Bengus, the Vampire Savior - A 1UP classic from May 9, 2008

Friends, I shouldn't have to say one more word about Bengus, but I will. Only because I got my hands on concentrated awesomeness last weekend. If you like the Vampire / Darkstalkers series and you like Bengus, honestly, who doesn't? Then you have to get your hands on a copy of the Vampire Graphic File, ISBN978-4-86233-124-3.

For those that aren't familiar with the game, it is to the classic monster genre what Street Fighter was to legendary fighters. Capcom decided to include as many classic archetypes in the game as they could. There was a succubus, a vampire, a wolfman, Frankenstein, mummy and even gill-man. However the ones featured in the game looked nothing like the classic Universal movie monsters. The Capcom doppelgangers were kung-fu werewolves, wrestling bigfoots and undead samurai. Crazy by anyones standards.

Bengus wrapped those archetypes around his head and came up with designs that were just as unique and memorable. They also included slight nods to their original inspirations. I'm only going to show a small sampling of the illustrations. Below are his pen illustrations of the original Vampire character art compared to his final portraits years later in Vampire Savior.

Notice how bold he was with his shadows in the original Dimitry and Morrigan art. Now look at how far he had refined his style by the time he was finishing his stint producing art.

The style was clearly Bengus and yet there was the sublime genius of DaVinci behind his technique. With nothing but one color Bengus simply shines. Look at the shadows and highlights of his figures. Look carefully at the subtleties of his crosshatching technique.

Even on the more fantastic characters like Felicia and Anakaris he managed to remain playful and iconic at the same time. Look carefully at the expressions on the characters for his original art and then his latter art.

Is Felicia meowing? She has depth and weight, shape and substance. The Anakaris piece is as epic as any classic movie poster. It is part Boris Karloff and part Alex Ross and yet something else entirely. Look at the way he created the illusion of multiple sources of lighting on the head of Anakaris!

MY GOD!

There isn't an artist working in videogames that has ever filled me with such awe. Not any of the greats at Sony Santa Monica or Incog Inc. Not anybody at Nintendo or even Sega. And just when you think that Falcoon, Hyung-tae Kim or the artists at Udon are getting close you go back and reference this art. That is when you realize that the other artists aren't even in his league. Bengus set a standard. Scratch that. Bengus is the standard. He breathed life into the characters featured in Street Fighter and Vampire. He put his stamp on history. If you ever doubt that he was anything more than a cartoonist just look at this illustration of Lei-Lei and then get back to me.

Have a great weekend and let me know what you are up to!

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What is going on with the Street Fighter V character designs? Part 1, who is F.A.N.G?

I've been pretty quiet these past few months on the characters unveiled for Street Fighter V. However seeing as the majority have been announced I think we can start talking about them. Let's start with the newest character F.A.N.G. Let's put down the initial impressions of him. The character is dumb, he is ugly, he is insincere and has no redeeming factors.

 

I think it would be safe for me to say that F.A.N.G. is the new Rufus. He is a character that is so over-the-top, that is so beyond the conventions of the other Street Fighter characters that he simply doesn't belong in the game. This is really saying something considering that a rubber-limbed Indian and a green-skinned Brazilian wild man are considered some of the great all-time characters. So what is it about F.A.N.G. that doesn't work? Well his design is a sort of polar opposite of Rufus. Instead of a big, fat and dumb US character we have a tall, skinny and sneaky Chinese character. In either case we have extremes in stereotype, extremes in caricature that say a lot more about the producer and director of the game than of what Street Fighter has become.

Yoshinori Ono should be taken to task for every character, every design that makes in into the game. He was the one that pulled the Black Cobra and made a strong black character into a fat white character. The excuse was that he thought it would be funny to put a fatty into the game. He was the one that made sure that the Turkish character was beet red and obsessed with oil, he was the one that made sure that the masked Mexican wrestler named every move after a Mexican dish. He made sure that the returning black character in Street Fighter V was turned into a fat slob. And now the joke is that a tall skinny Chinese character is flying around the screen like a pelican. Stop and think about how he has presented the British, Japanese, white and female characters that are returning to the series. Is there any bias, whether intended or not, in his decisions?

