Roster reviews, Street Fighter series part 1

This is just me noodling around with the rosters and discussing how much I like (or don't like) the various characters and why. Not sure how this will play out. I suspect I'll get the first Street Fighter game done. As we get further along, the rosters get significantly bigger, but they also feature significantly more repeat characters that I won't have to redress again and again. Chances are I'll be able to get two games in most posts at some point. When I'm done, I'll switch to either Fatal Fury or King of Fighters and do the same thing.

I. Street Fighter I introduced us to the original playable characters, Ryu and Ken (and for years, we pronounced it RAI yoo like Ryan with a different second syllable, in this and other games that used the same name, before spergy, weeaboo nerds and beta nitpickers had to try and "correct" us by saying REE oo or ree YOO or however exactly they pronounce it. Which is equally incorrect from a Japanese standpoint, I'll note, but I don't care—I don't speak Japanese, nor do I care to. In English, it was always RAI yoo, and it will remain so to me.) In retrospect, they don't seem like the most auspicious of characters, but when you're pioneering an entire genre, you can get away with fairly vanilla designs, because they haven't been done before. When the fourth or fifth game in a row tries to make copycat Ryu and Ken characters, that's lame, but when the first one does it, they become icons.

None of the other characters were playable, of course, so in some sense they don't count. However, many of them have become playable over time, so they're worth bringing up. When playing you must pick either Japan or the USA as your first country to go to. If you go to Japan, you face Retsu and Geki. Retsu is the iconic cloistered monk martial artist, which is a stereotype that dates back to early Hong Kong cinema movies of the 70s at least, if not even earlier. He's never appeared in anything else, doesn't even have any special moves that I can remember, and is pretty non-memorable, even given the context in which he appeared. They've tried to link him to various characters in the backstory by saying he was friends with Gouken or Oro or Dhalsim, and that he was excommunicated from his temple (which is curious, since that's his stage) but none of those appear in the game, and they feel like much later after the fact desperate attempts to make him interesting. Geki appeared on the shores of a lake or bay with Mt. Fuji in the background at sunset, and was a pretty classic 80s ninja, with throwing stars and everything. Today, the 80s is far enough away that it probably feels like a foreign country to people who didn't live through it, so you'll have to take my word for it that the 80s and ninjas had some major mojo together, which always made Geki mysterious and cool. It's a bit of a shame that he's never really made any other appearance except in non-canonical comic books and mangas, etc. Not only did he throw stars, but he had a claw-like weapon (less dangerous looking than Vega's, though) and could teleport very short distances. All part of the Shinobi mystique of the 80s. And maybe that's why he hasn't reappeared. He's kind of a dated, frozen piece of 80s pop culture, even in Japan, I suspect.

If you picked the US, on the other hand, you fought Joe and Mike. Joe was extremely anonymous; he's a blond spiky haired guy, like a potato-faced Billy Idol. He's got red pants and sneakers, and is shirtless. It's believed that he's based on Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, who was a popular competitive martial artist. Joe features Benny's real life signature move, a spinning reverse kick, as his only special move. He may also be based on the kickboxing legend Joe Lewis, who was supposed to appear with Bruce Lee instead of Chuck Norris in Way of the Dragon, but couldn't due to a scheduling conflict. (He actually beat Norris in at least one championship. He's considered the father of martial arts in the West.) But all that backstory aside, and we certainly didn't know any of that in 1987, he's just kind of a boring character. Mike was clearly based on Mike Tyson, although he just wears a red t-shirt and faded blue-jeans with tennis shoes. Although his story and appearance are almost identical to that of Balrog, Capcom have always insisted that he is not the same character. However, in SFV, one of the alternate costumes for Balrog is called "Mike-like" and he looks just like him. If you play the SFI version of arcade mode, he's one of the characters you could face as well.

After beating both of those countries, you have to pick again between China or Britain. If you go to China, you face Lee, a character who's never appeared again. While probably based on Hong Kong cinema characters like Li Shuwen or Beggar So, he comes across as just a generic Chinese guy to Western audiences. Again, Capcom have referred to him obliquely here and there in the backgrounds of almost every other Chinese character (apparently only about half a dozen people live in China, and they all know each other or are related) but this comes across as special pleading. Gen is the other character you fight after him, and this is the same Gen as appears in the Alpha series and Street Fighter IV and a brief cameo in Street Fighter V. His design is based on a very popular martial arts movie character (in turn based on a historical figure, but his interpretation here is much more informed by the movies) from several movies from Hong Kong, Bak Mei. Of course, he's developed more on his own within the Street Fighter franchise, but he's always hewed close to his source material in many ways. His pressure points Fist of the North Star type kung fu is also heavily influenced by cinema and manga, making him a bit of a classic of Oriental entertainment. Granted, you don't see a lot of that in the first game; it comes out more in the Alpha series. In typical "lost in translation" fashion, the fact that he's a serial killer and gang member doesn't mean that he's not a hero to Oriental audiences, something which Udon has occasionally struggled to reconcile in their comic book interpretation of the story, in which he had to be a criminal "in remission" who Chun-Li berates for his criminal past. No such vibe was present in the original, because hey! Surprise, surprise: diversity means actual difference and Oriental audiences have a different moral compass by which to judge his actions than Western audiences.

If you go to England, on the other hand (or after you've defeated China, when you have to go to England) you'll face Birdie and Eagle (no idea if the avian theme was on purpose or not. Or maybe it's a reference to golf.) Birdie has appeared in three subseries, and changed his appearance drastically in that time. In the first game, he's a white guy; a pretty typical punk from the English punk rocker scene from the late 70s or early 80s; tall, muscular, clad in leather and and with a blond mohawk. For some reason when he appears in the Alpha games, he's been race-swapped and is now a thick-lipped black or maybe high yellow man with a super-exaggerated and physically impossible mohawk with a hole in the middle of it, and bizarre mutton-chops. His signature move gradually becomes throwing out chains and grabbing you with them and slamming you around, while in the first game he only uses them sparingly in a single grab and squeeze move. By the time SFV rolls around, he's become extremely overweight and gross and is played for grotesque comic relief in a way that is typical for Asian entertainment, but which doesn't translate very well to the West. Eagle, on the other hand, is a butler who uses two nightsticks, or side-handled batons. Sometimes they're called escrima or tonfas, but in nitpicky fashion, those are not all exactly the same thing (although very similar) and given his British background in the 80s, I think the nightsticks make the most sense (although given that Capcom is a Japanese company, maybe the tonfas do.) He was originally intended to be an homage to a bodyguard character from Fist of Fury, but he seems to have migrated with his minor appearances in CvS2 and the handheld SFA3 game to being more clearly based on Freddie Mercury. Sort of. His more elegant dress and appearance is supposed to be a counterpoint to Birdie's cockney punk appearance. Either way, the Japanese interpretation of the English doesn't seem particularly flattering.

Finally, if you beat all eight fighters at all four of the countries, you travel to Thailand, where you face the final two: Adon and Sagat. Both are fairly well known; Adon also appeared in the Alpha games and SFIV, although he looks pretty different, and Sagat appears in every SF series except III (and, as far as we know, VI, although that's not out yet at the time of this writing.) Both are meant to be Thai Muay Thai boxers. However, it's worth noting that neither one of them look very much like an ethnic Thai. Adon would be abnormally large for a Thai; he's bigger than Ryu and has spikey red hair. He dresses like a traditional Muay Thai boxer; shorts, wrapped wrists and ankles, no shirt, and with  a headband. In later appearances, this spiky hair turns into a bizarre flattop that looks like an ironing board, but it remains red, or even more orange-ginger like the Weasleys. If Adon is big, red-headed and white-skinned for a Thai, Sagat is even more freakish. At supposedly 7'5" and quite lean, muscular and healthy (i.e., doesn't exhibit the side effects of gigantism), he's a freak of nature for any population group, especially the notoriously short and slight Thais. Although normally bald and somewhat brown-skinned, there are some alternative costumes that show Sagat with reddish-brown hair. I'm not sure what to make of all of that other than that Capcom and/or the Japanese in general don't really care about ethnicity at all, or their art style just kind of ignores it. Sagat also has solid white eyes in most appearances. Or eye, rather; he has a patch over one eye, of course. Sagat's an interesting character; he went from being a pretty one-dimensional "I just want to be the strongest" boss in SF1 to becoming an angry mobster who wants revenge in SF2, to gradually becoming a more honorable rival to Ryu, who felt really pushed by Ryu's own skill to becoming much better himself in later games (even Alpha, which is a later game than SF2, but which takes place earlier.) By SFV he's ended his association entirely with Shadaloo, and his place as one of the three lieutenants to Bison is taken by F.A.N.G. instead. This was good character development for Sagat, but of course, F.A.N.G. is literally one of the worst characters ever developed for SF, so we lose otherwise. The rehabilitation of Sagat is a curious one, because it seems that with Street Fighter in general, over time, they are reluctant to make any character too evil. Even Akuma has some redeeming moments. Bison seems to be the only one immune to this treatment, but a lot of other former villains end up being simply rivals over time. SNK has done something similar with a number of Fatal Fury and King of Fighters characters; Billy Kane being a notable example, or even Iori Yagami.

