Overpowered?

We’ve been pretty busy behind the scenes here at NewChallenger, as the changing of the guard at the Youtube NewChallenger.Net Group for cool fighting game footage has been shifted in my posession I’ve been tossing around some stuff to kind of get a feel for the kind of footage I think deems itself most impressive to the average Joe gamer who might not necessarily understand a lot of the common terminology tossed around the fighting game community at will. One of the original goals of this site ( as I understand it ) is to help the regular gamer off the street understand just what the heck is going on in all these match videos, combo videos, and otherwise crazy video clips. So I think a good vantage point to take around this time, to help people gain just a tad more insight that they may or may not have had in terms of being educated consumers, is to help people understand just what makes something “broken” in a fighting game ( and I again highly recommend that any gamer spending their time getting into a niche genre of games – whether it be fighters, FPS, shmups, bemani / rhythm, puzzle, pachinko, whatever – invest some time lurking and collecting information on exactly what goes on between the gamer, other gamers in the community, and the game itself before deeming it worth the investment ). See, to the untrained eye, a lot of what people see on Youtube will just pass right over their head as anything the common joe could do with a Gameshark or a programmable pad. There’s a lot of negativity being passed around in those comment boxes on Youtube, saying things like “Oh, he sucks, I’m so much better, anyone could do that”, and at the same time there’s a lot of vids being lambasted for the players within being “cheap” or “unfair” ( now would also be a good time for that specific group to go and check out David Sirlin’s Playing To Win book ). And I happen to labor under the possible misconception ( or plain sight realism? ) that this could all be avoided if we look at things in terms of simple game design, more to the point, let’s take specific characters, some of the most dominant characters in fighting games of today and yesterday, and see just what about them exactly is unfair / cheap / broken. Then, taking that into account, and also accounting for the fact that when you go to a videogaming tournament, obviously you’re there to win, or trying your damndest. No poker player is going to pull up a full house, know exactly what it does and what it’s capable of, and just fold his hand, right? And once we see what some characters in some games are truly capable of, we can weigh that against our current gamer mentality in the USA, and begin to see where we stand.

I’m about a hundred and ten percent sure that when the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fighting game debuted on the SNES in the US, there wasn’t really a big boom in the tournament scene about it. I’m also a hundred and ten percent sure that when the people who designed Ivan Ooze did so, they weren’t looking to create a balanced character. Moreso, they were creating a game based around a license, and when you have a guaranteed seller due to cross merchandising, who needs to test a game? Leave that to people like comedisdegno and Arcade Extreme with their Basic MMPR Combos vid, which goes a long way to point out that the OTG system, though you can mash faster to get up, leaves you completely vulnerable to ridiculous juggles in most instances. Then there’s the now-classic Team Best From Now’s Ivan Ooze Is Broken vid, which pretty much hits the nail on the head; take a game where each character can OTG ( off the ground, meaning hit you on the ground before recovery takes place, for those not in the know ), is capable of jump-cancel take-you-to-the-wall style juggles, but are for the most part basic in terms of design, and add a character who has a get out of jail free card in the form of a move that escapes hitstun, has a pillar that OTGs and forces block AND leads to combos on hit, AND everything he does is safe from punishment, and what does that lead to? Character imbalance. I’m not sure I can immediately think of a game that is a worse example of how to create such.

For those not familiar with how the Guilty Gear series has evolved over the years, I’ve been talking to some GG players who are the hardest of hardcore, and the general consensus is that over the period of Guilty Gear’s success among the fighting game crowd, by far the most dominant character has to be the #Reload version of Eddie / Zato-1. Undoubtedly in no small part thanks to the ability to summon a smaller character who can attack simultaneously with him in tandem, much like D’Bo of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Eddie can zone and control space over the entire screen, has the best rushdown in the game bar none ( yes, even better than Ky ) with mixups that occasionally seem impossible to block or predict ( mostly due to the fact that a big part of it is, in fact, unblockable ). In #Reload, Eddie had the advantage of doing insane amounts of damage output, yet another facet of fighting game design that is often overlooked ( fortunately now we are in the digital age of downloadable patches and and such is true may start seeing less redux style rereleases and more online updates / patch downloads, kind of how the FPS community grew – this is especially true of doujin fighters ). You can get kind of a glimpse of his potential by watching this video, which I believe is titled Nemuri, and shows off a bit of his unblockable game and the damage resultant. And to bring things up to date a bit, although Testament and Slayer have moved to top tier status in GG Eddie retains his legacy of dominance, having acquired a setup that involves three unblockable segments of attack one after the other ( used around 2:30 in this match ).

