Bookmark This Page; Enter the Dragon, Fighting Layer & the roots of Street Fighter II

For those that are visiting my page for the first time my name is Noe aka BigMex. I love fighting games, as well as racing games, skateboarding, theme parks, and much more. You might know that this blog had been around for a long time. A good portion of what I wrote on the 1UP, and the Capcom-Unity  pages some 20+ years ago were shared here. My best work was hidden at the bottom of this page. To make things easy for new visitors I started collecting similar threads. If you were interested in a certain topic then I was asking you to Bookmark This Page.

The first collection was a deep dive on Fighting Layer, a little known title by ARIKA and Namco. Find out the connection to Street Fighter II in this series.

Enter the Dragon, the legend inspires a game, part 1…

Enter the Dragon, the legend inspires a game, part 2…

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, part 1...

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, part 2…

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, part 3…

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, part 4…

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, part 5…

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, part 6…

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, part 7…

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, part 8…

Fighting Layer, return of the dragon, final part… 

Did you ever play Fighting Layer? Even an emulated version? What did you think about it? Let me know about it in the comments section. 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!

Speculation on ARIKA's unnamed Street Fighter EX successor, part 3...

Allen Snider was recently announced for the new ARIKA fighting game, let’s call it Fighting Layer EX or FLEX for short. Allen Snider, along with Kairi, were created as sort of rivals / parallels to Ken and Ryu in the Street Fighter EX series. In fact just about every character in the game was a sort of parallel to the Street Fighter II World Warriors. Blair Dame was a balance to Chun-Li, Darun Mister was the perfect rival for Zangief and Doctrine Dark was a military assassin to counter Guile. Skullomania was the oddball character, a sort of Dhalsim or Blanka in the lineup. Akira Nishitani was one of the designers on Final Fight and Street Fighter II. When he left Capcom to start his own company, ARIKA, he didn’t forget the many lessons he had learned from his teammates.

 

One of the things that ARIKA did was dissect the elements that made the Street Fighter II characters iconic. They looked at the color pallet, costumes, martial arts represented, origin stories and nationalities. They they tried to recreated these things. If a character set a standard, like Ken and Ryu did for karate-type fighters, then they wanted to figure out how to top those designs. It was very important that they show audiences that Kairi and Allen were not simply the same character with a different head. The colors, costumes, stance and fighting styles of Kairi and Allen were very unique. The difference between the two was much greater than the difference between Ken and Ryu. At the same time ARIKA wanted it to be understood that Kairi was the star of the game, the Ryu, and Allen was a sort of Ken in the universe, without necessarily being a friend of Kairi’s.

 

ARIKA didn’t settle for simple hue shifts or alternate colors for their characters. They actually created unique costumes as the alternates. Each costume told a story. Kairi’s showed the evolution of his character from fighter to boss-tier master. Allen went from one flamboyant gi to another more outlandish one. Supporting characters like Darun wore different wrestling championship belts depending on his costume selection. C. Jack went from one stylish outfit, including gambler-style hat, vest and tie, to an even more stylish one. This design rule followed every character in the series. But having a unique set of costumes, which were all character appropriate, were only part of the design elements behind the EX series.

 

Allen Snider was a second attempt at creating the Ken character. Takashi Nishiyama was the director and Hiroshi Matsumoto was the designer on the original Street Fighter. The reason they created Ken was to have someone for the USA players to identify with and thus play. Their design choice was far from unique. The white gi versus red gi character had been seen a few years earlier in Technos’ Karate Champ. There was little then that made Ken and Ryu unique. They shared the same moves and aside from Ryu having a different head and pair of traditional Chinese slippers, they were identical. When Nishitani took over the reigns in Street Fighter II (SFII) he and the team wanted to make Ken and Ryu a little more unique. Bengus, AKIMAN, SHOEI and Sensei, a literal who’s-who of fighting game designers introduced small details into the characters. If you look carefully at the official Street Fighter II art Ryu wore a gi that was ragged and frayed whereas Ken wore one whose cuffs were hemmed. That detail was very easy to overlook, especially since the sprites remained identical in the game. So when the opportunity arose to make a new American karate champ they went all out with the designs.

 

The artists looked at the heroes they had in comics, in animé, in martial arts cinema and then made an amalgamation out of these figures. Allen Snider in a nutshell had the hair and sideburns or Chuck Norris, but with the desire to be a breakout star like Bruce Lee. Snider was not simply a cut-and-paste of the two. He was especially not just a carbon copy of Bruce Lee. Many studios tried to put a Bruce Lee clone into their games, including ADK, Capcom, Namco and a few indy developers. But each attempt was just a caricature of the man. He seemed out of place when put in a lineup of figures that were more unique. That were more memorable.