For the most part, the characters that never really left the SFI realm: Joe, Mike, Retsu, Geki, Lee, and Eagle belong in that left behind pile and its probably good that they looked for more inspiration elsewhere. Eagle maybe had some potential, and Geki is one that I've always had a little bit of interest in, being a much more iconic shinobi character that anyone else in the series, including even Ibuki and Guy. They could have maybe gone somewhere, but didn't. Sagat is a total winner as a character; there's nothing not to like about him. Adon and Gen are... OK although it really took Gen's strange rivalry with Akuma to make him pop. And, of course, Ryu and Ken are iconic and over time have developed into really interesting characters with the time and attention they've gotten over the years. Birdie started off fairly generic, and actually got worse with time, to the point that I actively dislike the character now, and feel kind of irritated with what they've done to him, especially in the jump from Alpha to V.

What's wrong with SFV?

I just finished again playing the General Story earlier today. I had a lot of costume customizations, and it had been a while, so it was reasonably fun to go through it again. It reminded me of a lot of reasons why SFV will never be one of the best games in the series, though. In fact, it seems like it's the odd numbered ones that have struggled the most, finding cult followings among the super competitive set, maybe, but otherwise being rather unremarkable in their performance in the marketplace. This assumes for the sake of argument that the "zero/alpha" sub-series is an even number, of course.

A few technical things first. Why the devil are load times sooooOOOoooo bad on the PS4? The game is native to that console, fer cryin' out loud. I don't know if its better or not on a good gaming PC with the Steam version, but the load times for SFV on the PS4 are embarrassingly bad. Just absolutely terrible. Worst in the series. SFA2 on the SNES was better.

I deleted the from my PS4 for months and then redownloaded it again. For some reason, since I've gotten it back, I've had a hard time staying logged into the server for more than about half an hour or so before I get booted and have to get back on it. And for some extremely stupid and inexplicable reason, the game wants you to be online even in totally single player experiences. Getting booted out of the general story mode because you lost your connection to the Capcom server is beyond stupid and really, really annoying. I NEVER play any online modes; if I'm not playing a story mode, I'm playing arcade. I should never EVER have to connect to the server unless I'm browsing the DLCs. This doesn't happen with any other game, it doesn't happen when I'm streaming movies, or using other devices, etc. To be fair, I do occasionally (although much less often than in SFV) get have hiccups in our video conferencing software at work too, though. I can't completely and totally rule out that my own internet service is causing the problem, although the likelihood of that being the case is extremely low since everything else works like a charm. Even so... why do I even need to be online at all?

The story mode is also pretty embarrassing, although I admit to liking some aspects of it. The plot, though... gah. Who wrote this, a fifth grader? And the dialog... Look, I know it's probably translated directly from the Japanese, but why do Japanese anime and other storytelling formats always tend to sound like a bunch of pretentious blowhards reading out of context fortune cookies at each other in an attempt to sound like somebody has some depth to them? The "comic relief" such as it is, is so cringy that it makes me feel like I need to go to the gym just to recover from the beta that's all over it. The live-action Street Fighter movie with Raul Julia, Jean Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue is widely considered one of the worst movies ever made that got a wide release, but that comes across as a masterpiece of craftsmanship compared to this story mode storytelling.

SFV is also a shockingly ugly game most of the time, although it isn't consistently so; sometimes it actually looks really good. Sometimes the ugly is technical, like the incredibly plastic looking models, and the really bad clipping and crazy spastic behavior of hair and clothes. But sometimes its just the art design. Somebody really hated Ken and Akuma, for instance, and went out of their way to make them look absolutely retarded. Meanwhile, Ryu and (most alternates of) Chun-Li look quite good. The "hot Ryu" redesign is so good that it is up there with the Mark of the Wolves Terry Bogard as a kind of "this should have been his design in the first place" kind of redesign. Recent DLC character Akira looks tremendously good. Alex looks like he has a broken leg in his normal standing stance. It's really kind of all over the map, but when you compare SFV to some of its PS4 generation contemporaries like Fighting EX Layer, King of Fighters XIV, SNK Heroines, Tekken 7, etc. it really stands out as a mostly tremendously ugly game.

Character selection and prominence was quite weird. Did Karin go and become a fan favorite sometime when I wasn't looking? She was in one game as a totally forgettable rival; she is to Sakura what Ken is to Ryu, except that Sakura isn't as iconic as Ryu and she doesn't really need a Ken. Even the UDON folks completely ignored her other than an off-hand reference that Sakura's friend from school makes. And they LOVED pulling obscure characters out and finding ways to use them for something. There are plenty of fan favorites and original world warriors that don't show up, yet we also get a lot of kind of obscure and odd characters. Even very prominent characters from the last game don't show up except as cameos. Really? No Crimson Vyper? But we get Seth come back as a girl? Seth the boss that nobody really liked, and who was one of the weakest parts of SFIV? (To be fair, not very many of the SFIV original characters are very good. Rufus? El Fuerte? Somebody should have been fired over those two.)

I will say that at least at this point in the game's lifecycle, the gameplay itself is pretty solid. Not the most exciting SF gameplay I've ever seen, but it's not overly simplistic, it's not overly spastic, and its not overly technical. It does kind of hit a sweet spot that the best Alpha and SFIV iterations did. But given that almost everything else about this game is mediocre, disappointing, or otherwise fails to live up to the promise that it should and could have, and those other games with equally compelling gameplay are still around and can be played quite easily, it's a little weird to expect us to get very excited about this title still. 

Street Fighter vs King of Fighters

The year is 1998. Capcom has released, this year, its arguably most polished—and still considered one of its best entries in the entire Street Fighter series even now, years later—Street Fighter Alpha 3. It's in between the releases of Street Fighter III: Second Impact (1997) and Third Strike (1999). Its vs series has just barely graduated from Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter (1997) to Marvel vs Capcom (1998) which expanded the roster from just Street Fighter characters to include characters from other Capcom franchises like Megaman, etc. That would be greatly expanded in the next game in the series, Marvel vs Capcom 2, but this was the first game that started the real trend of gonzo, spastic, novelty value of having such a tonal dissonance of characters all appearing in a crazy crossover game. Prior to that, the Marvel crossovers had been marginally more serious, and the Street Fighter games themselves obviously so, with a consistent tone and feel throughout. In many ways, 1998 was "peak Street Fighter" for a whole decade, while the franchise lingered under lazy, uninspired efforts, before being revived with Street Fighter IV in 2008.

Meanwhile, SNK also released King of Fighters '98 in 1998, obviously. Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 also came out that year, which although a tremendous game, had already had the spotlight taken from it to migrate to King of Fighters. While here in America, this was never really the case, in many markets in Asia and in South America in particular however, SNK was as popular as Capcom at the 2-D fighters, and the supposed rivalry between the two companies was catnip to games journalists, especially seeing as what even many years later many fans see as two of the best entries in both Street Fighter and King of Fighters came out in 1998. This fact was not lost on people at the time, of course, and both games were covered in the press, often in fact, in the exact same issue. At least one publication, Arcadia, plastered the title Street Fighter vs King of Fighters on its cover, and at least some fans, tantalized by that title, thought that that meant that some kind of actual crossover game was coming, as opposed to the magazine merely reviewing two of the best competing entries from each company in the same issue.

Whether this is literally true or not, this fan and journalist fervor is supposedly what prompted Capcom and SNK people to talk to each other and hammer out the license for what was to become the various Capcom vs SNK (and SNK vs Capcom) series of games. From the get-go, however, this concept was tainted by what was going on in the crazy, spastic Marvel vs Capcom stuff; the idea that we needed to add characters who had no tonal resonance with the others, just because the whole point was throwing everybody in a giant bag of a game and shaking it up until it broke. The Capcom vs SNK games were more serious in most respects than the Marvel vs Capcom game of the same era (2000-2002 or so) when they did finally come out in response to that stimulus in 1998, but for my money, they never quite lived up to the premise and promise of Street Fighter vs King of Fighters described in the headlines.