Hokuto No Ken, since its Tougeki SBO appearance, appears to have been played to the point where the characters have laid themselves out in an organized fashion across message boards and are nicely tiered from each other. From the very beginning though it was generally agreed upon that Toki was in a tier of his own, being capable of things some fighting game characters only dream of. The PS2 release of the game toned down Toki’s throw, which he used to be able to capitalize off of in grand fashion with teleport combos that meant your life bar would be waving you goodbye. Primarily though, he has the ability to warp around the screen at will ( and I’ve noticed that, in the spirit of keeping this game development related, it seems ridiculously hard for most developers to program a character with a teleport that makes their sprite disappear and reappear without giving them some kind of abuseable invulnerability ), and in tandem with his attack strings mixed in with his arsenal of throw followups and counters he becomes far and away the deadliest character, almost impossible to retort to with some of the game’s cast. Endless Fight’s Toki CMV is still probably the best example of how far set apart from the rest he really is.

On a semi related note, last blog entry I was comparing Fighters History Dynamite to Super Street Fighter II X in terms of how they’re about even in terms of balance. Well I have to admit I kind of lied about one particular facet of that, and I say that because I tend to play favorites to FHD mostly because I find Karnov so fun to play as a character. He dominates a fair amount of the game, with ridiculously intricate blockstrings involving his Balloon move that has invincibility for a huge duration of it, not to mention the move allows him to float in close and cancels in and out of air normals ( so you can do jump D, balloon in closer, falling A,A, balloon, until the ground, ground blocked string, scissor kick, instant half circle back reverse tiger knee motion punch for a balloon or fireball to force them to block and then walk up throw, etcetera ). He also tends to cause random dizziness states when crossing up, which he does a LOT. His options are so good it’s hard not to mention him when bringing up characters that sort of embody this ongoing trend of possible programmer oversights that lead to character superiority. One thing I haven’t been able to master with him is a glitch with the game that enables him, much like the aforementioned Toki, to warp from one end of the screen to the other at will, which makes him even nastier to fight. Just look at this example of the Warp Glitch from the Insanity Naked Hunter Fighters History Dynamite: The Great Grapple DVD preview, and tell me he’s not scary.

What’s interesting yet again is that you have to wonder for a moment if a lot of the anime licensing that goes into fighting games lead to publishers forcing developers to put out games that have huge oversights. Gundam Wing Endless Duel for the SNES wasn’t nearly as bad as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Fighting Edition and, in terms of comparison, is a tad more balanced, but still has problems. Deathscythe, like Karnov before him and like Toki from Hokuto No Ken ahead of him, can warp around at will as his normal dash, but it’s only due to the EX Buster Shield being cancellable into his teleport-like dash that he can create an infinite. What’s scariest though, as seen in this Deathscythe Tutorial Vid by Dracula X, is that due to the previous OTG imbalances that team faced with the Power Rangers game he can actually OTG you and dash INTO the infinite after the EX shield toss leaves you standing up! Frightening, or ingenious?

As a side note, Deathscythe would go on to have ridiculous unblockables, huge, nigh unavoidable projectiles in Gundam Battle Assault 2, and in Gundam Battle Assault 3 the LaGowe mobile suit ( you know, the one from Gundam Seed that looks like a combination of a Zaku, a panther and something out of Zoids – by the way, anybody played that Zoids fighter? ) would have a ridiculous infinite in the form of linking light attack, light attack, quarter circle forward hard attack, hard attack into each other over, and over, and over again ( found this out today after playing it for all of twenty minutes, lol. ) But I digress.

Recently the Big Bang Beat development team NRF released a 1.02 patch, and the community seems to be hesitant to accept a lot of the changes which are seemingly a bit nonsensical ( kind of how the last Akatsuki Blitzkampf update made Anonym, one of the worst characters in the game, even worse ). From what I understand a lot of the game’s intrinsic imbalances, which are preventing it from acquiring the same star treatment that games like Melty Blood Act Cadenza and Arcana Heart are receiving, are attributed to the OTG system still leading to ridiculousness like you would see in matches like this one and one sided victories like you would see in this one. My guess is that oncoming patches will certainly improve things, but the newly implemented “Big Bang Break” feature, which you can read more about over at bbb.mizuumi.net, kind of worries me.

