Fighting in the Street Part IV: The King of Fighters?

While all the hype behind MKII and SSFII was overwhelming US gamers (The two games were basically all that my friends and I would talk about at summer camp that year, outside of the X-Men), SNK released a game that would be more important to the evolution of fighting games than anybody realized. The King of Fighters '94 offered a unique gameplay experience, where players chose 3-on-3 teams, mostly made up of characters from other SNK fighting games; Ryo, Robert, and Takuma from Art of Fighting comprised one team, while Terry, Andy, and Joe from Fatal Fury were another. 

This meant that the SNK games were all part of a shared world, something not really ever explored in video gaming up until this point. Sure, Mario appeared in the original Donkey Kong game, Pin Ball and the Super Mario Bros. games, but that wasn't necessarily a shared universe; it was Nintendo re-using a character design for multiple games. King of Fighters was the first time we saw game characters in a shared world, like in comic books!

And not only were these characters in the same game, characters from different games were on the same teams; Yuri and King from AOF teamed with Fatal Fury 2's Mai Shiranui, and Kim Kaphwan from Fatal Fury 2 teamed with original characters Choi Bounge and Chang Koehan. 

In addition to characters from Art of Fighting and Fatal Fury, KOF '94 

featured the lead characters from the Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier games; So it wasn't just the SNK fighting games that were a part of this shared world. It was potentially SNK's entire game library!

Unfortunately, the hype behind Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II was so huge, The King of Fighters '94 got left in the dust. All of us serious fighting gamers knew it was there, but it wasn't making the US gaming magazine headlines.

And, really, why should it? Art of Fighting was a piece of trash game. It had some great characters and cool ideas, but the actual gameplay was crap, and we all knew it. Fatal Fury was pretty okay, but nobody could find it in any arcades. Ikari Warriors and Psycho Soldier were both games whose days had come and gone - The inclusion of those characters was more of a fun bonus than anything else. And despite having 24 playable characters (the most in any fighting game up to that point), there were only 8 teams, and you were stuck with all 3 team members.

The King of Fighters was a fantastic idea that got held back because of its legacy and limitations. At least that year.

But by the end of 1994, Capcom's Street Fighter would be the first to do something that neither Midway nor SNK was really prepared for - Release a feature-length film!

Street Fighter starred martial arts movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile, in his quest to defeat M. Bison (played by Raul Julia), once and for all. The film was considered a financial flop, mostly because it sucked. Why was Chun-Li a news reporter? Why were Dee Jay and Zangief working for M. Bison? And why wasn't Balrog? Where was Ryu's trademark red headband? AND WHY WASN'T ANYBODY FIGHTING?! For a movie called "Street Fighter," there was WAY too much talking. 

I remember my dad taking my brother and I to see the film, and FALLING ASLEEP in the middle. I have to say, I wasn't much more impressed with the movie, myself. And for a 12-year-old kid to be disappointed in a movie based on a franchise he loved, that's saying something. I mean, there were parts of it that I liked, but it seemed as if the producers hadn't even TRIED to make a good movie.

I have a much fonder appreciation for the movie, now, as the tongue-in-cheek, campy ride that it was probably intended to be. My friends and I will often make daft references to it while playing games over XBox Live (the "Each Bison Dollar will be worth FIVE British Pounds!" line, and basically anything Dee Jay said being amongst our favorites to quote). I own it on DVD, but I only paid five bucks for it, because I refused to pay any more. It did, however, introduce me to Kylie Minogue, who has become one of my favorite pop singers.

But with the two-hit combo of the film and the release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which introduced even more moves and a new secret boss character into the SF world, Street Fighter was undisputedly the true "King of Fighters." At least for the next several months...

Fighting in the Street Part III: Super Kombat

MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAAT!

By the time September of 1993 rolled around, EVERYBODY had played Street Fighter. And those of us who stuck with it had all learned how to throw Hadokens with our eyes closed. We were Hundred-Hand Slapping the controllers fast enough to create Sonic Booms, and there were enough Tigers to shake a forest of sticks at.

So when Mortal Kombat came out on Mortal Monday, we were ready for a change. And what a change we had! Not only did a gallon of blood fly out of your enemy's head with every hit, at the end of a match, you could literally KILL your opponent! 

MK definitely inspired a faster style of gameplay - There were only two punch and two kick attacks, and a block button. But, unlike in Street Fighter, when you blocked in MK, you still took a bit of damage. But there was something lacking. MK had seven playable characters, five fewer than SFII Turbo, but everybody was completely different... Or did they?