There are some other titles that qualify as similar in tone, of course, although most of them have already had some kind of crossover of sorts with the two flagship franchises. On Capcom's side, Rival Schools and Final Fight have always been associated with Street Fighter; Sakura appearing in Rival Schools and more recently, Akira appearing in Street Fighter V's final season. Final Fight characters were all over the place in the Alpha series already, and more of them have been more and more integrated into the Street Fighter franchise since. Although going back to 1989 already it was clear that they were going to be the same canon; the crush the car game from Street Fighter II was borrowed from Final Fight, and Final Fight's original title was going to be Street Fighter '89! Darkstalkers is a little more difficult; while the Darkstalkers titles have more or less the same vintage as the Marvel and Alpha games, and are obviously very similar to them in many, many regards, they do have an occasionally more gonzo tone than the Street Fighter games, at least. Although other Darkstalkers characters would fit in more closely with the Street Fighter cast. Curiously, as far as I'm aware, no Darkstalkers or Street Fighter character have actually ever appeared in the same game unless it was explicitly a crossover game (or puzzle fighter or something), however, and there hasn't ever been a Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers type property except for a comic book series published by UDON. I find this observation oddly compelling to noodle on. Some of the Street Fighter characters, especially Akuma, but also maybe Gill and Urien and Rose (and Menat) and more recently G (and Q) have the kind of vibe that would fit quite well in a Darkstalkers game. And with the successful relaunch of Street Fighter again, there's certainly been a call to do something with the Darkstalker characters besides an occasional cameo or cosplay alternate costume from many fans, which so far seem to have been unanswered and unaddressed. Curious and curiouser.

The King of Fighters games were always meant to be crossover games, of course, but they were primarily based around the concept of Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting and other similar characters; even characters like the US Sports team, the Psycho Soldiers team or the Ikari Warriors team were remade into a Street Fighter-like character representation. Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters, of course, were already in that mold. From time to time, characters who were a little more outré have popped up, like Nakoruru being a significant part of the plot of King of Fighters XIV, or some of the weird sub-bosses that showed up in King of Fighters XI, or especially all of the strikers that showed up in King of Fighters 2000. And curiously, a number of their actual bosses have always had a Darkstalkers like vibe too; I mean, what is Mukai and Magaki and Saiki and even Orochi for that matter, if not Darkstalkers in a Street Fighter-like game? The NESTS saga was less supernatural, but that only meant that it much more closely resembled the Street Fighter Alpha games, and later the G-project Street Fighter III stuff.

A few other games merit some mention. The Street Fighter EX games were, of course, Street Fighter games, but they were developed by Arika, and had a reasonably diverse cast of characters that have not appeared in mainline Street Fighter. The reason for this, it appears, is that the rights to those characters remained with Arika all this time, so that even if Capcom wanted to use them (which isn't at all clear that they ever did) they couldn't have without making some kind of new deal with Arika to do so. Arika have not that long ago finally released a new Street Fighter-like fighting game of their own, featuring these characters. Curiously, they made a deal of some kind with SNK so that Terry Bogard appeared in their game, and Skullomania appeared in a strange King of Fighters spin-off. This raises the tantalizing question of including these Arika Street Fighter EX characters in with the Street Fighter and/or SNK characters as certainly plausible. 

There are a few more even more obscure but also tantalizing connections. Data East released a Street Fighter II-like game called Fighters History and Fighters History Dynamite, its sequel or upgraded version. This was released on the Neo Geo and just based on the look and gameplay of it, it's mostly a late Street Fighter II vintage copycat. These characters would fit very well. In fact, Capcom thought that they would fit so well, that they sued Data East for copyright infringement. They lost because of the scenes a faire doctrine, which in fact suggests that Capcom was right in believing that the FHD characters are basically Street Fighter wannabes. Curiously, the rights to use these old Data East characters are currently with SNK, and although they've done precious little with them, they have on occasion had crossovers and cameo appearances, including a FHD character appearing in one of the Maximum Impact King of Fighters 3-D games, and a crossover cellphone game using Fatal Fury and Fighters History characters. I'm not quite sure why they haven't introduced a few of them into their mainline King of Fighters series since they have the rights; maybe it's because they don't know that they'll retain the rights forever and don't want to be stuck unable to sell a title that they've produced. But it'd be pretty fun to see a Fighters History team or two, even if they're DLC "non-canon" characters make an appearance in a King of Fighters game.

A final one I'll note is another Neo Geo game, but one developed by another studio, Visco. This is Breakers and its update Breakers Revenge. For my money, this one is even more overtly Street Fighter II-like (with a handful of Darkstalker nods; I actually think Alsion III is a better manifestation of the mummy concept than Anakaris, for instance) yet it was Data East that got sued.

Both Fighters History and Breakers have cult followings for various reasons; the super solid gameplay of Breakers Revenge, for example, and some of the odd character designs for Fighters History Dynamite. While they are largely forgotten (if they were ever known to begin with) by the mainstream as merely Street Fighter 2 copycats, the fact that they were such clear Street Fighter II copycats, not to mention the occasional cameo of some of the characters in other games of the same type, raises the question of whether or not there's any value in adding a Street Fighter vs Breakers Revenge or vs Fighters History Dynamite angle to this crossover. Probably not, because hardly anyone is asking for it, the characters don't have as much depth or interest for the most part, and frankly just with Street Fighter vs King of Fighters alone you've got too many characters to choose from anyway. But... it remains a tantalizing feature; how do (or at least how can, the Darkstalkers characters, EX characters, Fighters History Dynamite and Breakers Revenge characters somehow get worked in to this massive crossover game that yet somehow still manages to have a consistent feel with characters that all feel like they belong there for the most part, without having bizarre characters that don't belong, like Megaman or Amingo or Phoenix Wright, or other characters that actually have appeared in crossover games? Probably mostly just to provide novelty value for the silliness of the concept of adding them, honestly.

Whew. So, where am I going with this? I don't know yet. I'd like to think that eventually I'll write a big fan fic that crosses over the Street Fighter and King of Fighters characters, with some nods towards Darkstalkers and maybe some of the other titles, but honestly, I'm not really doing anything there and not likely to in the immediate future. I am, however, putting together a more complete list of character on my Google Drive. I already had a list of mainline Street Fighter characters. I needed to add the recently announced Luke to the list, and decided, why not create more tabs and go all out? I've now done the EX characters tab, using all of the EX games, including the various iterations of Street Fighter EX and the two games that Arika published that are not Street Fighter. Next will be Darkstalkers, and then I can turn to the SNK titles. I'm doing that one last because it's by far the biggest and most difficult of them all to do.

UPDATE: I really buckled down and finished the lists after a couple of free hours. The King of Fighters rosters were—as anticipated—the most difficult to do. It also reminded me, actually, that there are a lot of really dumb King of Fighters characters. The developers, going back to the very beginning, really, have a strange fondness for introducing characters with bizarre "Japanese street fashion" outfits, although that's admittedly gotten much worse since Falcoon started working for the company. They also have a really bizarre tendency to like to enter little kids in the game, and there are tons of high schoolers and even younger kids padding out the roster. 

Whatever I do with these characters (including simply playing the games) I will very studiously ignore the worst of these.

Capcom vs SNK Pro vs Capcom vs SNK 2

It seems like it should be obvious that CvS2 is better than CvS Pro. But, if you have the Japanese import Dreamcast version of the latter, which I now do, then that's not necessarily true. I've had the PS1 version for some time, and it's notably not very pretty or fluid, although it plays quite well and is a perfectly fine game. The improvements that the Dreamcast version adds make the comparison between the two games a bit more unclear, though—it really does make it a much more pleasant if not even occasionally breathtaking experience. Let's talk about various areas where they differ from each other, and I'll talk about which one offers a better experience overall.

Character Selection. It's clear that the second game has a better character selection than the earlier version. However, this doesn't matter as much as you'd think unless you're a fan of a more esoteric character. I've actually only quite rarely played any character in 2 that isn't in Pro. My go-to characters, down to the second and third string, a bit deeper on the bench, are almost all characters that are in Pro. However, again—there's no doubt that the second game has more characters, and it also has better bosses. Shin Akuma and Orochi Rugal are simply better than the version of Geese and Bison that Pro has. But on the flipside, Pro has a more even theme and tone. While neither game is anywhere near as gonzo and spastic as the Marvel vs Capcom series had become, especially by the time MvC2 came out, there are still some characters that really don't fit the concept of Capcom vs SNK. Which, lets all face it, was really always meant to be about their iconic fighting game franchises, and specifically kind of Street Fighter vs King of Fighters with maybe a Darkstalkers, Fatal Fury or Art of Fighting character that wasn't in KOF thrown in just for kicks. The inclusion of Samurai Shodown and Last Blade characters just don't feel like they belong in this game. And of course while Morrigan was a perfectly fine fit as an unusual offbeat character but not too much so, her sprite was absolutely terrible, and has been mentioned by every reviewer who's ever talked about either of these games. (I should mention that Nakoruru is in Pro, and she seems to show up as a com player way more often than she should.)

