Martial Masters was released in 1999, after Street Fighter III: Third Strike yet bore an uncanny resemblance to the Capcom fighter. At that point every major publisher and developer of fighting games had shut down their 2D game development teams. The sprite they assumed was a dead format and players would be likely to ignore new fighters using traditional methods. As the success of Sammy, DIMPS and SNK showed through the new millennia the other publishers were wrong IGS bet that their fighting game would grab long time fans of the Street Fighter series and give them a new experience to sink their quarters into. They started with their own PGM system, an arcade console more powerful than the Neo Geo and thus capable of rendering large sprites with dozens of animations per character. These sprites looked closer to those presented on the more powerful Capcom CPS-III system. What IGS did was nothing short of genius or a blatant rip-off, depending on whom you asked.
In order to make a fighter that had the elements of Street Fighter without outright copying the cast. Data East had copied Street Fighter II with Fighters History in 1993 and got slapped with a lawsuit by Capcom a year later. The courts ruled in favor of Data East and the results of which were other studios were able to develop fighting games with eerily similar characters and control schemes. IGS did not outright copy the cast as controls through Martial Masters, they did however poach the Capcom artistic style. Of course copying an artistic style was only part of the challenge. The other would be to fill a roster of fighting archetypes that were unique and memorable. By '99 there had been dozens of fighting games at home and the arcade, just about every possible character combination and fighting style had been explored. The brilliance of IGS was in filling out the roster with characters that were inspired by, and almost direct copies of, the fighters featured in the Once upon a time in China movie series The strict IP laws that curb comics, movies and games in the US seem to be more lax overseas. This loose interpretation of copyright allows for a thriving fan-based comic industry in Asia, as well as hobbyists creating models of popular characters in limited edition runs. Martial Masters was an example of that type of mentality influencing character designs in a game.
The sprites featured in Martial Masters (MM) were large and colorful. The male and female archetypes were all there, including a strong Chinese female lead, just as in the SF series. However the differences between SF design and designs featured in other fighting games were subtle yet more complex than most realized. The SF series succeeded in part because the masters of their respective art were inspired by actual and mythological heroes. They were an amalgamation of the inspirations but done in such a way as that the characters could never be pinned onto one person. Ryu in SF for example was based in part on karate masters Mas Oyama and Yoshiji Soeno with a look from Ken from Fist of the North Star. For MM and some of the other games, the designs were blatantly based on the mannerisms and gestures of popular actors, including Jet Li, Bruce Lee and Donny Yen.
More than that, some of the characters and moves in MM appeared to have multiple sources of inspiration. The Tiger character for example had the size and proportions from SF III's Alex but with some of the slashing moves from Wolverine of the X-Men.
Speaking of Tiger, he was a good example of the proportions that IGS had used to create sprites similar to Capcom's. The design of the characters was set somewhere in between the sprites used for SFIII and SF Zero / Alpha. Tiger appeared very much like a playable version of Chun-Li's partner from the ending of the game.
The other characters used the general proportions and scale made popular by Bengus. The Monk character for example had roughly the same size and proportions of the Hulk from the Marvel fighting game. If not Zangief from Street Fighter Alpha.
Of course not all of the characters were inspired by Capcom characters. Others were inspired by archetypes featured in other games but presented in the Capcom style. The Drunk Master for example appeared like the hybrid of Chin Gentsai from the King of Fighters and Gen from SF Zero. Not to take anything away from IGS because the character was fun to play as and had many original moves and animations. He, and several other characters should have returned for a sequel.
The subtle elements that IGS designers missed when imitating the SF character designs became obvious for the more esoteric fighting styles. The characters Scorpion and Ghost Kick highlighted the lack of understanding of how certain fighting styles appeared in the SF universe. The characters in Street Fighter were all representatives a particular style, like karate, kung-fu and wrestling. These characters had moves were not grounded in any particular school however. What the team at Capcom did was apply a stance and set of moves that mirrored the popular concepts but were optimized for use in a game engine. Ken and Ryu had moves that looked like karate strikes, Chun-Li had moves that looked like kung-fu strikes. Most of these moves looked fantastic, even if they were impractical, the purpose was that they could be animated and balanced within the fighting engine. Martial Masters took some of the styles too literally and presented the masters with exaggerated arts and stances. These forms may have appeared in a SF game, however the designs and stances for Scorpion and Ghost Kick were too unbalanced and exaggerated. The characters created a visual distraction that upset the symmetry of the rest of the cast. Moreover they would be difficult to animate moving and fighting convincingly with the rest of the cast.
As well made as the sprites were, the game was lacking substance. This would prove to be the biggest trend for almost all the IGS games. The studio was capable of following trends and even imitating the best developers in the industry, however the games were always lacking something. In the case of Martial Masters the game had decent controls and move sets for each character but it lacked balance. Every great fighting game strives for balance. Balance in the amount of damage that moves take, balance in how quickly characters attack, how slowly they recover and what strikes take precedence. A game that allows for players to constantly juggle opponents with a barrage of strikes and gives them no chance to recover or counter is clearly unbalanced. Almost all of the characters in Martial Masters were able to perform an endless loop of attacks that could completely drain the energy of an opponent. These things would have never appeared in a numbered SF title because of the extensive balancing process.
The flaw for IGS was clearly the lack of experience behind their developers. They could imitate Capcom and even create characters that were animated on par with the best efforts from the Japanese studio but they did not understand how all of the elements worked together in order to build a Capcom caliber fighting game. The levels were nice but lacked the vitality of the SF levels, the controls were good but not precise, the characters were diverse but almost all rooted in Asia rather than the global community that made up the SF cast. If I could describe an IGS game it would be anemic. It lacked the size and energy to have run with the major publishers. Players could see what the studio and designers wanted to do and appreciated the effort they made in bringing a game to market, especially after Capcom had closed its 2D wing. What killed the gamers though was that the games always seemed to be lacking something. Martial Masters looked and played like a SF game that was 80% maybe even 85% finished. At that stage it was good enough to demo at a trade show and get buyers interested in ordering arcade cabinets. For gamers it was not enough, that 85% was still more than a half a year's worth of hard work to make up for. It lacked the polish and level of detail that made the Capcom fighters great. Had IGS only had more time or team members then perhaps Martial Masters could have made an even bigger impact with the community. That, or the very least they could have had larger publishers looking to bring their fighting game to home consoles.
Thankfully, the PC emulation program MUGEN had brought these sprites to a whole new generation. Players could see how the Martial Masters would have stacked up against the Street Fighters. IGS did not create another game that was in the traditional SF vein. However a few years ago they did release a title in the arcades and the Playstation 2 that was similar to Guilty Gear. Spectral VS Generation came out in 2006 featuring developer Idea Factory’s Spectral Force vs Generation of Chaos. The game was fun but lacking. It was similar to Martial Masters in that it felt anemic. The levels were sparse, animations fun but not extraordinary, the character designs familiar but not revolutionary. IGS had fallen into a trap of a "good" game being "good enough" for the publisher.
The publisher would actually release two titles that were better gaming experiences. One of which fell into the trappings of Martial Masters, but in a different genre, and one title which could honestly stand on its own merits among the best arcade games ever produced. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!
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