For a while I hadn’t really been familiar with why it was that I didn’t see any Japanese matches of JoJo No Kimyou Na Bouken featuring the character Petshop, until I found out that he’s ridiculously top tier. Like insanely broken tier. It’s kind of like if you took the aforementioned #Reload Eddie, with all of his mixups involving unblockables and leading to crazy damage, and put him in a game like Vampire Savior, gave him constant flight, a tiny hitbox and a braindead overhead in the form of a huge ice stalactite that will force you to block it high ( reference this Arama Match Video Digest at approximately 3:30 for an example of his high low pressure ) , and really at that point, unless you can Guard Cancel like a madman you’ll never be able to press any kind of advantageous situation. That’s one of the fatal flaws of a lot of fighters; disregarding talk of frames for the moment ( since that word seems to scare a lot of newcomers away ), momentum can make or break a game, and if you create a character that is essentially a walking one hit kill, nay, a walking one hit win button, then you create a lot of potential dislike for your product. ( Again, I love JoJo, but I can definitely see why Petshop is softbanned. )

Because I could fill the rest of the internet along with this space up with all the factors that lead to character imbalance / superiority, I’m going to just run down some more bulleted examples and then call it quits for now:

- In the Arcadia sponsored King Of Fighters 2003 event ( Flame Of Nova ) matches between Japan’s top players, it was declared without question that Duolon was far and away the best character. The aforementioned teleport game was ever present, along with a command grab that led to an infinite, several damaging resets and team combos using the Multi Shift Attack that would decidedly kill most characters 100% of the time hardset him in god tier status. Nowadays, in King Of Fighters Maximum Impact Regulation A, Duolon’s little sister Xiaolon upholds that tradition in matches like this one that clearly show that she has all the trappings of a dominator – warping around at will, OTG sillyness, unstoppable keepaway and ludicrous speed.

- One of the names that crosses everyone’s lips at some point as far as fighting game insanity goes is Magneto from Marvel VS Capcom 2. He’s not even the best character in the game at this point ( Sentinel and Storm have been agreed by the community to be slightly better ) but his status is legendary. He can make or break a match, he can kill off entire teams by himself without assists or die in a matter of seconds, he’s mind numbingly fast, has offense that can destroy you for blocking the wrong way, and has numerous infinites and 100% death combos at his disposal to annihilate you with. My personal favorite exhibition of his true potential, unquestionably, is still Magnetro2K’s Magneto Video, which entirely speaks for itself.

- Uploaded this one from UltimateMK.com – this vid is kind of dated, and I’m not entirely sure if the now much bigger Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 community would agree with this one since the best character in the game may or may not be Human Smoke now ( he can kill anyone in two mistakes, but then again Kung Lao can kill you in one ), but EWAShock and Konqrr’s Kabal Tactics and Mixup Montage still goes to show you how one particular move or tactic can make or break a character. Kabal’s spin dash still befuddles me on how a game design team would create a move that goes full screen, sets up a forty to sixty percent life combo plus allows the character to mix them up on wakeup by baiting an unsuccessful normal attack then spin dashing them again and combo’ing them to death for the win. Although, UMK3 is very balanced, much in the same way as Super Turbo is, which reinforces my point that truly balanced games are ones where every character is equipped with some tools of insanity, some better than others, but with a good spread. Kabal, as dominant as he is, is countered by a lot of tactics, and unlike a lot of the characters listed above, can be heavily punished if he gets predictable. A good fighter is like chess – the best pieces, with the best abilities, can still be captured should you position them wrongly.

- I had to give this vid a nod because it made me laugh the first time, but when I thought through a lot of what they pointed out, it prompted a lot of thought towards this blog entry. ANBU’s Itachi Love is not exactly a tribute, more like a divorce letter ( Profanity / Vomiting sounds warning on this one, since their music choice is Eminem’s “Puke” – feel free to turn down your volume before clicking ). Again you kind of begin to see that when an anime license is involved, not a lot of thought goes into character balance. And again, no disrespect to the show involved, just, you can tell that the people who made the vid would prefer a more balanced fighter over one that has such immense advantages.

- Much like CE Bison and Karnov, Raphael from TMNT Tournament Fighters on SNES has the advantage of consistently getting the opponent dizzied from what seems like only slight opportunities. You can see it in MKK Kompetitive’s excellent Raphael tutorial; almost everything he does leads to a knockdown where he can make you block with a fireball placed over you, or a dizzy where you’ll struggle fruitlessly to mash back to recovery. If Makoto from Street Fighter III 3rd Strike got half the stun potential Raphael did, she’d be beating Ken, Chun and Dudley ninety percent of the time in KSK Gamervision ranking battles.