 

As the producer Mr. Ono has the final say as to how the game is going to present itself. He has a reputation for being a funny guy, always kind to his fans, but very silly at the same time. This silly humor has found its way into the game in how the characters act, how their special moves appear and even with the constant use of breaking the fourth wall. The Street Fighter games that came before Mr. Ono were considered templates for great design. The ones that came after certainly looked nice and were well balanced but they did not contribute as much to the genre as the earlier titles. This is especially true with the appearance of F.A.N.G. I know some people read my blogs because I try and understand the roots of a character's design. The long sleeves given to his costume are more akin to Chinese opera than a traditional kung-fu uniform or even classic Mandarin robe.

The combination of sunglasses and robes has been seen many times before in film and television. Sometimes detectives set in pre-cultural revolution China wear fedoras and sunglasses while tracking down criminals. However in film the majority of those wearing the sunglasses and robes are villains. They are often mob bosses if not mob enforcers. A good example of these dangerous characters can be seen in the film Kung-Fu Hustle. The harpist assassins as played by Gar Hong-hay and Fung Hak were mysterious agents sent to kill some kung-fu masters. Their traditional costumes were nondescript. They seemed harmless until they unveiled their secret techniques. Of course there was nothing subdued about F.A.N.G.'s costume. The colors and cut on his robe were as flamboyant as his personality. Instead of a modest hat he wore the widest brim possible.

There was a reason why F.A.N.G.'s design had to be super exaggerated. Every character in the Street Fighter universe had been presented in a costume that looked traditional on a superficial level. Karate masters after all did not walk around with torn sleeves, and female masters of wushu did not really wear wrestling boots and spiked bracelets. F.A.N.G. had a costume that at first glance looked like a traditional robe and hat. But the more you looked at his costume the more you realized that they were as exaggerated as his proportions. F.A.N.G. wasn't just skinny, his head appeared as if it had been squeezed by a vice grip. His costume shared the same qualities, he didn't just have long sleeves, they could double as wings if he flapped his arms fast enough. It was absurd of course but also par the course for Street Fighter character designs.

 

Traditional Chinese costumes had been used for generations in pop culture. Whether they were in a movie, comic book or cartoon, the classic Chinese tunic had been seen many times by audiences and not solely on Chinese people either! These costumes were even finding their way into game designs. The Jiangshi for example were zombie-like Chinese ghosts. They could be summoned to life with a special talisman placed on their head. Since they were dead and rigor mortis had set in they had limited use of their limbs. Rather than shuffle around like a zombie these monsters had to hop around like rabbits. Read about it on the Chinese Ghost Primer. The jiangshi turned up in a number of modern games, for example you could fight them in Sleeping Dogs, specifically the DLC called Nightmare in North Point. The costumes and designs of the undead were stylized in the fighting game Vampire / Darkstalkers by Capcom. The sisters Lei-Lei & Lin-Lin aka Hsien-Ko and Mei-Ling wore very bright (and revealing) versions of the classic robes. The costume given to F.A.N.G. was no more different than what Capcom had done previously. At first glance it had the appearance of a traditional costume however upon further inspection it was something else entirely. Yet the costume, weird moves and silly personality were only part of the reason why F.A.N.G. didn't really inspire me.

 

In the reveal trailer we could see several things about the character. He was goofy and lanky of course but he was also quite tall. In fact he appeared to be as tall as Sagat, the once world champion. And like Sagat this new character was marking a place for himself in the pantheon of Shadowlaw / Shadaloo villains. In the reveal trailer there was a level that was set inside of a secret base. In the background there was a statue celebrating the leader and "generals" of Shadowlaw. Sagat was previously the second-in-command to Vega "the Dictator." Yet during Street Fighter V there is no sign of Sagat, not only that but his visage would not be in the background details either. Instead the bust of F.A.N.G. had been carved out of a mini Mt. Rushmore.

