got. When I first discovered the world of fan fiction, in the mid-90s, so quite some time ago now, it was while I was searching the Internet for stuff related to Street Fighter, with which I was pretty much in love at the time. And by far the best stuff I found were these quick vignettes by Bethany Cox.

I've added a link at the bottom of the post here. All of her stories are there, that I know of. Some of the links are bad; some of the text files end in a .txt extension, and some end in a .cox extension, but the links are not all accurate. You'll have to manually update the URL on the links that don't work.

Bethany's stories really helped bring the characters to life for me, in a way beyond that of the game. She had a real talent for characterization. Which is really what these stories are about; they're not action-packed, plot driven expositions, they're character studies, and as such, they're absolutely brilliant.

Check 'em out. I promise, despite the fact that they're tainted with the bad name of fanfiction, these are the exceptions that prove the rule. They're good.

www.thekeep.org/~rpm/streetfighter/

The Genre vs. the Real World

What kind of changes would have to happen in the real world to accomodate the kind of action that a game like Street Fighter, King of Fighters, or Fatal Fury seems to implicate? My goal here isn't to make broad, sweeping changes, but rather to minimize them as much as possible, yet still have a setting that makes some sense and has some consistency. Here's what I've got:

• The world has to be a much more cosmopolitan place than it is today. Southtown, the setting for the Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury games, and much of the King of Fighters games too, for that matter, is supposed to be a west coast American city. It's got street signs in Japanese in some instances, though. Plus, you've got characters with obviously caucasian features bearing Japanese names who are clearly supposed to be Japanese. Karin Kanzuki is one of the most overt examples, because not only is she clearly extremely white-skinned, but she has curly blond ringlets and blue eyes! She looks a bit like a teenaged martial arts loving Shirley Temple. I've seen explanations here and there about wigs, dye jobs, colored contact lenses, etc. That seems like special pleading. Let's just assume a more cosmopolitan world where what you look like and what culture you grow up in are not nearly so tightly linked as they are in the real world.

• Along those same lines, there are some people who don't look like they could belong to any ethnic group today. Who has naturally occuring blue or purple hair, for example? Or red eyes? What kind of young people routinely have white or silver hair? What the heck is Blanka supposed to be? If you don't think the default colors are crazy enough, check out some of the alternate colors. I don't mean ones that players have made with color edit modes, I mean stuff that just appears in the game itself.

I actually like this bizarre, almost alien diversity. In a cosmopolitan world where Japanese people can have blond hair and blue eyes, why not where some other Japanese girl can have lavender hair and be a J-pop singing sensation?

• The government sure doesn't seem to be very important. Why is nobody stepping in when fights break out between folks with crazy superpowers right there in public places, in front of national monuments and everything? Why doesn't anyone do anything about all the minors that compete in violent martial arts tournaments? How is it that these apparently penniless martial artists can travel around the world barefoot without any concern for things like national borders, passports, or anything like that? How does a city like Southtown conceptually come up with the idea of seceding from the United States? How does Bison establish what is essentially a rogue nation in the Golden Triangle? Well, all of that is a heck of a lot easier if you figure that governments play a much more limited role than they do in real life.

• Despite that, agents from Interpol, the Ikari Warriors (who are... what exactly? Mercenaries?) and who knows what other law enforcement agencies seem to have an awful lot of clout when they want to. They can travel internationally to arrest people. And by "arrest" them, I mean beat them up in a public place without so much as a warrant or court order or anything. I think the way to do this is to have national governments be extremely low key, laissez-faire, but they've ceded some of their authority to international law enforcement agencies. They're way too small and undermanned to do the job properly, so they go about as practically and expediently as possible, even if that means the occasional sacrifice of due process.