As you may know I am a huge fan of fighting games. I rarely talk about Sega fighters, and I might do a deep dive on them someday. For now I wanted to focus on some of my favorite stage art of all time. There were many stage designs in the various fighting games that I loved. Exotic jungles, busy metropolitan intersections, racetracks, heavy metal mosh pits, and other amazing backgrounds sparked my imagination. Of the dozens, and dozens of fighting games that I had played in my life there was a detail that was burned into my brain. It influenced me so much that I had to redraw it, almost from memory some 15 years later.
You might remember that Sega was one of the first studios to go all in on 3D fighting games with Virtua Fighter back in 1993. As their technology improved they tried other ideas with their fighting engine. They released a lesser known title called Fighting Vipers. The title from November 1995 featured young characters in armor, as opposed to traditional martial arts masters. The stages were set mostly in city locations. One of which was in a concrete pit with walls covered in graffiti. One of the pieces on the wall really stood out to me because it made a religious icon instantly accessible to my generation. It was inspired by the Rest In Peace murals featuring the Virgin Mary. In this case it was a tribute to Honey, the character that the Bayside stage belonged to. As a Mexican-American I grew up in the Catholic Church. I was well familiar with the art, and iconography used by the church. Jesus, his apostles, the saints, Pope’s and various figures adorned not only the walls of the churches we visited, but also abuela’s house. The image of the Virgin Mary was one of the most important figures for the Latin community. Specifically it was
Our Lady of Guadalupe. The short version of this visual was that it was adopted by the natives of Mexico in the 1500’s. It lead to many of the native Aztecs to convert to Catholicism.
Many years passed, and I got a chance to play hundreds of games in the arcade, and at home. I would reflect on my favorites, and the things that made them unique. I would have long talks about it with my brothers, and friends. This was before I started writing things down on a blog. While talking about favorite stages in fighting games I mentioned the graffiti in Fighting Vipers. I lamented that my favorite piece wasn’t featured in the Sega Saturn version of the game. By that time most of the arcades we used to visit had closed down, and those that were around never had Fighting Vipers. The only proof that the art I loved had ever existed was from a tiny screenshot in one of my Japanese gaming magazines. I sketched it out one day as best as I could remember. Mind you this was almost 15 years after the arcade game had come out. The fact that it was a close approximation of the actual art showed how much I was moved by the graffiti. It really turned the iconic figure into something that 20th century kids could relate to. I’m sure that it stood out to the other Latinos that played the game.
I posted the sketch on 1UP, and talked about how I would like to redo it in color. Sure enough a few months later I had an illustrator version of it. Unfortunately looking back on my hard drive I couldn’t seem to find the original file. Thinking about it 2010-2011 was about the time that my older Mac computer crashed, and I lost a lot of data. If it weren’t for some CD backups that I made I would have lost years of files. It wouldn’t be hard for me to reproduce the piece. Chances are it would look a lot better if I did. I still loved the pose, and look of the original drawing. It wasn’t exactly how the Sega original appeared, but in my memory that was how it always was. To be honest it wasn’t be the first time I recreated the graffiti from a Sega game in Adobe Illustrator.
I was a huge fan of the Jet Set Radio games, and little by little managed to recreate all of the game icons, in Japanese, and English! As well as the small, medium, and large graffiti pieces. I was hopeful that someday I might be able to use them in some sort of modded game about graffiti. But for now that was my story on Our Lady of the Boombox. I hope you enjoyed the art. Did you ever recreate any of your favorite stage art, graffiti, or logos? Let me know about it in the comments section. As always if you enjoyed this blog, and would like to sponsor me
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