I've got to give a slight edge to 2 over Pro, but much more slight than you'd think; only a tiny sliver of advantage.

Gameplay System. I'm covering three different things here: 1) button layout and moveset, 2) the ratio system, and 3) the groove system. While most people would say that 2 beats Pro handily on all three dimensions, I'm going to make the case that it doesn't; it either is the same, or even arguably worse. For my taste, of course.

1) Pro made the decision to switch to a SNK-like layout, using four buttons instead of the default Street Fighter scenario of six. While this meant that some moves had to be abandoned here and there, curiously, nobody's ever complained about the King of Fighters characters feeling move impoverished because they used four instead of six buttons, and nobody has really complained since the first month or two of release about the four button approach of Marvel vs Capcom 2. In fact, in an era when home ports to consoles were becoming much more important than arcade renditions of the games, you could easily make a case that a four button layout is much less awkward than the six button Capcom default. Unless you went out of your way to buy a specialty control pad, after all, you always only had four buttons on the face of your controller. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think the four button layout is better than the six button layout, and I've always been slightly annoyed by trying to figure out the best way to map the six button layout to every four-button (plus triggers) control pad I've ever used to play a Capcom fighting game, from the SNES, the PS1, the PS2, the PS4, the Xbox, the Dreamcast and my USB PC controller. Every single one of them would have benefited from being designed to be a four-button game rather than a six button game. Of course, this isn't an issue for the SNK games, all of which are four button games to begin with... if they aren't even three button games for that matter, which a few of the Fatal Fury titles are.

2) I don't like the ratio system for either game. Luckily, there's actually no reason to play it for either game if you don't like it. Pro has the Pair Mode, where you ignore the ratios and pick two characters of your choice, who are merged into ratio 2, regardless of what they originally had been in the ratio mode. 2 has a slightly better selection; offering a 3x3 mode that is like the pair mode but obviously with three instead of two characters, as well as a regular Street Fighter-like 1x1. Normally, I'd suggest that the 1x1 is essential for the way I like to play, because I don't like having to mentally switch gears between characters. This is one of my bigger complaints with the regular gameplay associated with the King of Fighters games, although most of those titles also offer a well-done 1x1 mode as well. I find, however, that picking two characters instead of three doesn't trigger that reaction in me; I guess switching between two characters I can handle, whereas switching between three is too many to be fun for me and subconsciously stresses me out or something. I can't remember the last time that I played either game using the default ratio system, and I can't imagine why I ever would again. The ratio system simply was a bad idea, and even improving it between Pro and 2 didn't make it worth using, when there are better options right there in both games anyway.

3) I suppose some people like the number of grooves that 2 offers over Pro. I can certainly see that, especially if you're a fan of a particular groove that is unique to 2 rather than Pro. 2 has six grooves; C-A-P-S-N-K. C is almost exactly the same as A-ism from Street Fighter Alpha 3. A-groove is similar to the V-ism of Street Fighter Alpha 3. P-groove is most often compared to the Street Fighter III games, because of the presence of parry. Although parry was difficult to pull off in III, and it's even more difficult to master in this game. If you're really good at it, it's probably the best groove, but I'm not, so I don't care for it. S-groove has the manually charged super meter, and Desperation moves when you're health bar is red, similar to the earliest KOF games. N-groove is similar to the advanced mode that later KOF games started to develop, including 97 and 98 (and maybe 96? I'm drawing a blank now on that one.) K-groove is an interesting mashup of Samurai Shodown features and Mark of the Wolves features, making it a unique groove. This choice is great if you like one of the new grooves, or like playing around with optional things in the system and having lots of choices. There's even a groove edit mode where you can create your own grooves. However, after trying all of them out for a bit, I now only play C-groove on 2. I have no interest anymore in any other groove, although if for some reason I had to pick another one, I'd go for N. Pro only has two grooves, and although they don't have the same names, they are identical to C-groove for Capcom and S-groove for SNK. Since I can't imagine that I'd ever pick another groove again other than Capcom/C-groove, and it's present in both games and works exactly the same in both, the additional choices of 2 offer me nothing that I actually want.

I'd say that the button layout is a very slight advantage to Pro over 2 and a similarly slight advantage goes to 2 over Pro for offering the 1x1 and 3x3 over the 2x2 of Pro. Neither has an advantage in groove selection, because both offer me the only groove that I'm still interested in playing ever again. On this dimension the two games, therefore break even.

Presentation. In terms of the sprites, they are basically the same for both games, and there are, honestly, issues with them. The handful of redrawn Street Fighter sprites (just Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and M. Bison, I believe) and the obviously newly drawn SNK sprites all look pretty good. Ironically, by the time even the first of these came out, many of the SNK characters had migrated to improved looks; Kyo's NESTS saga look was a big improvement over his Orochi saga look, for instance, but it's the latter that got drawn in the Capcom style. Regardless, that's all nearly top of the line for the era, and can't really be complained about. The rest of the Capcom sprites, however, don't look nearly as good. Everyone always points out how terrible Morrigan looks, and while it's true that she has the worst looking sprite in the game, many of the older Alpha vintage sprites really aren't that much better. Not only that, they really aren't drawn in the slightly more serious style that the SNK characters and redrawn Street Fighter characters are. A few new characters (and by new I mean drawn from much older games) from the Capcom side got ported to 2 that weren't in Pro, like Maki, Kyosuke or Eagle, and they also had to be redrawn in the newer style. The Alpha sprites look fine in their own game, but they are somewhat more cartoonish than the style that the SNK and redrawn Capcom sprites are in, which causes further graphical confusion; they just don't all look like they belong in the same game at all. (To be fair, this is also true even for some 3-D models that are in the same game. SFV has characters that look ridiculous next to characters that look really good. The newly released Akira in particular simply looks like she shouldn't be in the same game at all as the totally whiffed up Ken model.) However, while this is an issue, it's equally an issue for both games, so I can't give either game a leg up in this regard. Other parts of the presentation are different however.

While I don't think either game has really very memorable music, Pro's music is substantially better than the really generic Eurodancy soundtrack of 2. In general, I'd say Capcom was really whiffing on their music selection in this era too; this is the era of Marvel vs Capcom 2; the worst music ever featured in a major fighting game, and Street Fighter III. (To be fair, I'm really only familiar with the Third Strike music. But I didn't like most of that either.) Neither game is anywhere nearly as ridiculous as MvC2 (and yes, I realize that the music has grown on many fans. I'm not one of them. If anything, I find it even more obnoxious the more time passes. But I have other reasons for not really loving that game too.) I think 2's music is comparable in its weird badness to Third Strike, whereas Pro's music is comparable in its pretty generic run-togetherness to Alpha 3. Ironically, I once really liked the music to Alpha 3, but after hearing the really well-done remakes of the classic Street Fighter themes, plus the equally cool stage scenes that Overclocked Remix did (both for the HD Remix of SF2, and on their own before even) and the OST for Street Fighter IV, that Alpha 3 has not aged well in comparison. I still think that both Alpha 3 and Pro are fine for the era in which they came out, and they at least don't distract from the game, like MvC2 does, but they really aren't all that good either.

Otherwise, the look and feel of the stages is also very much better in Pro than in 2. Now, I didn't appreciate this as much for many years, because I only had the PS1 version of Pro, but with the Dreamcast version, it's obvious that many of the stages in this game are literally the absolute best 2-D stages ever produced, while the 3-D stages from 2 (and MvC2 for that matter) are probably the worst stages produced in general. Now, I don't necessarily hate 3-D stages in their own right. I think later 3-D stages, like those in KOF 2002 UM or KOF 1998 UM, for instance, look great, and there's some other really cool console port stages of what were originally 2-D stages in the arcade versions for some games that I also quite like. But I certainly don't think doing stages in 3-D just because you can is an improvement, and the stages in 2 are just awful, with only a couple of exceptions (the two boss stages, as it happens.) Really well-done 2-D stages have aged quite well, and have a kind of timeless beauty to them now that the early 00s 3-D video game design simply doesn't have. That era really kind of is a wasteland of very ugly, blocky polygon graphical design that looks terrible almost across the board, no matter the type of game. Curiously, though—it's less the technical limitations of the era that make the stages so unlovely as it is simply the design of them. I've got to give the edge, and it's a more substantial edge than we've seen before in these comparisons, to Pro over 2.