 

So what artists did was focus on the elements that made Lee and Norris unique. They tried to find some symmetry there. Allen was meant to bring back memories of the previous generation of karate stars. Not necessarily the underground legends but instead those that fought in televised contests. The developers had seen how well incorporating elements from real people had worked for Ryu. I’ve talked about it again and again but I always go back the gold standard in character designs. Ryu was inspired by the true-life adventures of Mas Oyama and Yoshiji Soeno. The thing was the character did not look anything like the real men. Yet watching him dominate the competition with his superior techniques would rekindle memories of Oyama, a man nicknamed the God Hand. Snider was the high kicking star from the USA. Someone that was ready for his movie debut. He was not supposed to have the gravitas of Kairi, his drama was more manufactured. He was a reflection of the modern martial arts star. Someone who was more comfortable on the big screen than in the back-alley fights.

 

ARIKA did an excellent job at making the difference between Kairi and Allen more profound than that of Ken and Ryu. Kairi was covered in scars, had long hair and was missing an eye. Snider had the good looks and shaggy long hair of a ‘70s star. Kairi was a tortured soul that pained with every victory while Allen celebrated with gusto. They didn’t want to let tiny details tell the story, there were no hemmed cuffs separating the models. Reusing sprites was a thing of the past. There were fresh uniforms, bright colors and original 3D models to look at. They hammered away at this difference all throughout the series. The way each controlled had to be as unique as how they looked. Kairi was the more experienced fighter, he had a broader library of attacks and could be played more aggressively. Snider was new to the unsanctioned tournament scene. He was designed to be used more tactically. Even the game endings were very different. Kairi was the outcast, haunted by his past he was meant to fight his battles alone. Allen was the budding movie star and got his big break at the end of the first EX Tournament. ARIKA gave audiences another nod to his forefather. If Bruce Lee fought one giant on film then Allen had to fight two.

 

When Allen Snider was announced for the new ARIKA game I was excited. The changes made to the character perfectly reflected his origin. We’ll look at these things on the next blog. 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 Abridged History of the Brawler, a pre-rumble...

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be looking at one of my favorite all-time genres, the Brawler. This was originally a series that I ran on 1UP but I decided to revisit it and update a few entries. Now note that I call the genre the "Brawler." Other people and game sites call the genre "Beat-em Ups." But those people often call fighting games beat-em ups as well. I would contend that the fighting game and the brawler are actually two completely different genres. A fighting game is traditionally a one-vs-one game. Whether it's two martial arts masters, or a robot versus a demon or two dinosaurs going head-to-head, there is always one player versus another (sometimes a PC opponent instead). That is by my definition a fighting game. There are usually a few things that most fighting games have in common. There is a scoring system, a way to track health and often a time clock or ring out rule as well. Again the fight is usually one on one. There is the rare exception where the original Fatal Fury actually allowed two versus one battles and it would still be considered a fighting game. For the most part however a fighting game is one vs one.

A Brawling game however is one or more versus many. The Brawling game usually revolves around unarmed combat. In some cases a character may pick up a bat, knife or gun along the way but a weapon usually does not last after a few uses. The difference between a Brawler and an action game, such as the Capcom arcade classics Black Tiger or Strider, is that a Brawling game allows two or more people to fight against waves of opponents. In at least one arcade game there was even a chance for six teammates fight against the bad guys or a single bad guy. This game would still be considered a Brawler. There are other genres that are cousins of the Brawler, the Run-and-Gun, also called the Action Shooter features characters that fought with guns and modern weapons instead of bare hands.

Also the Hack-and-Slash game is a brawler featuring classic swords and melee weapons instead of bare hands. In terms of popularity the Brawler had a quick climb to the top, in fact of all of the games I will be talking about the majority happened within a few years, from 1990-1993. Then they all slowly faded away. The brawler was eclipsed by the rise of fighting games. The genre never completely faded away but instead it slowly evolved. It would find waves of popularity in countries with developing PC markets like Korea and China. The core mechanics of the brawler would even become adapted into other genres. I will highlight many games and try to point out some things that made each game unique.