See, the thing about Mortal Kombat was that, while everybody LOOKED completely different from each other (outside of Scorpion and Sub-Zero, who were yellow and blue versions of the same ninja outfit), everybody played basically identically. So it wasn't like you could get really good with Liu Kang and then have to re-learn how to play to master Rayden. You really just had to be good at Mortal Kombat, and learn which moves did the most damage and had the most priority.

And Sub-Zero was so incredibly overpowered in that game with his Freeze Ball and a slide attack that could hit opponents on the ground, that any high-level MK matches just came down to who hit the first Freeze Ball.

But by the time anybody really figured that out, Mortal Kombat had made its money, and a sequel was announced. Mortal Kombat II would feature twelve characters - Five returning, and seven brand-new fighters. Each character would now have TWO Fatality moves, and the entire game had been given a facelift; Not a single graphic from MK1 was re-used. The game was faster, bloodier, and more violent than ever. And gamers ate it up.

So, for fear of losing ground in the fighting game community that they started, what did Capcom do? Announce a new version of Street Fighter, of course! Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers introduced four new characters: Dee Jay, a dancing Jamaican kickboxer; T. Hawk, a native American powerhouse; Cammy White, a teenage British intelligence officer; and Fei Long, who looked, sounded, and fought just like Bruce Lee. In addition, the background stages and character portraits had all been completely re-drawn and looked better than ever, every character got at least one new move, and the four boss characters all had their non-special attacks completely re-animated.

It's hard to say which game was the "winner" in 1994, but one thing's for sure - Whatever was coming next from either company had some huge shoes to fill, or there was going to be trouble.

But was there enough room for a third entrant in this battle for fighting supremacy? Around the corner loomed a game that claimed to be the KING of fighters...

Fighting in the Street Part II: The Art of Fatal Kombat.

It took me just over a year, but I'd finally played and beaten Street Fighter II.  And there were already TWO new versions in the arcade; Street Fighter II: Champion Edition which included a couple of new moves, varied the speed and range of some of the previous moves, and allowed a character to face him or herself in a new color. It also re-colored all of the backgrounds, to allow for easy visual distinction. Champion Edition also allowed players to use the four boss characters; Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison. Finally, all 12 characters would be playable!

But by the end of 1992, we also had Turbo Street Fighter II: Champion Edition - Hyper Fighting, which replaced everybody's original color with a new 3rd color, and made the original colors the 2nd player color. It also increased the speed of the game by 15%, as well as introduced even more new moves, such as Chun-Li's fireball and Dhalsim's teleport.

In late 1992, Capcom announced that Champion Edition would be coming to the Sega Genesis (known as the Mega Drive in every non-US country ever), making the Genesis seem like the ideal console for SFII playing. Except that its controller only had three buttons, and SFII required at least six. And then in the late spring of '93, Capcom announced  Street Fighter II Turbo (a shortened title for the 3rd installment of SFII) for the SNES. In the summer of that year, SFII Turbo came to the Super Nintendo as announced, and SFII: SPECIAL Champion Edition came to the Genesis. What made this edition so special? It had all the same features as SFII Turbo on the SNES. So Capcom basically marketed the same game with two different titles.

Also, to make up for the lack of necessary buttons, Sega designed a six-button controller, and several third-party companies began designing 6-button arcade sticks, specifically to cash in on the popularity of Street Fighter II. Otherwise, players could press the Start button to swap the A, B, and C buttons between punches and kicks - Not ideal, but probably the best solution Capcom could've come up with that didn't destroy the integrity of SFII's control scheme.

I remember the first time we rented SFII Turbo on the Super NES, I was up until 3:26 am trying to beat the game as Vega. Even before I grew my hair out, I was intrigued by long-haired dudes. I think my early days of watching wrestling may have had something to do with that, as mullets were super-popular in the WWF during the early 90s. Plus, Vega had a claw similar to Wolverine from the X-Men comics, and had a cool sash. Besides, he was always the hardest character for me to beat in the original SFII, so he must be the best, right?

Anyways. I defeated all 12 characters that night, and didn't do anything besides play that game, outside of go to school and homework for the rest of the rental period. Oh, summer vacations...

In October of 1993, my brother got Turbo on the SNES for his birthday, the first copy of SF owned by somebody in my house! It was super-exciting. But by that time, Street Fighter's reign of excellence seemed to be coming to a close.