Total. Now, exactly which of those dimensions are most important to you may vary from what are most important to me. And some of my preferences there are obviously fairly subjective. Although I'll note that with the music in particular, I hear people make repeated mention of the "this is true love we're making" track of the London stage, and I've got to think that they've just developed a nostalgic fondness for an ugly track, the same way many have for "I'm gonna take you for a ride" from Marvel vs Capcom 2 rather than because it's an objectively good song or anything. But for my money, I'd have to say that it adds up to me being more likely now to play Pro than 2. Now don't get me wrong. I played a lot of 2 over the years, and I played probably a bit less of Pro when I had it only on the PS1. But now that I have the Dreamcast version, even with the Japanese, which I can't read a lick of, I just think that I prefer playing that one and probably will for the foreseeable future. All of the "improvements" made to 2 over Pro ended up being improvements that I don't really value that much, meaning that in most respects I can consider it an improvement from an academic perspective, but my own personal experience is actually a downgrade.

SFA3 and CvS2

I recently watched some Top Hat Gaming Man YouTube documentaries. I've actually seen these before months ago, but I'd kind of forgotten about a handful of specific conclusions he reached. Now, he's got his finger more on the pulse of what fighting game fans think than I do, presumably, although of course there might be selection bias in terms of the data input he receives. He also (as well as some other fighting game YouTubers) make reference, particularly in regards to the Street Fighter fandom, to a distinction between the "FGC" or fighting game community, and casual fans. I'm not 100% sure that I fit very well into either of those buckets; I don't feel like my fandom is necessarily all that casual, and yet I certainly don't compete online or do much with any "community" other than watch YouTube videos and stuff like that. I'd say I'm a casual fan who's casualness is suspect because I'm a bit of an obsessive collector sometimes, and because I do a lot of stuff when not actually playing related to my fandom, but who's behavior is otherwise quite similar to a casual fan in many respects.

Anyway, either way, THGM made a few conclusions; two major and two minor, that I 100% agree with yet I thought that the fandom in general did not agree with. What's more, he implied that these same conclusions were fairly general. Not everyone, of course, agrees with them, but a significant plurality if not majority does. This is both surprising and also somewhat gratifying if true. The "if true" being a big limiting factor, because I don't know that it is. But if it seems to be true to him, I'll trust that he's in a much better position than I am to see that, and trust in turn that it's much more likely to be true than I had previously suspected.

Anyway, what are these shocking conclusions? First the two major conclusions that he discusses.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 is considered the best SF game of the entire greater series by many fans. I don't actually think this anymore, because after I got Ultra Street Fighter IV back in 2014 or 2015 or whenever I got it on Steam, I came to believe that one was the best one. V is still growing on me, and it's TBD what I feel about it long term. But I seriously can't ever imagine that it would pass up IV in my esteem, and after IV, is definitely SFA3. I don't hesitate to recommend it to anyone as a timeless example of the pinnacle of karate supers development, or even fighting games development as a whole. 

It's important to remember the context in which this game came out too, though. The revolution caused by SF2 felt like a long time ago to us (although it wasn't really; less then ten years.) SF2 clones that were a dime a dozen were out there. Street Fighter itself had had a lot of development. The Marvel vs. series was in full swing by this time, and in fact, the alleged pinnacle of that series, Marvel vs Capcom 2, was not far away from being released at this point (about 18 months or so.) The 3D fighting game revolution was also in full swing; Virtua Fighter, Tekken and Soul Edge had been in arcades for years already. In another direction entirely, so had Mortal Kombat by this point.

That said, the PS1 release of SFA3 (which is the one that I played the heck out of for years, by the way) was considered a great release by most, and was immensely popular. I guess I didn't realize that the Alpha series was considered so good by fans, though. I hear all kinds of noise about the classicness of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, or the finely honed tactical, technical, competitive gameplay of Street Fighter III: Third Strike. I consider both of them significantly less fun to play than SFA3, however, and that they apply to a niche market within SF fandom. I guess I'm not as alone as I thought in that opinion.

To be fair, plenty of people don't think it's the best of the SF series. Heck, there are people who don't think it's the best of the Alpha subseries, and who prefer SFA2 still. But, although I don't change my mind because of this kind of thing, it is still somewhat gratifying to know that there's a significant plurality that agrees with me on this one.

Capcom vs SNK 2 is considered the best 2-D fighting game of the entire genre by many fans. Although kind of a quiet "sleeper" hit compared to the Marvel vs Capcom 2 game which came out the same year, it's more serious, Street Fighter-like gameplay, great roster of characters, and general vibe appeals to fans of the genre in many ways more than the hyperactive Marvel vs. games do. I think it's worth pointing out that to the majority of Street Fighter's audience, SNK was not really a rival, but rather a distant second who made some games that they were vaguely familiar with. Not saying that this is fair, but I think it's still true. The SNK fandom is concentrated in 1) certain parts of Asia, 2) South America. In Europe and North America, the only ones who knew SNK well were 3) people who are a bit less casual about their 2-D fighting game fandom and went out of their way to become familiar with series like King of Fighters and Fatal Fury, etc. During the 90s, I'd offer up the observation that most arcades had a few Neo Geo cabinets, probably because they were a good deal for arcade owners. I rarely saw large crowds around these cabinets, though, like I did when a new Capcom, Namco or Midway game was out. (Samurai Shodown's release being a notable exception.)

So I suspect that the portion of the fandom who thinks this is a bit less casual than the Joe Blow who buys a Street Fighter title for his Playstation, plays it a bunch, but then kind of puts it aside and forgets about it when new stuff comes out. It's more for the kind of fan who returns to this type of gameplay time and time again over long periods of time, because he really likes this kind of game more than just about any other kind of video game. Guys like me, in other words.

I also suspect that the people who think SFA3 is the pinnacle of Street Fighter development overlap a lot with the people who really esteem this title. In spite of a few characters who don't really fit the vibe of the game because they come from different enough types of games that they don't really fit (this problem was orders of magnitude worse in the Marvel vs games), it's really Street Fighter vs King of Fighters, and both were really very similar types of games with a very similar vibe to them. The gameplay is heavily based on the SFA3 style of gameplay, and while there are other options you can mess with with the groove system, I still think it's fair to say that the default is very much like playing a SFA3 game except with a bunch of SNK characters thrown in too. It's no wonder that I consider both of these games the very best of the pre-hiatus titles by Capcom if not by anyone (which I might think too, but I do have to acknowledge King of Fighters '98 in particular as a contender there) given in many ways how similar they are, and how both seem to be tailored specifically to my own taste. But again, it's nice to think that my taste maybe isn't such an outlier out there after all. 

Anyway, let's move on to the two minor conclusions which, again, I didn't think very many people agreed with, but which were certainly true for me.

The 2.5D style of 2D sprites fighting over a 3D background isn't very attractive, and looks very dated. The well-done 2D backgrounds of earlier games actually look quite a bit better and more timeless. This is, in particular, a feature related to Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Capcom vs SNK 2. Most of the titles up to that point had still used 2D backgrounds. It doesn't help, of course, that the actual stages weren't really all that attractive to begin with. They were simply poor designs. Of course, there are plenty of 2D backgrounds that are also poor designs and which I don't much like over the history of the genre. However, none of the stages from Marvel vs Capcom 2 stand out to me as even vaguely interesting, except possibly the boss stage, and none of the stages from Capcom vs SNK 2 stand out to me as attractive at all except, again, the two boss stages (the rainy castle roof and the fiery destruction stage.)

Of course, I don't really think that this is necessarily a problem with 3D stages, just that at the time these 3D stages were made, the technology and context for the artists wasn't there to make 3D stages that actually looked good. They certainly look good in Street Fighter IV and V. In fact, in V they made a deliberate effort to recreate, in 3D, a number of the classic 2D stages from the past. This includes loads of the Street Fighter II stages and a few Street Fighter Alpha 2 stages.