-I’ve only really seen one good example on Youtube of this, and this kind of shows you that sadly Youtube is lacking in a lot of what it could potentially have in terms of rare fighting game footage; Toad from X-Men Next Dimension is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous fighting game characters ever to grace the screen, and the reason for him being so is actually very simple – as long as he has super meter stocked he can relaunch you off the ground with a super. He really doesn’t have to do much. In his game, the only characters that really give him trouble are Super Armour types who can counter hit him out of his rushdown, but as long as he has meter he can poke away until he can hit confirm a combo that will launch you into an air to ground to relaunch series. Major props to MrWhiteFolks, as this is actually one of my personal favorite combo videos of all time: Pimp Productions Holiday Combo Video has a very nice bit of Toad usage right around 6:00 near the end of the video, which contains some neat Halo, Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, Kakuto Chojin and X:Men Next Dimension goodness.

The case can actually be argued that Street Fighter II The World Warrior had broken, imbalanced gameplay simply due to the idea that in a real fight, i.e. fisticuffs on the street or a boxing match, you probably would be considered cheap or dirty should you throw a ball of fire from your hands at someone, or throw a blocked jab only to take advantage of their momentary blocking positioning to heave their entire body over your head and across the street twenty feet away. I think really it boils down to three factors; you have to consider if or why a programmer considered certain aspects of the games you play valuable or viable to the gamer ( overall game technical design ), you have to consider if there is a counter or available response to a tactic that someone could eyeball and perform on reaction ( overall game balance ), and you have to consider whether the game itself still remains enjoyable after certain tactics, strategies or moves in the game have been thoroughly tested ( overall game quality design ). I think if more of the gaming masses thought along the lines of them being game testers and reported bugs they found, or wrote more FAQs on games they found interesting, or took more of a headfirst dive into their gaming experience, then the educated consumer aspect would kick in and you’d hear less complaint about game imbalance. On the other hand there will always be tiering as long as there are fighting games with multiple characters with different movesets; the question then becomes not one of choosing to play casual or tournament, the question becomes one of choosing to play and derive enjoyment from a title or choosing not to play at all.

See you next time!

-Chibita Jr / 4649 / Rez

On “Tourney Worthy” Games.

Now, I’m really hoping that the audience this post is intended to reach is as open minded as I hope they potentially are, or else a lot of this may swoop directly over their head. See, for a while I have believed that the best fighting games – and let me actually start this by saying NO fighting game in the world is without some form of glitchy, maligned imbalance, or else things like tiers and the like would never be considered – the best fighting games in the world are the ones that stick with you personally long after you’ve found the broken stuff, long after you’ve learned every character, long after you’ve had dreams about new strategies or things to pull off in them. Truly good fighting games lead you into almost a compulsory, infectious state of giddyness, especially in the kind of situation where you might be on your way to an arcade with some friends who might not have the same interests you do, and while you try and not betray your inner thoughts ( “God, I can’t wait to play that game again!” ), everyone can tell what the first thing on your mind is. And let me just say it now: I think this whole “tourney worthy” thing that a good partition of the gaming community is on now is really, at base instinct, a value judgement. And no one can say it’s not. It’s an emotional decision, and to be honest, I am vastly underqualified to make that decision for someone, and anyone who would tell you a game is, or is not, worthy of having a tournament based around it, is acting on pure gamer emotion. Whether or not that emotion is misplaced depends on factors I can’t even begin to list; this is such a loaded question, such a catch-22 that I almost feel like I’ll be lynched afterward. Fact of the matter is, though, at the end of the day the decision of what games are worth your time belongs solely to you and no one else.

So, in order to somewhat divert that somewhat generalized statement, allow me to rattle off some games that I think that the tourney-going crowd would, assuming they sat down and actually took the time to dissect the mechanics of them, particularly find interesting, if not worthy of putting hard earned time, money, and muscle memory towards.

(1) Garou: Mark Of The Wolves – I cannot stress how much this game gets overlooked by the tourney crowd. The yomi levels and metagames are intrinsically similar to 3rd Strike ( and hey, no Genei-jin BS! ) Check out the finals of the 8/18/07 Howard Arena 2 On 2 tournament right here on Nocturnal / JaimeDL’s Youtube.

(2) Akatsuki Blitzkampf – One of the best fighting games in existence IMHO, doujin or otherwise, and criminally being overlooked. And now has a peer to peer system in place for smooth online play. Check out the Mizuumi.net wiki for it here to find out more about it, and check out this nice Japanese match from Kurousami to see how intense and fun it can be.
(3) Karnov’s Revenge / Fighters History Dynamite – I’m not sure how many of you remember game magazines completely throwing games into the bottom of the barrel because they were supposedly Street Fighter clones / ripoffs ( hi EGM! ). But while FHD has obvious similarities, I for one think that Insanity Naked Hunter’s DVD footage of their huge Great Grapple event hosted for this game, coupled with insane matches like this one from Game41, speak for themselves. The game has only as many balance issues as Super Turbo does, and in my mind both that and this game are classics.