Midway, the company responsible for games like Smash T.V. and Arch Rivals, had released a competitor to Street Fighter II. Japanese company SNK had tried, but all of their games were only available on the Neo-Geo console.

Now, the Neo-Geo was a wonderful piece of machinery; It had all the power of an arcade cabinet, and hooked up to your home television. The controllers it came with were two arcade-quality joysticks, and the cartridges were the size of video cassettes. The games found in these cartridges were arcade-perfect realizations of SNK's games. The problem? The Neo-Geo cost $500. That's what consoles are released for today, but back in the early '90s, the SNES debuted at $250. Not to mention, due to the high quality of the Neo-Geo cartridges, the games were all priced at around twice what SNES, Genesis, and NES games cost. Sure, I could have my arcade-perfect port of SF-competitors Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, but not at a price anybody that *I* knew could afford.

But Midway did something else. Rather than try and beat Street Fighter at its own game, they used the cutting-edge technology available to them. Rather than create a fighting game with anime-inspired, hand-drawn graphics, as SNK's Neo-Geo games were doing, Midway used real people, and digitized the footage of these characters into game sprites. The lead designers for Midway's project, Ed Boon and John Tobias, also decided that SF wasn't violent enough for their tastes; They couldn't understand why, when Blanka dizzied an opponent, he didn't just eat their head. So ultra-violence was the theme of their game. Arcades had been abuzz of this smash hit for a few months, but in September of 1993, console gamers were told to prepare themselves...

Fighting in the Street: Part I

It began in February, 1992.

My mom had only recently moved into her first apartment after she and my dad separated. My brother and I spent the weekends at her place, and most weekends we'd go to the Blockbuster Video that was about a mile from her house. My bro and I would each pick out a video game to rent and then we'd get a couple of movies. But something different happened this particular Saturday. Blockbuster had a single magazine up by the checkout, called GamePro, and it featured what was the biggest craze in the world at the time - The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I begged with my mom to please get the magazine for me. I wanted-- No, NEEDED-- to know about this new Ninja Turtles video game coming out! She conceded, and I was happy as a pig in shit.

The magazine was awesome. Not only did it have a two-page story about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project on the NES, it also had reviews on a bunch of other games. I remember one for Megaman II on the Gameboy, and one for an arcade game that I'd never heard of before: Street Fighter II.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this game, but it had a very unique premise: You could select one of eight brightly-colored characters, each with their own look, fighting style, and attacks. And this game had SIX attack buttons! SIX!!! As an NES owner, I was used to two buttons. My cousins had gotten a Sega Genesis for Christmas, and they kept bragging that those controllers had THREE buttons. But six?! This was unheard of!

The next month, not only was Street Fighter II featured, it was the COVER ARTICLE. I enjoyed the previous month's GamePro, I had to get this next issue, too. Thankfully, mom obliged me yet again, and I went home with this magazine dedicated to SFII.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Street Fighter II preview in that initial issue didn't really do very much for me. I have only the vaguest recollections of looking at the article, reading it, and moving on to something far more interesting. And even when the March issue came out, it still wasn't a huge deal, but I figured the game had to be important if it got to be on the cover. After all, the month before, the NINJA TURTLES were on the cover! So SFII had to be at least almost as big a deal as a new TMNT game.

The subsequent months had articles and special insert pages telling the coolest moves and combos for each of the characters. Oh man, this game looked SO COOL! I couldn't wait to play it!

But wait was exactly what I would have to do. 

See, the Super NES had JUST come out, so there was no way I was going to get my parents to buy me one so quickly. Plus, I had managed to talk my dad into buying me TMNTIII on a rainy Monday evening in the spring, and an entire Sega Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog the very next day. Not only that, I had somehow managed to rack up something like 7 or 8 NES games at Christmas - Codename: Viper, Clash at Demonhead, NARC, and a new copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 to replace my broken one were just the tip of the iceberg. I had enough new games, so my dreams of a Super NES and the forthcoming Street Fighter II home release would have to wait.

I think it was October of the following school year, one of my new friends in 4th grade (whom I never saw again after that year) had gotten a Super NES for his birthday, and invited a bunch of us over to play  games with him. If I remember correctly (you have to understand, 1992 was 18 years ago for me), his parents were going to be at work late that night, and his older brother was okay with people coming over to play video games. He was telling us that he'd gotten Super Mario World, Final Fight, Contra III, and Street Fighter II.