In fact, in general, I think my copy of Capcom vs SNK Pro has much better looking stages than Capcom vs SNK 2, even though those are 2D stages, and they're on the PS1 (the Dreamcast versions look even better.) Granted, I don't love the design of all of these stages either, but the ones that are good are really good. To be honest, I've often kind of liked some of the SNK stages better than Capcom. I think they have a slight edge in making really attractive stages compared to Capcom. Although it's not really super dramatic or anything, I still absolutely love the stage progression of this little neighborhood park from King of Fighters 99. I think stage design doesn't get much better than that, and since you usually play this game in teams of three, the stage will advance through all three "morphs" before you move on. This is the kind of thing 2D stages could be, and it is a kind of timeless look. These animations aren't actually all of the animations that playing the game would show you, but you get the idea:

That said, I think the stages is one of the presentation areas that Capcom vs SNK 2 really botched, and it does tend to depress my enjoyment of playing the game. The other minor conclusion is also a presentation issue, and it does the same thing as the stages; make me wish for a way to fan-sub it out for something else. That is:

The music from the late 90s games, specifically Capcom vs. SNK 2 is really bland, uninteresting and "Dreamcasty" and really dates the game; also not timeless like the earlier Street Fighter II themes. To be fair, this may be mostly THGM's opinion rather than one that's shared overall. Even in the comments to his video that he posted saying this, he got a lot of flack from the "This is true love we're making" fans. Blegh. The worst track from the game. That said, I suspect that the fans who like that like it in a kind of ironic way rather than a legit fashion, just like they like "Gonna take you for a ride" theme of Marvel vs Capcom 2. Nobody actually likes that song, but they do laugh at it and can become fond of it because of association. I don't; I dislike the music from most of this entire era. Marvel vs Capcom 2 has the worst music of any fighting game that I know of. Street Fighter III Third Strike also has pretty terrible music with only a few standout tracks that I don't mind, like the Yun/Yang "Chinese James Bond" music being a good example of one that I do like. Sadly, when ported into SFIV to accompany the characters that came from Third Strike, their music wasn't rearranged enough to dilute the terribleness of it. Dudley, Ibuki, Makoto, Elena, etc. I'm looking at you. Of this era, I'd actually probably suggest that the Capcom vs SNK music was generally the least offensive and dated sounding, but that isn't to imply that it isn't pretty bad. 

This is another arena in which I think SNK might have had a leg up on Capcom. Granted, SNK were prone to do a lot of experimentation with lots of different styles, and the smooth jazz soundtrack of Blue Mary, for instance, might have been a poor fit for a fighting game, but I do kind of appreciate the willingness to take risks and really put out there some intriguing types of music. Again, from King of Fighters 99, check out this boss theme. It's about the same vintage as Capcom vs SNK 2, but nothing on Capcom vs, SNK 2 sounds as good as this.

To be fair, maybe my own personal fondness for certain types of EDM make me prefer some games' BGM to others, but I think that really classic tracks from the SFII era done in the SFIV EDM style sounds kind timeless too. The late 90s early 00s style of music is just a very dated sound, with its weird Eurodisco rap and hip-hop influences. But again, dated or not, I hated it when it was new. It's just not my style at all.

And comparing it to King of Fighters 99 might not be entirely fair. While the vintage of the games is about the same, King of Fighters 99 was probably the most atmospheric of all of the KOF games, which makes is more atmospheric than any other fighting game. Nobody else has managed to compete in that particular front. The dark, secret society cyberpunk edge lurking just under the surface of what appears to be the normal world that we were familiar with is just brilliant. I do think that 99 is a criminally under-rated entry in the KOF series, unfortunately. The problem with the KOF titles, if I can be allowed a small digression at the end of my post (and of course I can, because it's my blog; I can write whatever I want) is that they tend to overwrite themselves. There was a clear progression from 94 to 98 where once the newer one came out, there was little reason to look backwards at the earlier entries, and 98 in particular was meant to capture the best of the entire 94-97 run in a single game. This is especially true of the Ultimate Match re-release. The next phase is kinda sorta treated this same way by KoF02, especially the Unlimited Match re-release. But what gets missed if you do it this way is the atmosphere and story of each individual game in the series. Sure, if what you mostly want—and I'd wager most fans, even me, do want this—is all of the characters and gameplay in a single game, then Ultimate Match 98 and Unlimited Match 2002 are all you really need to have for the entire run of King of Fighters between 94 and 2002. But that's a little bit of a shame, because you miss out on some cool little details here and there that way. 

New Season V characters

I haven't done anything here in forever, but... now that I've got my new desktop, and my own office to use it in that used to be my son's room before he grew up and left home, I've reinstalled Steam, I've put Street Fighter V Champion Edition on my PS4 (technically that belongs to my youngest two boys too; but like I said, one of them is out of the house for at least another year and half, and then he'll leave again after that for college out of state. And the younger one is kinda over video games and doens't care anymore. I'm the only one left that's regularly using it, which is weird, because I didn't touch it for a long time when we got it; not until one of my sons bought Red Dead Redemption II, actually.) So, I'm back in the saddle after a lengthy hiatus where I rarely if ever played one of these types of games, because I didn't have access to SFIV for a time, and I never liked SFV until I got it recently in its more fixed and updated form with enough content to not be embarrassing.

Anyway, although SFV was considered a fairly dead or done game, the Champion Edition was sufficiently well received that Capcom decided to issue a final and fifth (Vth?) season and announced that there would be five (V) new characters added to the game still. While it's certainly possible that a new character will be among them, I think it's much more likely that we'll see the return of some characters that've already part of the Capcom roster. If we get anyone "new" it'll be one of the dolls; maybe one that hasn't ever been playable before. (We do know that most of them are in the game as opponents already, since we fight a number of them in story mode. That would be a quick and easy way to bring a character to the game without having to do too much work on it; you've already got a model and moves, they just need to be made playable. Which I don't want to underestimate the workload involved in doing that, but still--a fair chunk of the work has been done.)

Anyway, the purpose of this post isn't to talk about who I think is likely to be brought in, but who I'd wish to see, and who I'd pick if I was in charge. Before I do, let me at least spell out who some of the potentially obvious adds are, just because. Then I can contrast (and a bit of compare, but it'll mostly be contrast) those obvious adds with my own wishlist. Street Fighter V is the first game since Super Street Fighter II that doesn't feature all of the characters from Super Street Fighter, at least in its final, fully fleshed out form. So, some obvious adds would be the three missing New Challengers: T. Hawk, Fei Long and Dee Jay. Yeah, yeah... those are the least popular of the New Challengers, I'm sure, but still, it's odd that they're missing. But I also doubt that they'd make three of the five be those characters. Probably at least one of them, though. Some of the more popular Street Fighter III characters also seem like shoe-ins. We have less Street Fighter III characters in V than in IV. Dudley, Yang and/or Yun and possibly Makoto. I hear a lot of calls from the fanbase for the latter, in particular, although I've never liked her as a character at all. Of the Alpha characters, I doubt that Rose or Guy will come back as we have Menat and Zeku to kind of represent them. It's the first game not to have Dan, though, so he'd be a kind of obvious addition too. Even if the joke is long past played out by this point. Of the IV characters, I was surprised that C. Viper wasn't already included; she does make a cameo in the story, at least. The same is kind of true for Abel, although he was a much less memorable addition to IV than Juri and Viper. So, that list of "obvious" candidates is obviously twice as long as it needs to be, but I wouldn't be surprised to see at least four of the five pulled from that list, if not all five.

Who would I most want to see return? My list might be a little esoteric, but what the hey?