(4) Breakers Revenge – Another game that got the “SF clone” stick with unwarranted fervor. Amazing that this game still holds up after 10 years as an amazingly impressive, solid, balanced fighter. Watch this match from KinnikuSuguru’s Youtube and note the impressive defense by the Sho player and impressive offense by the Tia player.

(5) World Heroes Perfect – Seriously, with the console release of World Heroes Gorgeous, this game better get more exposure than it’s gotten in the past. It’s a value judgement to say it’s worth your time, but matches like this one from Playland-Pulse and the insanity therein show that this game is insanely fun ( that and it’s got Rasputin’s infamous Field Of Dreams super, free win right there ). It’s balanced, has a varied range of characters, and you should try it if you like any of the games listed so far.

(6) Fatal Fury Special – Fatal Fury Battle Archives Volume 1 has this gem on it, as soon will Xbox Live Arcade ( online play! ), so I would expect people to be all over this one. For a while this and Street Fighter 2 Turbo were neck and neck in popularity at the arcades. One of my favorite bits of footage on Youtube for this game would unquestionably be r3ko’s Billy Kane match video montage, an excellent example of how well the game can be played.
(7) Weaponlord – To be honest, I’ve heard many a tale of this game being played at an insanely high level at older tournaments, but have never seen it personally. Plus, on top of that, footage of the game is nigh impossible to find, like drawing blood from a stone. But this is a game that is very complex and did not get its time to shine due to being released in the twilight of the SNES and Genesis. However, the game is easily accessed via emulation and is mind-numbingly deep. Hanzo Hasashi of MKK has a few combo clips up for your viewing pleasure.

(8) Kaiser Knuckle / Dankuga – Now this is a tough sell. This game was on Taito F3’s system ( the same hardware that powers Darius Gaiden, the Puzzle Bobble series, Elevator Action Returns – one of the best games ever btw ), but didn’t get nearly as much attention as its hardware brethren, even though it was a hardcore, six button. white knuckle throwdown with incredible scrolling and effects ( wish I had vids, but the net seems bare of them ). Even more confusing is the decision to have this game not show up on any of the Taito Memories or Taito Legends discs ( opting instead to include Violence Fight, which is comparatively terrible ). Anyway, the game works terrifically on MAME and looks and plays great, with awesome mechanics that you can check out in Goh_Billy’s excellent FAQ located here.

(9) Primal Rage – What a lot of people still don’t realize about this game is that it wasn’t developed by the people at Midway responsible for Mortal Kombat, but rather by a team working for Atari Games. The developmental style differs in the sense that this game is very chain heavy and has a magic series much like the Vampire series of Capcom fame, but is very balanced out in the sense that there are no infinites and there is a very well implemented damage scaling / protection feature. Definitely leans more toward its own feel than that of MK, and if you haven’t seen it I would strongly recommend watching MKK Team’s brilliant combo vid to see some of the possibilities. As far as accessibility, the game had a big rerelease through Midway Arcade Treasures Volume 2, which is still widely available.

(10) Metal Gun III: Shout Of The Arms – Still the ONLY good fighter maker fighting game out there. If you like characters like Cable in Marvel VS Capcom 2, or Marco of Metal Slug fame in Neo Geo Battle Coliseum, I can tell you right off the bat you’d love this game. High emphasis on projectile zoning and spacing, much like Touhou Immaterial and Missing Power ( you can also graze through bullets and projectiles by shield dashing through them, just like in IAMP ), but with far more hard rock and explosions. DandyDLC has a few matches against the CPU and in the vid info tells you where to get the demo if you’re interested.

