Of Virtua Fighter and Volcano Knees

A while back, I was having a conversation with my dentist about what I was going to do that summer.  “Do some writing” was the obvious choice, but with no small number of tools hovering around my mouth I wasn’t in much of a mood for conversation about the particulars.  So I just said “play some video games.”

“Oh?  Do you have Wii Sports?” he asked with a smile.  “My kids love that -- all that boxing and stuff.”  I told him that I did (though I’d loaned it out to a friend).  “What kind of games do you like?”

“Fighting games,” I answered -- though with his assistant currently shoving metal into my mouth, it sounded more like “Haahigg gaaaaze.”  I managed to raise my fists to illustrate.

It was a weird moment in more ways than one.  See, I like to think of myself as an intellectual gamer -- one that preferred titles emphasizing the mind and strategy instead of rote button-hammering and battering enemies with bullets and nail bats.  So I’ve collected my fair share of RPGs and strategy games -- a couple of Advance Wars, a couple of Disgaeas, a heaping helping of Shin Megami Tensei games…I even spent the better part of six months pining for Valkyria Chronicles.  I hold games that give you time to stop and think in high esteem...and the less said about my love of Phoenix Wright and 999, the better.

Given that, you’d think that I’d hate fighting games.  And to some extent, you’d be right. 

Sonic the Hedgehog: Forever Tails

I missed out on the NES generation of gaming.  If you asked me about World 4-2 of Super Mario Bros. or the sixth dungeon in The Legend of Zelda, I’d probably just stare blankly at you for a little while before letting fly an enlightened “…Guh?”  The NES was just barely before my time, I think -- and that was a problem only exaggerated one Christmas morning.

I woke up to have a huge box waiting for me under a tree sitting at the bottom of the staircase.  And after faffing about for a bit, rocking to and fro in the fetal position with a Joker-sized grin on my face while I waited for my parents to wake up and we could do that whole “celebrate Christmas as a family” business, I tore off the wrapping like a wolverine.  And what should I find but a Sega Genesis, bundled with a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2? 

DP Into Ultra (Part 2)

(be sure to check out Part 1 here first!)

The answer to all of life’s problems rest within Street Fighter.  I still stand by that vaguely ridiculous claim, but with a slight adjustment: all fighting games have the answer to life’s problems. 

Street Fighter II, when it was released, created a revolution in the gaming world…heck, in the world in general.  It was a devourer of quarters and a bringer of new challengers to cabinets everywhere, from the dedicated arcades of old to diversions inside the occasional Long John Silver’s.  One on one combat had never been so well-defined in the history of games (and it tended to prove a safer alternative to backyard wrestling); you select your alter ego and fight with all your skill and wit to claim glory.  Granted there was a bit of violence outside the game; according to my brother Rich, doing nothing but throwing your opponent would give a kid enough of a reason to start wailing on his opponent in real life.  Whatever the case, Street Fighter II opened the floodgates on the competitive spirit, as well as the potential fighting games had to bring it out in kids who would sooner beat Gunstar Heroes than become a black belt.  Basically, children and nerds (yo) could become ultimate warriors.

Flash forward to 2012.  The fighting game renaissance has shown no signs of slowing down.  This year alone will see the release of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Skullgirls, BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend, Soulcalibur 5, Dead or Alive 5, maybe Virtua Fighter 5 Showdown, the PlayStation Vita version of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and of course Street Fighter X Tekken.  It’s a staggering amount of fighters to be released, on top of the fighters that are already out there; I’d wager that come June or July, there’ll be announcements of new fighting games in the works (a new Darkstalkers, most likely, although I’d love to see a new Rival Schools).  In a world where Japanese games are either on the wane or automatically shunned by entitled American audiences raised on Call of Duty and conditioned to hate anything even remotely anime-esque, the fighter endures as a means to express skill and creativity -- both by its developers, and in its players. 

History’s repeated itself -- but hopefully, we won’t have a repeat of last time.  See, Street Fighter II was a big money-maker for Capcom, so naturally they had to go and ruin a good thing.  They released updated versions on a regular basis, introducing new characters and tweaked game mechanics -- and making the simple name all the more complicated.  What was originally Street Fighter II eventually became Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition.  Pro tip: if you have a game with The Anniversary Edition in its title, then you’ve released too many damn versions of the same game.  Since this was before games could be patched online or DLC could be added, this of course meant kids (i.e. parents) shuffling back and forth between Toys R Us to pick up the latest version for home consoles.  And while that was happening, competitors tried to release their own fighting games to jump on the bandwagon.  Some endured (King of Fighters); others…didn’t.  Oversaturation of the market, working in tandem with a franchise that was like a snake shedding its skin every other day -- factors like these probably led to the fighting game genre going on hiatus in the late nineties/early 2000s.

And then you look to the present and you see the same thing going on.  There’s a crapton of fighters available for sale right now, with more on the way.  The advent of patches available through your console of choice and downloadable content means that sometimes you don’t even have to leave the house to put money into a company’s pockets.  Capcom’s up to its old tricks, of course; what was originally Street Fighter 4 eventually became -- deep breath -- Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition ver. 2012.  (To say nothing of the fact that Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix has been available for download for a few years now.)  Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is now Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, a galling move considering that an announcement of the update came about FIVE MONTHS after the original was released, and the update itself came four months later.  I can’t even imagine how many more pennies Capcom got out of gamers by offering costumes and characters (some of which were on the disk to begin with).  It’s almost hilarious what had happened; Capcom originally said that, while they’d offer customization options, you’d never see poster boy Ryu in a funny hat.  Nowadays, you can not only see Ryu in a goofy bandanna, but his best bud Ken in a cowboy hat, Cammy dressed like Catwoman, and T. Hawk in a costume Rich asserts is incredibly racist.

What does this mean?  Are we going to see an end to fighters, and resurgence ten years from now?  Well, if fighters go down, then I can think of a few other genres COUGHshootersCOUGHCOUGH that would go down too.  Fighters do more than just evoke nostalgia or give losers a chance to become winners.

I’ve learned that for myself.