• Geki. Of all of the non-playable characters from the first Street Fighter game, he's the one who seems to have picked up the most mystique. I'd argue that he's probably more popular than SFI characters that we have had added to subsequent games like Birdie, Gen and Adon. Of course, I don't have much to back up that assertion other than his use in stuff like the Udon comics and whatnot, but I'd really like to see him updated. I know, I know, there are a number of ninja-esque characters in the game already, like Ibuki and Guy and Zeku. But they don't really fit the classic trope of the Shinobi that was super popular in the late 80s and early 90s when these games came out, and the little that we do know about Geki's potential moves is already very different than either of them, with throwing stars and teleportation, etc.
• Edi. E. (I don't know why he has a period in his name after Edi, but that's correct.) The only Final Fight boss (other than Belger himself, and a character in a wheelchair probably isn't feasible) to not make an appearance makes him a good candidate in my opinion. Not only would his rivalry with Cody make for a better story reason to include him than say, Abigail or Hugo, both of which have made appearances, but he'd be a significantly different type of character than any we've seen before, given that he always uses a pistol and a night stick. He'd probably be Zangief-sized too, which would be interesting, as we could always use another bigger character while we're at it. Maybe this time he's the one in a convict uniform, since after he framed Cody and sent him to prison, now that Cody is mayor, maybe he's been drummed out for corruption finally. Yet another reason to have an even more bitter rivalry!
• Mike Haggar. I know, I know. I'm probably leaning too much into the older games, but I'm an older guy, and I like my nostalgia. To be honest, I'd rather have seen Mike make an appearance with his Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 model in Ultra Street Fighter IV, and leave him off the roster for V, but since he didn't ever make it to IV, putting him in V is a must. He's the iconic character from Final Fight, and he's had a bit of a comeback since his appearance in the MvC series. He's primed for a re-appearance.
• Oro. A Street Fighter III character that never seems to get any love, although maybe that's because he's kinda dumb like Twelve or Necro, I dunno. At least he has more character, in my opinion, and he does make a number of cameos in Street Fighter V already, where it's shown that he's pretty good friends with Dhalsim. I think he could turn out pretty cool and interesting, especially if he gets some decent alternative costumes. It can also start to point towards his appearance in Street Fighter III; the inclusion of a bunch of Illuminati characters already starts that, as well as Sean's cameo since his sister is a playable character. 
• C. Viper. Just because she's an obvious one doesn't mean that it's not one that I wouldn't like to see! I kind of like C. Viper, although I think she's a little bit underpowered in IV, and could stand a bit of minor updating. She's obviously kicking around, having made a number of small cameos in the Story mode, but as kinda the new protagonist specifically for the IV game, leaving her out is a little bit insulting. She's also a kind of rival to Juri, and picking up Juri but leaving C. Viper out seems incomplete. It'd be like having Ken in the game but not Ryu. Well, not quite, as those are the protagonist and deuteragonist for the entire franchise, but still, you get the picture. 
• Honorable Mention. Oni should come back, not as a new character, but as a skin for Akuma. Akuma looks so terrible in this game, and only his "nostalgia" skin actually looks any good. Giving him an Oni skin would be perfect. I think it would actually be interesting to bring Gouken back too, although again, maybe as a skin or "cosplay" for either Akuma or Ryu is better than bringing him back as a complete character. For that matter, maybe that's a better way to bring Dan back than as a character; have someone dress as him in cosplay. Although, to be fair, he already dresses an awful lot like classic Ryu and Ken anyway, and just has a different head. I would have thought the same thing about it being fun to bring some Darkstalkers characters into the game, but given that most of the ones I'd want to see are already skins for someone or other in the game as is, it's probably fine as is.

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 I

Part II
Part III

The SNK games in particular make a lot of mention of the city of Southtown. It's the fictional setting for two of the three Art of Fighting titles, three of the Fatal Fury games (and still features as a location even in the more "global" titles) and features prominently in several King of Fighters titles as well. Capcom has the less well developed but overall relatively similar Metro City--it's easy as pie to combine them. Because Southtown is more developed, with more stages, more history, and more detail all around, for my purposes the two towns will be collapsed into a single one, and for the most part, it defaults to the SNK version of Southtown. About the only thing that needs taking from Metro City is that Mike Haggar is the mayor, and that Mad Gear Gang has been making inroads into the town while Geese was absent following his first defeat by Terry Bogard.

Although fictional, Southtown has been confirmed to have been loosely based on the real city of Miami. The little icon from Fatal Fury 2 confirms that it's in the far southeast. Although here it looks like it's up in the panhandle of Florida instead of on the tip, that's not meant to be taken too literally; the icon is a large bit of graphics that's only supposed to be vaguely related to an actual spot on the vague outline of the lower 48 states.  If you look at the other image above, though, you will see a skyline that looks nothing like the Miami skyline.  Where do all of these green mountains come from?  And where's all of the Cuban and Caribbean influence, rather than Asian influence which is shown repeatedly in the games?  I've decided that I believe the most likely source of this is that the Japanese developers say that it's based on Miami, but in reality it's based on the only US city that most Japanese tourists are likely to be very familiar with: Honolulu.  Hawaii has a huge ethnic Japanese component (as well as Chinese and other Asian elements).  It also has a military and industrial port (an important component of Southtown) and lots of Asian-themed architecture.  It's as if the developers wanted it to be Miami, but since Honolulu was the only city in the US that they really knew very well, they imagined that Miami must be just like Honolulu.  In any case, simply imagine that a city very much like Honolulu, including the mountain/jungle topography all around it, were somehow transported in toto to the tip of the Florida peninsula, and you basically have Southtown as it is presented to us in the games.

This series of posts, then, discusses more of the details of the geography of Southtown rather than this big picture view.  While SNK have indeed given us lots of detail about Southtown, the problem is that the detail doesn't always match from one title to another. Most of the geographical information comes from the first two Art of Fighting games, Fatal Fury 1 and Fatal Fury 3, with a major add-on in the form of the Second South sister city that was the setting for Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves. Let's start with what each game gives us, in order of release.

Fatal Fury - The first Fatal Fury game was released late in 1991, and is the first appearance (I believe) of Southtown as a setting. The setting for Southtown in this game was meant to be more or less "now", i.e., in the early 90s when the game was released. The geography is very constrained; there's a kidney bean shaped city surrounded by water with only a thin connection to a mainland beyond (bridge, probably, although not clear) and there's another bridge that connects this island to another island to the right, which appears to be east southeast. The images from the stages in game as well as pre-game demos and other images here and there clearly show a very large suspension bridge, that connects these two islands to each other. They also show a dynamic skyline full of skyscrapers. There is a subway, which is perhaps a bit odd in a place like Miami where the water table is high and the city is traditionally lashed by hurricanes, but hey, I said it was only loosely based on Miami, right? There's a big amusement park, the famous Pao Pao Cafe (which appears over and over again in SNK games) and a beach with pretty good waves that are apparently good enough to surf in, and a Japanese temple and garden. The town also seems to be surrounded by low mountains. At one point we see Terry on a high, craggy rock looking out at the town, and we can see the mountains surrounding the town. In fact, looking back at that list of characteristics, its clear that although Southtown is supposedly set in Florida, clearly the point of reference, and the real American city that it most closely resembles, is Honolulu. Considering how many people of Japanese ethnicity live in Hawaii, and how many actual Japanese people visit the islands for vacation, maybe that's not surprising for a game made by Japanese. Besides movies and soldiers on the bases in Okinawa and whatnot, that's probably the most likely frame of reference the Japanese have of America.  The screenshot of a map above seems to indicate that what we see is the majority of the town, but as we'll see shortly, that quickly changed, as every other game had the original Fatal Fury part of Southtown as merely "East Island"--SNK's version of Manhattan to the greater New York City on the mainland.

Art of Fighting - 1992's Art of Fighting was a significant departure and significant addition to the canon of Southtown related details. For one thing, it completely ignores the East Island altogether, and develops part of the "mainland" area of town that's west and north of East Island. Because of this complete lack of overlap, all of the locations that it shows are completely new. This game also takes place during the heyday of Hong Kong theater, i.e. in the 70s. This is problematic in some ways. Because the Art of Fighting games take place in the same continuity as the Fatal Fury games, but a good fifteen to twenty years earlier, the characters from one can't really appear in the same games as the characters from the other without being aged. That never stopped SNK, though--Ryo showed up in Fatal Fury Special, and of course, all kinds of characters from both series appeared in all of the King of Fighters games. Arguably, it was the concept of combining the Art of Fighting characters with the Fatal Fury characters that led to the genesis of the King of Fighters series in the first place. "Officially" the King of Fighters continuity is different from that of Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, which is how they can all exist at the same time without Ryo being old enough to have his own kids fighting in Fatal Fury. 

The first Art of Fighting game establishes that an industrial port district is located on the western tip of the city, including a Navy base of some kind sufficient to berth an aircraft carrier. This was on another smaller island. The "mainland" has several seedy downtown slums, Mac's Bar, a run-down biker bar, a Chinatown district, the restaurant King works at, L'Amor (in later games, particularly in King of Fighters, she actually seems to own these restaurants) and last but not least, another different Japanese temple and garden spot. Overall, the place seems to be a rough town without a lot of social graces. Gangs are (as in Fatal Fury the year before) shown to be probably the most important player in the city, and poverty and crime are shown in stark relief. Is this because that's the focus of the games, and not necessarily indicative of the city overall? Yeah, probably, but still... it's clearly a major facet of Southtown still. Also, as you can see, the nature of the new locations further the resemblance to Honolulu rather than to Miami, and the gangs specifically make it feel like a Hawaii 5-0 rip-off in a way.

Art of Fighting 2 - In 1994, Art of Fighting had a sequel. In this game, for the first time, the parts of Southtown from the two series are merged into a map that shows them both, in context with each other, and which also show some of the more far-flung suburbs and regions just outside of town, including the airport, a national park, and the ritzy neighborhoods with expansive grounds where Robert Garcia's manor is, for instance. It shows a river running through the eastern edge of town, and even has a number of streets named. A few locations, like the horse barn of "National Park" and Crawley's Air Field actually seem to be almost rural in nature, but they're far to the northeast of the downtown area. Chinatown looks more like downtown Hong Kong than it does an American city with a Chinatown, which is actually kinda nifty. And of course, many locations are the kinds of things that you'd expect to see in most large cities, especially with an Asian minority population--martial arts dojos, fitness clubs, and places like that.

