Hello friends, what are you up to? Things could be better over here. I shouldn't have gloated about the brownies yesterday. It seems that karma does not like gloaters. I got a parking ticket at work because I forgot to display my staff permit. I'll see if the school can do anything about it since I am staff, only I forgot to put up the permit. Then at home one of the light sockets went out. It's another wiring issue in the old house and the money is running out before the family can do something about it. Going to have to squeeze the belt tighter to take care of things.
I'll just focus on videogames and my lawn before things get worse. The other day it was announced than another classic fighting game would return. Given the momentum that SF IV and KOF XII are generating it was only a matter of time before other fighters were resurrected. The weapons-fighting game Battle Arena Toshinden is coming back on the Wii. Kotaku stole the news from Famitsu about this release.
Despite getting four titles over it's lifespan, Toshinden was always a sub-par fighting game. It was proof that even the Japanese were not immune to cashing in on the fighting craze of the 90's. It played ugly and looked worse. It was slow and cumbersome, with music and sound effect that were laughable by early-90's standards. It truly was forgettable compared to the hits of the era.
Toshinden is almost lost to history but is actually more than a footnote in the era of fighters. It was the first 3D fighter to use weapons, it came out in 1994, a full year before Soulcalibur and one year after the debut of Samurai Spirits. Toshinden debuted in the same year as Tekken. It represented the changing tide of technology and in bringing arcade graphics to home consoles. Toshinden, like Tekken, were arcade titles and 1st generation Playstation games. They looked almost indistinguishable between home and arcade. The only problem for Toshinden was how bad it looked and played when compared to Tekken, Virtua Fighter or Samurai Spirits.
The only memorable things to come from the franchise were the character designs. Director Masami Obari and character designer Tsukasa Kotobuki had a field day creating animé-friendly, in some cases, bouncy-breasted archetypes. Feathery-haried, wafish protagonists with long swords swords battling oafish brutes with clubs. Funny how it pre-dated Final Fantasy VII by three years. Too bad that the designs and the actual polygon models were worlds apart. Perhaps the Wii is powerful enough to do a remake justice. We'll see as more news from this game develops. As always 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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