This flew in the face of everything that had been established about Shadowlaw from many years earlier. Whether it was mentioned in the game, in the comics or supplemental material The other generals were dangerous fighters in their own right. In propaganda posters, in Shadowlaw art the four figures were placed side-by-side in a show of solidarity. The generals looked intimidating but there was something about F.A.N.G. that did not match the gravitas of the earlier bosses. A one-eyed, seven-foot, muay thai fighter was a sight to behold. A seven-foot, flamboyant Chinese kung-fu master was also a sight to behold, but not for the same reasons. Why the designers working on Street Fighter V would replace the legacy character Sagat with F.A.N.G. didn't make much sense. Why they would go out of their way to erase any hint of Sagat was frankly insulting.

What were the roots of F.A.N.G. and why was he so bad? Was there anything about the character that might work? These are things that we can explore in the next blog. Right now I'd like to read your thoughts on the character. As always if you enjoyed this blog and 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!

The road to Rising Thunder, part 3...

The first generation of game designers had grown up reading about giant robots in comics and watching giant robot cartoons. They were only too eager to make games that revolved around these machines. There was a downside however to being in the first group of developers. The software and hardware they worked with were woefully underpowered. They had a difficult time coming up with a game that could capture the power of piloting a giant robot. So instead of that the developers learned workarounds. They would create arcade titles that featured mostly static images of robot sprites with smaller characters moving around them (Space Harrier). They would create platform titles and change the colors of the human character to make them appear more robotic (Mega Man). They would even replace a fighter jet with the top view of a robot on the shooting titles (M.U.S.H.A. Aleste). Sega was just one of the publishers that did this and at the same time they managed to match the trends in robot designs happening on television at the same time. Take a look at how the robot designs changed between Space Harrier in 1985 to Virtual On in 1996. They were on par with the designs featured in VOTOMS and Gundam.

 

There was a reason why the designs used by the mid-90s were show quality. The robot figures in Virtual On were created by Hajime Katoki, he was a senior mecha designer on the Gundam series. It was a long time coming where robots in fighting games had as much planning put into their look and purpose as human characters had since the start of the industry. Sprites and sprite-based engines were how characters were represented in games through the '80s and early '90s. Robots in fighting games were rare at the start of the genre. The vast majority were usually cyborgs, humans with a few robotic enhancements. One of the first robot boss characters in a fighting game was named Ram-X. The character debuted in the 1993 Sega game Dark Edge. It was a unique title in that allowed a pseudo 360-degree playing field where sprites shrunk and grew to create the illusion that they were moving further back or closer to the player. Ram-X appeared like a Macross-style robot, one which could transform into a black fighter jet. It was a sub-boss character and non-playable. Audiences had a number of unique fighters they could play as, the characters Yeager and M.E.K. were cyborgs.

 

In the late '80s there was a big shift in technology. Arcade titles began to be developed on 3D engines. The earliest of which were racing titles because studios did not yet have hardware powerful enough to render convincing human shapes that could move and fight. That changed in the early '90s with the introduction of the Virtua Fighter and Tekken series by Sega and Namco respectively. In addition to being the first 3D fighters the two were notable for being some of the first to have android fighters. Androids were humanoid robots with artificial intelligence. The boss of Virtua Fighter was named Dural, she was a silver-skinned fighter that adapted to the moves of her opponents. Being a faceless, voiceless opponent made her intimidating. Of course the next android character was even more menacing. The enormous Jack appeared in every version of the Tekken series starting in 1994 and was "upgraded" on each new version. He looked like a bodybuilder-turned-soldier but underneath his plastic skin he was a robot. He could swing his arms like propellers, spin his torso 360 degrees and punch with the force of a cannon. If I didn't know better he was nothing more than a re-skinned version of the Mechanical Man that Mickey Mouse had build more than half a century earlier.