Fatal Fury 3 - The next year, 1995, had the release of Fatal Fury 3. After jumping across the globe for Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special, we return to Southtown, a more contained story, Geese as the villain, and we get another view of the town. This time, the geography is more consistent with that of Art of Fighting 2, although naturally it showcases some different locations. There's a mainland East Side park, with a large aquarium. This can also be seen in the distance from Hon Fu's stage, which is an open air construction elevator in the far western port town part of the city. East Side park also has a large ferris wheel, for instance, and a zoo, as well as a Disney-esque castle. There's also a rocky hill or small mountain near the park. From the top of the elevator, you can see out over the water. There's a small island in the bay that has a building or monument of some kind built on it. We also see that there's a second Pao Pao Cafe on the mainland, making that a small chain rather than simply a stand-alone place. There's a large cathedral in Pioneer Plaza, and the National Park is shown here to be a tropical swamp complete with alligators and weird carved tiki heads or some other kind of idol. And Dream Amusement Park looks less like an amusement park and more like an actual cowboy town stuck in the middle of the city--although in the first daylight version of the park, you can barely see the skyscrapers through the haze; it's only for the sunset and afterwards stages that the skyline is clearly defined. And near the run-down industrial district of port town is a train station, South Station, which oddly enough seems to sport a lot of steam engine traffic. I think that has more to do with the designers at SNK (and at Capcom, for that matter) being obvious railfans than anything else--there's a surprising amount of train featuring stages in games from both companies. Sound Beach is clearly not all just sandy breakers, as wharves and other more built up areas are shown. We see Delta Park, yet another area with Chinese style statues. And finally, we also see that there's a big airplane manufacturing facility at or near the airport.

Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves - The final Art of Fighting game leaves Southtown behind and explores Mexico of the 1970s. Fatal Fury Real Bout doesn't give us new locations, although it does show us a few surprising sides to the locations we already know. We see more of Sound Beach again, looking less like a beach and more like an entertainment district waterfront. East Side Park has a weird indoor greenhouse/garden/shopping mall with a gigantic Easter Island-esque head. Terry, the most famous native of Southtown, appears to spend some time in the American southwest, at a lonely gas station on a wide stretch of road, with buttes and mesas in the background. Of course, it's always possible that the designers didn't think that that would be far away from southern Florida too and just aren't very familiar with American geography.  Or, they simply didn't care very much.  Neither would be surprising. 

We get slightly different views of Sound Beach again in Real Bout Special. It's really not until Real Bout as a subseries is over and the Mark of the Wolves game is released that we get a major new take on Southtown, though. Here we're treated to an all new geography that seems completely unfamiliar, as well as all new locations. The latter isn't too weird, given that another generation (about) is supposed to have passed between the mainline Fatal Fury games and this last chapter in the series, but the former is harder to explain. Careful examination, however, shows that these new locations are all located just to the east of the other Fatal Fury locations, and the tip of East Island, and Geese Tower's little island can just be seen on the western edge of the map. This Southtown is actually supposed to be an all new city, and given the rural areas located in the land between them, it looks like they must be twin cities that are located very close to each other, like Dallas and Fort Worth, but all part of a single expanded metro area. Second South, as the new city is called, has many features in common with the original Southtown, including having a concentrated, highly urbanized island connected by bridges to the mainland, Asian ethnic neighborhoods, a harbor, train station, slums, a pro wrestling arena, a large church, and it even has the Sarah Forest and Barbaroi Falls, which are near the National Park area shown in earlier games. Maybe the falls indicate a rapidly changing elevation, which would be consistent with some of the stuff shown in some games that has the town nestled amidst some low mountains. It would also go a long way towards explaining how more temperate forests can be in the same place as a tropical, swampy rainforest.

King of Fighters - NESTS - Southtown featured prominently in the NESTS saga too; notably in that the finals for King of Fighters 2000 were supposed to take place there, and at the end of the game, Southtown is destroyed by the space-based Zero Cannon! Oddly, that is hardly mentioned again, and not long afterwards, it seems to be thriving again. I think it more likely that there was an attack on the city, which did cause some destruction, but that it wasn't as extensive as all that after all. A few buildings downtown were destroyed, people were killed, the nation was shocked, etc. but life went on, most of the city remained intact, and within a few months life went to to something not too unlike normal. Curiously, although the King of Fighters series, like the Street Fighter series, sent fighters all over the globe to fight, the locations in '99 and '00 are not identifiable as belonging to a specific country. In fact, it's possible that they are all located in Southtown (with the exception of the flying rocket ship and the satellite, of course, from King of Fighters 2000)--the only one that is problematic is the Korea stage from '00. Which could possibly indicate a Koreantown neighborhood. Since one shows up in Second South in Mark of the Wolves that's not even a difficult bridge to cross. The "Egypt stage" from '00 was even labeled as a Dream Amusement Park locale in at least one source I've seen before which, if true, would strengthen the notion that almost all the stages from both games actually represent Southtown localities. It doesn't really add significantly to the canon of what is available in Southtown either--it postulates that Krizalid's secret base was underneath Southtown somewhere. Since the Zero Cannon attacked Southtown in an effort to destroy the NESTS base, that's not even new news. A natural history museum, complete with dinosaur skeletons, and an Egyptian themed part of Dream Amusement Park, complete with lots of sand and pyramids, are the only significant adds in terms of what the stages show--we already had an aquarium, factories, various parks and urban areas, an airport, and a Chinatown.

Although not strictly necessary, other location stages here and there from King of Fighters titles might represent localities in Southtown. Notably, the Sound Beach stage in King of Fighters XI most certainly does. The sunset over an industrial landscape which is the "USA Stage" from King of Fighters '95 would be consistent with a Southtown location, as would several stages from King of Fighters '96 including the docks of the Yagami team stage, the waterfront of the New Ikari stage, and the restaurant of the New Women Fighters stage. And the two USA stages from King of Fighters '98 could easily fit here too; the basketball stage at the base of a large suspension bridge (which is a remake of a very similar stage from King of Fighters '94) looks like a slightly different angle of the bridge seen in Fatal Fury and Real Bout Fatal Fury, and the train yard, like Southtown's trains, features a surprising amount of steam still in use. And finally, the ultra non-canonical King of Fighters Neowave has unidentified locations, almost all of which could be reasonably placed in Southtown as well, including the interior of yet another factory, more urban suspension bridges, another view of a train yard, another view of a working dock, the interior of a large clock tower (possibly the same clock tower we see the exterior of in the Dreamcast version of King of Fighters '99?), and the interior of what could possibly be the Howard Arena temple grounds!

While there's no really compelling reason to place any of these locations in Southtown really, except for the destruction of Southtown as part of the NESTS story, which hints at a NESTS base being underground in Southtown somewhere, there's also no reason not to place these other stages from various KoF titles, especially 99, 2000 and Neowave, within Southtown itself. With few exceptions, all it does is add another view to locations that we already knew Southtown had, or could reasonably presume that a city like Southtown would have anyway.

Of course, as has been said before, the Fatal Fury and the King of Fighters continuities are not supposed to overlap. For my purposes, this is immaterial--I'm not only collapsing the continuities (or more likely, utilizing the King of Fighters continuity, adapted, since it already adapts the Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury continuities itself.) In somewhat brief and genericized terms, that means that we know a little bit about Southtown, where it came from, and how it got to be the way it is when we first encounter it. Made up of the same ethnic mix that populates most of the US, Southtown also has a stronger than normal Asian influence on some of its architecture, some of its neighborhoods, monuments and decorations at various parks and other places around town, and in its restaurants. Organized crime has always been a major problem in Southtown; both Italian mafia as well as Asian groups--Yakuza and Triads--have worked over the city. Geese Howard's Howard Connection, a much more organized outfit with a legitimate face, clamped down on most of the organized crime in Southtown, incorporated the best and brightest of its former rivals (Mr. Big), and marginalized or eliminated the rest. Unknown to Geese, however, a major international syndicate set up shop here. They perhaps flew under his radar because they didn't dabble as much in the "day to day" crime of smuggling, racketeering, and whatnot, and instead focused on high tech illegal experimentation with human cloning, AI, and the creation of super-powered human beings.  This new gang is NESTS, an international conglomerate originally birthed in the Yakuza, but now multi-ethnic and multi-headed.  NESTS itself stands for Nipponese Expatriate Shadow Trading Syndicate, and is sometimes nicknamed the Shadow Law, or Shadaloo.