(11) Killer Instinct 2 – You know what I always thought was the best thing about this game? I can distinctly remember the first day I saw someone finish a round with Jago against someone else, KO’ing them, and right before the “Ready” sign came up, Jago did this peculiar motion where he powered up his body. I had no idea what it did until the Sabrewulf player he was against came back and KO’ed him in the final round, only to watch in awe as Jago’s spirit jumped out of his body, slid in with DF,D,,DB+K and went into an Ultra combo for the win. This, much like Hokuto No Ken, Rage Of The Dragons and X-Men VS Street Fighter, is one of those games where while people may lambast the infinites and cry blood over character imbalance, the actual gameplay itself is so liberating and fun ( and not a turtlefest like the first KI, I might add ) that really, it brings to light what I’ve been saying: if you’re not having fun with the game then it’s not deserving of your time, simple as that, regardless of what others think. Plus, this game was a TON deeper than the last one, adding in Parrying, Throws and Throw Teching / Reversals, integral kara canceling of certain specials into others ( Jago’s Windkick to Tiger Upper comes to mind ), the ability to speed up or slow down your combo links and autodoubles to mixup someone trying to break it, and let’s not forget the advantages of the implemented super meter. Watch KIG’s thoroughly useful vid here if you’ve never seen it. I can only hope the game comes to Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console and takes advantage of the Wii Hori stick, because sadly the game isn’t emulated very well and the other only option is Killer Instinct Gold for Nintendo 64, which isn’t nearly the same thing.

(12) Cyberbots – A lot of people tend to gravitate toward developer or brand loyalty just because other people do the same, without knowing what they’re really getting themselves into. Capcom was a quality fighting game developer, and one of its finest hours is pretty much unknown among the masses who swear Capcom loyalty: Cyberbots. While at first glance being Vampire with robots instead of monstrous freaks of nature and with less buttons, this game innovated by being the first to use the Boost meter now so prevelant in recent games like Hokuto No Ken, The Rumblefish series, Big Bang Beat, et al. This, along with Vampire Savior, was also where you first began to see Instant Air Dash; some characters could IAD longer because their boosts didn’t go as far and didn’t use as much boost meter, allowing them to multi-boost chain dash around at will or double IAD on wakeup for instant overheads. The Mikado Cyberbots matches hosted by TRTerror’s Youtube, I must stress again ( starting to feel like a broken record ) are excellent.

Again I must stress, there’s been a lot of anxiety among some people in the fighting game scene lately, there’s been a million threads going, “Why doesn’t the mainstream industry recognize X game over Y game?”, or “why do a lot of tourney worthy games die out?”. On top of that, whenever a new game comes to the light, the immediate reaction en masse usually amounts to something akin to “It looks random, it doesn’t look like you can play it at high level”, etc. While I’m being very general here I’m sure we’ve all experienced the whole argument of “real games” over games that don’t get much attention. I’m just going to say this much: judging a game or a gamer based on appearances and without knowing pertinent fact makes you a follower and not a leader. It’s the same thing as playing theory fighter, or trying to fight a military battle when all you’ve had is VR training ( I knew I’d fit a MGS reference in here somewhere! ). Until you yourself have taken the extra mile to see if you’d like something, be it a game, a song, a band, whatever it may be, shallow value judgements will get your gaming experience nowhere. The games I’ve listed here are personal friends of mine I would like to see more people harbor a similar desire to play and find what’s fun about playing them against other people. No matter the tournament, it’s all about the gamers in the end. If the players aren’t having fun while playing each other, whether that comes from intimate strategies on manipulating your opponent and well calculated, chess like advances that lead to a strategy based victory, or whether that leads from accidentally running into that item in Smash at a high percentage and laughing when it knocks you off a cliff and into the horizon, if the fun isn’t there, there is no tournament.

Well now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, happy gaming! Coming down the pipe I’m trying to throw together a few video tutorials and various other projects, so please watch this space! We’ll be trying to update on a regular basis of at least five times a week!

The Obligatory Huge Pre-SBO post.

This might get kind of lengthy. You may want to go grab a drink or something before trying to digest all of this.

Mortal Kombat II is currently doing pretty well for itself via the PSNetwork among PS3 owners, amid minor emulation problems, disconnection errors in the Kombat Tomb and ping issues between players. Jim Carrey’s classic line from the seminal flick The Cable Guy about “playing Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam” may be about half true at this point, but netcode can only be so solid in non peer-to-peer connections, at least until there’s a universal standard for seamless online connectivity. (Mind you, I think this just opens a whole new way to hit people with Mileena’s top tier low jump HP sai all day until they cry…thanks Axem Black!)

To very quickly address the latest details of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 DS, a recent Ed Boon interview sees him stating that the port will include online play through friend code, peer to peer play with only one copy of the game necessary, and a redone Puzzle Kombat (from Mortal Kombat Deception) with touch screen support. UMK3 going portable after its revival through tireless online play on Xbox 360 Live Arcade is a very good thing.