Namco kept the tradition of androids alive in the series through other characters like P-Jack, the prototype Jack and more recently Alisa Bosconovich in 2009's Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion. Alisa is very similar to Astro Boy in that she has a number of weapons hidden underneath her artificial skin. She also mirrors Astro in that she was created to be a surrogate child for a professor, in this case it was Professor Gepetto Bosconovich. Of course anybody familiar with the story of Pinocchio recognizes the name of her creator. The Japanese were fond of borrowing from pop culture while designing their games. When it came to putting robots in fighters they could design based on the trends or they could outright poach the look of a character. The second option was used in Galaxy Fight. The robot Musafar was actually the head and brain of a human encased in the body of a robot. His design and attacks were modeled after Robocop 2, the villain in the movie and game of the same name. Robocop 2 was a game made by Data East a few years prior.

The 1995 title by Sunsoft was set in the far future and was one of the first to focus on human versus alien combat. Galaxy Fight had a diverse cast and featured a typical plot of the humans and aliens uniting to defeat a powerful alien bent on galactic domination. Despite the serious tone and history of some characters the game was interjected with some humor. Some of the characters in the game appeared a year later in a more comedic fighter called Waku Waku 7. What was interesting about the robots featured in gaming, not just from Japan, were how many cues they took from pop culture. Musafar was just one example but the influences did not stop there. I had mentioned previously the 1995 game Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness. The game by Capcom had some very unique designs. The influences from pop culture were subtle and instead the artists at Capcom, including Kinu Nishimura and Daigo Ikeno got a chance to work on original mecha ideas. The biggest poach of the game was Zero Gouki, but he did not appear until the game was adapted for consoles.

 

A few years later Capcom would go into full fanboy mode and release their first and only 3D fighting game featuring giant robots. The 1998 title Tech Romancer was an homage to the various giant robot shows over the past 40 years. There was at least one robot in the show that represented every type of giant robot anime that the producers had grown up with. Whether it was a silly kids show or a space drama for teens, from the Transformers to Macross and everything in between there was a robot that reminded audiences of 40+ years of anime. Capcom did a good job of changing just enough details so that they couldn't be accused of plagiarism. Also unlike Sega's Virtual On the combat for these robots was closer to a traditional fighting game than a 3D simulator.

 

Capcom had a history of making some memorable robotic fighters. Some of their best work had nothing to do with piloted mecha. As early as 1994 the studio had started a trend that they would follow through the rest of the decade. The game Darkstalkers, Vampire in Japan, introduced the world to Hutzil. It was actually an ancient robot that was modeled after the clay Dogu statues by the Jomon people, the neolithic ancestors in Japan. Huitzil could change shape and had a number of weapons hidden throughout its forms. From the ancient robot to the futuristic Capcom next explored fighting robots in the game Star Gladiator in 1996 and its sequel Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein in 1998. Both of those titles were done on 3D engines. The robots Vector and Omega fought similarly. They could spin, twist and shoot their machine guns as well as internal lasers. The Star Gladiator series was a sort of fighting game homage to Star Wars with the exception that the robots in this game were not comedic sidekicks.

Around this time the west was experimenting with different types of fighting games as well. Since CGI graphics were relatively new they stood out when compared to the hand-drawn sprites that made up 99% of fighting games. Going with computer-generated models was part of the appeal of the original Killer Instinct. One of the first, if not the first, all-robot fighting game was Rise of the Robots. The 1994 game by Mirage was considered one of the worst fighting games ever released. The studio focused its efforts on a diverse cast of robots and highly-detailed backgrounds. What the studio forgot to do was focus on the gameplay, animation and balance. Those three things pretty much determined a hit or miss in the community. Despite the cool looking robots the game played like a slug. Also the publisher failed to recognize that neither the consoles nor the home computer was powerful enough to render the complex models and stages in real time. When the game was released it was mostly pre-rendered backgrounds and sprites.

 

Rise of the Robots, just like many fighting games that came before and after, failed to live up to the hype. How would a new western effort like Rising Thunder be any different? Well first off it was any indy game and had no connection to a major publisher. The game was also a free-to-play online title. As far as the gameplay went it was being balanced thanks to the feedback of the fighting game community. These were just a few things that Rising Thunder had in its favor. The next blog will look at the stars of the game and wrap up this series. I hope to see you back for that! As always if you enjoyed this blog and 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!