 

The Brawler, just like every other genre, came from somewhere. The early generation of arcade hits were inspired, if not outright stolen, from comics and movies. These games would then become adapted to the home consoles as a sort of faded copy of a familiar idea. Star Wars, Star Trek, various anime shows, manga and comic books all had a hand in shaping the history of game designs. The developers on the first batch of action titles often looked at action movies for inspiration. There was a lot of crossover to influences for the early action games, fighting games and brawlers. The action movie star was often a kung-fu expert. After all if you are going to have a story where one person can take out an army of opponents then they better know how to fight. There was no bigger star on the planet than Bruce Lee, at least this was the case back in the '70s. The young developers in Japan and the United States would have been greatly influenced by the man and his movies while growing up. When they started working on the first wave of action arcade games, almost a decade later, then there was usually one person they all looked to. It didn't matter how the artists colored or animated the early sprite heroes, there was something very familiar about the way they appeared...

The presence of Lee actually worked in favor of these early games. We had an actor and martial artist that dressed in very clean and easy to read costumes in his films. The shirtless hero with dark pants would pop up on various character designs. When the early arcade and console systems had limited memory to work with then simple two-color costumes were perfect designs. Of course Lee's signature yellow jumpsuit with black stripe from the film the Game of Death would become iconic as well. The costumes that Lee wore, his haircut, stance and moves would influence character designs for the next few generations. From some of the earliest 2D fighting game characters to some of the first 3D fighting game characters, even the Flash-based fighting games and hybrid 2.5D fighters all had a Bruce Lee clone. Some of these were subtle nods to the actor but the majority stole his likeness.

 

Lee moved with a quickness that had never been seen before. He punched and kicked so fast that it was a blur on screen. These would be elements that would become adapted in the early brawlers. Resources were very limited on the arcade machines at the time, especially memory. Perhaps a character had two frames of animation between a punch and kick. This would have seemed impossible on a bulky character but a skinny fighter like Lee actually did strike that fast. Even the trademark yell of Lee, his facial quirks and mannerisms would be reproduced on many characters in fighting games and brawlers. The godfather of the brawler, the one that I believe started it all was Kung-Fu Master by Irem. It was released in 1984, a pivotal year for arcade games. The title was a subtle nod to Lee's final film, the Game of Death. Players had to climb a tower filled with various fighters, and it got progressively more difficult the higher you went. The main character "Thomas" was searching for his girlfriend "Sylvia." Of course the names were changed from the original title, Spartan X. What didn't need translating was the lighting-quick strikes and familiar yell of the hero.

The US didn't really have a connection to martial arts cinema in the '60s or '70s. The action movies that the USA enjoyed right through the '80s had a different type of violence, one which was rooted on guns and revenge. The anti-hero was a popular subject in many of the movies. As it turned out the settings were a character all to themselves. The fictional version of New York in the John Carpenter film Escape from New York lit the imagination of the Japanese studios. Cities in western-themed games had to be big, dirty and overcrowded. The walls had to be covered in graffiti and colorful gangs patrolled every corner. Japanese studios began creating impressions of these cities, based on cult films like Death Wish and Streets of Fire for the earliest and often most successful brawling franchises. Double Dragon and Final Fight were two of the biggest sellers and they introduced audiences to a modern "western" metropolis overrun with gangs.

The setup for most of the games was simple. A person of interest was usually kidnapped, often a girlfriend, a finacee and at least in one case it was the President of the United States. Seeing as how the Japanese were shamelessly pandering to Western audiences they would drop names like pop singer Madonna and Ronnie, the nickname of President Ronald Reagan, into their games. If the brawler could be compared to a film genre then it would be the cult action film. Not quite a summer blockbuster yet not lowbrow enough to be a "grindhouse" picture (with the exception of Splatterhouse that is). The Brawler was nothing short of mindless action, it was like the perfect summer movie for eating popcorn, drinking soda and turning off your brain for an hour. After all, the payoff after saving President Ronnie was getting hamburgers. It was hardly Oscar-caliber material the Japanese were interpreting.

Of course for most of these movies audiences would wonder why the cops didn't stop the bad guys. There was usually two reasons for this. The cops were either too afraid of the gangs or they were being paid off not to do their job. The gangs often had leaders and these were not the typical thug. They were instead rich crime bosses living in the lap of luxury. Sometimes they were politicians or even heads of corporations. Players figuratively and literally fought their way to the top in many of the games. As dirty subways gave way to abandoned amusement parks and crowded alleyways the player would find themselves fighting in nicer and nicer neighborhoods. Eventually they would end up in the suite or penthouse of a millionaire. It turned out that the person that was pulling the strings was often the richest person in the city. They could have had it all but instead messed with the wrong people. The punishment for kidnapping or putting a city at war was often a long drop for the bad guy.