Now, in approximately seven days or so, taking place 8/11 through 8/13, is Tougeki Super Battle Opera, and the culmination of a lot of the hopes and dreams of fighting game lovers. There’s a lot to anticipate: will we actually see the supposed Kamui infinite Japanese players have rumored about on 2ch / futaba in Arcana Heart? How will Shounen and Woshige fare in Guilty Gear XX Accent Core without the famed Bridget player Ruu on their team? ( Note that SBO rules that they cannot have a replacement ) And can notable A.B.A. player DIO, the best A.B.A. in Japan, sneak into the top three, or will he be stopped dead in the tracks of Kaqn’s vicious Order Sol? Will the King Of Fighters ‘98 play be dominated by the same names that ruled the Great Battle China VS Japan event, or will one of the GameChariot qualifiers dominate? Will Ogosho climb back into the top spots and defend his Neowave and KOF 2002 SBO wins? Will we finally see the true strength of Japanese Yoshimitsu play in Soul Calibur 3 AE, strength that could inevitably change the tier rankings? Who is the strongest Virtua Fighter 5 player right now? Can ANYBODY stop Team No Respect from winning Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection again? Can anything be done to stop Championship Edition Vega (M.Bison to us Americans) imbalance from ruling Hyper Street Fighter 2 Anniversary Edition? Will Satoken’s dominant Akiha Vermilion play have a clear shot at the Melty Blood Act Cadenza ver. B winner circle now that Niga’s Sion has no infinite? Are we hype for this event? You bet.

To speculate on games being considered for next year’s SBO (premature, I know), I’d have to say Tekken 6, King Of Fighters Maximum Impact: Regulation A, Sengoku Basara Xross and Battle Fantasia look like top contenders. Even Battle Fantasia, with Ashley’s Gatchi Drive + Heat Up infinite that looks like something out of Street Fighter Zero 3.

But hey, Hokuto No Ken was there, so…

I don’t think I’ve addressed Shugendo yet, but it looks promising, especially for aspiring fighting game developers who want to show their creations in an online setting. Essentially it’s a Mugen derivative (and as such, uses similar development tools) with the potential for a far more balanced engine and an integrated network mode. Some players will of course get a kick out of playing each other online with Cheap Boss Type, Omega Tom Hanks and Dragonclaw, but there lies the potential for original ideas and settings within Shugendo custom builds, and I hope innovation wins out in the end.

World Heroes Gorgeous comes to PS2 on October 18th in Japan, sporting ports of World Heroes, World Heroes 2, World Heroes Jet and World Heroes Perfect (the main attraction being WHP by far, one of the best fighters ever IMHO). Also, Kizuna Encounter Super Tag Battle has been released on PS2, in case you’re a slowpoke like me and didn’t know yet, and the game is well worth your time if you like SNK’s fighters.
Interesting note: Arc System Works is developing Cho Nekketukoukou Kuniokun Dodgeball for Nintendo DS (!!!), as reported by Magic Box thanks to the developers of Guilty Gear the game seems to be headed more in the fighting direction, with over 100 special techniques, a big focus on melee and an 8-player WiFi melee mode, sounds like good stuff.

I’d been wondering recently why there aren’t more devotees to Naruto fighting games in the US since the show seems to have become immensely popular through its Cartoon Network exposure. Naruto Narutimate Accel seems to be undergoing a relative amount of dissection over at our friends Crooked Jester, specifically in this forum (congratulations to Jaxel from Crooked Jester on winning Virtua Fighter 5 at Otakon by the way, he has a pretty mean Brad Burns), but it seems most fans have deemed Naruto Gekito Ninja Taisen EX for Wii to be a lot different from Naruto Gekito Ninja Taisen 4 in terms of playability and balance changes (Tenten being absolutely INSANE now).

The Dragonball Z Sparking series seems to be getting more attention as people get back into the second game as hype builds for the third and possibly final game in the series, Dragonball Z Sparking METEOR (Budokai Tenkaichi 3 to us gaijin). Hironobu Kageyama evidently cut an exclusive new song for the game, “Super Survivor”, which you can hear in the newest trailer for the game right here.

DirectTV’s Championship Gaming Series 2007 has ended, congratulations go out to the top Dead Or Alive 4 players Black Mamba ( Helena ) and Kasumi Chan ( Kasumi ). Funnily enough this leads into the first talks of Dead Or Alive 5’s developmental cycle, with DOACentral’s latest interview with Itagaki regarding CGS 2007 emphasizing Team Ninja’s new commitment to involving the community and implementing the ideas and feedback from top players. Good to hear.

Also, courtesy of XDest of DOAPlus be sure and check out the Book Of Destruction (worth a read for anyone who even remotely likes DOA, kind of like the DOA counterpart of Buktooth’s CVS2 Systems Guide).