Humminabwah!? Street Fighter II?! The game that I had been reading about in GamePro for A YEAR?! Yeah, I was gonna be there for that, I don't care what kind of trouble I might get in (turns out it was none).

I totally sucked at the game and lost every match, but holy crap, did I have fun! People were impressed that I knew all the special moves, even though I'd never played the game. I remember being pretty good with the manbeast, Blanka, although the fact that he turned around to do his crouching Roundhouse kick kind of threw me off.

That Christmas, Santa was kind enough to get me and my brother a Super Nintendo (along with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time...But more on that game in a future entry!), so the FIRST CHANCE I GOT, I rented Street Fighter II. AND HOLY CRAP WAS THIS GAME AMAZING!!! By this time, I had even memorized the code to play character vs. same character (Down, R, Up, L, Y, B at the "Capcom" logo screen), and I just could not stop playing.

As a ten-year-old kid, this game had been building up in my brain for a year. That was 1/10th of my entire life -- There was NO possible way that this game was going to be bad. None, period.

My first favorite character was Guile, because I could do the Sonic Boom and Flash Kick. I liked that he was an All-American "army guy," and his funny hair intrigued me. Plus, he had that weird upside-down jumpkick attack, and nobody else could do that.

It took me forever to finally beat the game, even on the lowest difficulty setting. But I was so proud when I finally did. I felt like I could do anything in that game, now that I'd toppled the evil M. Bison, and crushed his crime syndicate.

After a year of build-up, I had finally played and conquered Street Fighter II. But that wasn't the end of the journey, my fellow Geeks. No, it was only the beginning...

Virtua Fighter 5

I busted out my copy of Virtua Fighter 5 over the Labor Day weekend, on the XBox 360. I forgot how much fun that game was. As a fan of the series from the very first release in the arcades in the mid-90s, and playing countless hours of VF2 on the Sega Saturn (it was a pack-in game when I got my Saturn!), when VF5 finally came to the XBox 360, I had to be there, right away.

Virtua Fighter was the very first 3D fighting game. Its use of polygons instead of pixels was revolutionary at the time, and Sega definitely saw what the future of gaming would be, arguably before anybody else. Between VF and Sonic 3D Blast, Sega was all on top of making 3D games before 3D games were the norm. I wonder what happened?

Anyways. VF is much like other fighting games, in that you pick your martial artist and go head-to-head against other fighters from all over the world. The controls are complex in their simplicity; In addition to the 8-way Joystick/D-Pad, there are just three gameplay buttons; Punch, Kick, and Guard. Pressing combinations of P, K, and G will execute different attacks; For example, P+G is a throw attack for every character. K+G is usually a stronger kick attack. Throw in directional pressed on the joystick, and you've got an infinite number of simple combinations that are executed instantly, each with their own range, power, speed, and priority.

One of the unique features of Virtua Fighter is that each sequel has only ever introduced two new characters, and only one of the characters was retired (Taka-Arashi, the Sumo Wrestler from Virtua Fighter 3, was apparently too difficult to calculate hit detection for, in relation to the other characters). But every game gets completely re-imagined backgrounds, and brand-new character models for each and every character, and cleaner, crisper controls.

VF5 introduced two new characters: El Blaze is a Lucha Libre expert, very reminiscent of Mexican Wrestling sensation, Rey Mysterio (before Rey got a bazillion tattoos everywhere). Also joining the cast is Eileen, a teenage practitioner of Monkey Fist Kung Fu.

Of course, with my being a pro wrestling fan, I've always gravitated towards the grapplers in fighting games, and VF is no exception. My character of choice is Wolf Hawkfield, a Canadian native American Heavyweight who integrates the most popular maneuvers of pro wrestling into his move set. In addition to all kinds of chops, clotheslines, elbows, and kicks, Wolf also has a wide variety of powerful throws and devastating suplexes, in addition to a handful of bone-crunching submission attacks. If only he weren't so slow, I may consider him the ultimate fighting game character.

The only downside to VF5 is that the online community has all but vanished, as the game is nearly 3 years old, by this point. Two minor updates to the game have been released in the arcade since the XBox 360 release (re-introducing Taka-Arashi, as well as an all-new character, Jean Kujo). Even if Sega were to just release the most recent update onto consoles, it could breathe new life into the game.

Or we could just wait for Virtua Fighter 6. Which I'm perfectly content doing.