Electronic Arts / EA is evidently developing a new Marvel licensed fighting game. Whether or not this is based on the Marvel Nemesis: Rise Of The Imperfects IP is beyond me, I’m just hoping they test the game a little better in order to prevent terrible glitches like this one from again resurfacing.

To talk sticks for a minute: for those looking for a specific PS3 stick or a good one with USB option, your options have widened a bit in the last month. You can now choose between Sega’s Virtua Stick High Grade, Hori’s Real Arcade Pro 3, Hori Fighting Stick 3 and the new Salaubi 4K, based on a Korean design. Tekken players evidently tend to prefer sticks modeled after this sleek design (Korean wavedashing comes to mind), so this stick is very good quality, and you can read more on it ( and all of the known Tekken 6 info so far ) right here over at SDTekken. At the time of this post all of these sticks were available at Play Asia.

Yes, you probably saw the new video up at Smash Dojo revealing the newly implemented Subspace Emissary Adventure mode. But did you notice that the vid leaks the fact that Peach is now confirmed as a character?
To Do List For Later: I noticed that for a good while Wikipedia had the Super Nintendo on the front page as a featured article, talking about its global success as the best selling console of the 16 bit era. Seeing as how it’s my favorite system of all time, at some point very soon I’ll have to show you guys some of the hidden gems of the SNES, fighting games that probably will never show up on the Wii’s Virtual Console (but SHOULD!).

Also, an article about the people behind Waku Waku 7 and a bunch of Waku Waku 7 fanboyism that you would probably not see anywhere else. Stay tuned!

Boss Battles.

So the latest major East Coast tournaments have been announced and now have dates. NEC / North East Championships in Philadelphia falls on December 1st and 2nd, and ECC 12.5  / East Coast Championships (the one I’m mainly stoked about) pops in at October 6th and 7th at Eight On The Break arcade in New Jersey. The interesting thing is that no games have been announced and the directors of both tournies, respectively, have been asking for new games to add to the lineup. Which is great, because that means that newer games like Arcana Heart, Melty Blood Act Cadenza Ver.B, Virtua Fighter 5, King of Fighters Maximum Impact Regulation A, Big Bang Beat, Akatsuki Blitzkampf and so on and so forth may get some play depending on the turnout and availability. So if you’re planning on going, make sure to support the underdog when they announce signups, even if it’s just to contribute to the pot, these games are definitely not shown enough love in the good old US of A.

Speaking of the US Melty Blood scene, RottenSashimi recently put up a vid that was too funny not to address:

Props to Zar The Biscuit / ZTB / Zartacus for going that extra mile to show the Aoko Aozaki love. >:3 Be sure to check out the rest of RottenSashimi’s Melty Blood Act Cadenza vids, and also check out darkdrizzle’s account for vids of Zar, Team Spooky and friends playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters at high level!

On both sides of the pacific, King of Fighters Maximum Impact Regulation A is getting a good amount of playtime with players noting all the updates and balance changes. G3Evolution has the first batch of US casuals, Kennyyck has some very good Xiaolon combo footage, and kijounokuuronn recently updated with japanese matches (which may or may not be from Henvoke).

User ronin830 recently updated with a batch of matches centered around Aniken, notorious for using Ken in Super Street Fighter II X, fighting Yaya’s Sagat. Not a good matchup for Ken if I remember correctly, so for those ST Ken players, steal anti-Sagat stuff from those vids. ^^;

TRTerror recently put up new Rumble Fish 2 matches among other things, which is kind of a dying game due to the conflict over the rights to the intellectual property resulting in no console release / Atomiswave only status, so do yourself a favor and check them out, keep the interest in this great game alive.

I’m not terribly familiar with the level of high level Super Smash Brothers Melee technique that goes into the realm of specific arts developed by specific players (the whole Wobbling thing was news to me), but it appears phanna has developed an interesting technique involving edge cancelling Jigglypuff’s Rest that makes Jiggly even more of a threat. Cool stuff.

Smash Bros. Dojo announced a newcomer to the series in the wee hours of the night: Ike from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. But I’m sure you knew that already, slow week for news.

And finally, one that burningfist/tobemorecrazy drug up from the depths of the internet, a video almost lost to time but rediscovered for your viewing pleasure: with big thanks going out to Mike Z, here’s probably the only real Inuyasha Sengoku Otogi Kassen combo video in existence.

Inuyasha Sengoku Otogi Kassen (Multi Character Combo Exhibition) by Mike Z