There were many other plots to explore, many more heroes to become and many more villains to throw through windows. The brawler was and continues to be a fun genre. I hope there are a few games mentioned in this series that rekindles some memories. Perhaps I'll highlight a few that you may not have played and give you a reason to track them down. Whatever the case I hope you stick around and as always share a comment. 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!

How fight culture became fighting game history, part 18

Bruce Lee was the most revolutionary martial artist of the past century. He changed the way people thought about training, fighting and introduced many to Eastern philosophy. Lee also changed the form and content of Hong Kong action cinema. One of the most important things he did was drop the classic heroes and villains from ancient China and instead base all of his films in the modern world. There was no sorcery, no made-up kung-fu styles and no Pai Mei-type white-haired masters. Instead there were corrupt politicians, roving gangs, racist foreigners and drug kingpins to deal with. His films would influence Hollywood and game studios in many ways. Bruce Lee's last film, the 1978 title "Game of Death" featured the fighter going through a series of battles on different floors of a tower. Each floor featured a different opponent and style. These could be thought of stages or boss battles in a videogame. This was the basic template featured in the 1984 Taito game Kung-Fu Master. The main character "Thomas" had to fight through countless waves of opponents and defeat a boss-type character before he could climb the stairs to the next challenge. This blog had featured Kung-Fu Master as the godfather of the brawling and fighting genres. It stood to reason because the producer of the game, Takashi Nishiyama was also the man that helped create the original Street Fighter. He was sought out by Capcom to develop a fighting game based on the success of Kung-Fu Master. Takashi undoubtedly incorporated the cinematic influences of Lee in the development of both titles.

Lee's approach to the martial arts fable was original. His sense of storytelling was refreshing. When he arrived in Hong Kong he created a radically different approach to the fighting legends. He used the diversity of fighting styles, as featured in the Jimmy Wang Yu films but instead brought them down to Earth. Both Bruce and Jimmy saw that there was more potential to the genre if the styles were diversified. Rather than retell a legend where all of the characters used a form of kung-fu, both Wang Yu and Lee created new legends that exploited original styles against the established forms. This would become a staple of all great fighting films and all great fighting games. Wang Yu had the fortune of enjoying his time as a star of these features in China while Lee was struggling to find his voice in the US.

Bruce pursued his calling in Hong Kong after finding that the US had no room for an Asian lead actor. Or for that matter an Asian writer or producer. Lee had discovered that he could only get the creative freedom he enjoyed once he left Hollywood. The USA had a long history of not only white-washing Asian characters but of outright stereotyping them in cinema. The title actor in the Charlie Chan (a Chinese-American detective) was often a white actor in makeup. Even singular performances could be shocking bad, such as Mr. Yunioshi the apartment manager in the popular film Breakfast at Tiffany's. The very crude portrayal of a Japanese by Mickey Rooney was supposed to be hilarious and it was to many but not all audience members. Lee was one of many Asian-American actors that had to suffer through these indignities and social stereotypes while trying to get established. Attitudes were very poor towards minorities in the US. However that could also be said of many other large nations. On his path to fighting immortality Lee had to face the similar discrimination that were highlighted in the stories of Huo Yuan Jia, Wong Fei Hung and his own teacher Yip Man. On the other side of the Pacific the story was completely reversed. In Hong Kong cinema the Asian and Asian-American performers were revered and it was often White Westerners playing the bad guys.

On a personal level and professional level Bruce Lee kept working through the discrimination. He translated the lessons from boxers, wrestlers and judo practitioners that he met in the US. He adapted many styles into his own method of fighting, known as Jeet-Kun Do (JKD). Lee had worked on television and films with stuntmen who were practitioners of various styles. He learned how to make movie fights seem more visceral and realistic than any other previous director. While he was in Hong Kong Lee relied more on natural movements and believable fight choreography than the wire work and stiff kung-fu routines of his contemporaries. This break in tradition opened the eyes of moviegoers around the world.

The martial arts films of the '60s and '70s had a direct influence on the fighting game genre during the '80s and '90s. It was more than just because the developer were impressionable fans but instead because there was something so universally appealing about the greatest action films. Developers created the majority of fighters based on movie tropes. There was a karate hero, a wrestler, a boxer and a kung-fu master in many early titles. The kung-fu character often mirrored the classic heroes and villains from cinema. As the genre grew many developers were looking at trying to put in fan favorite characters. Although he passed away in 1973 nobody was a bigger name than Bruce Lee. The actor would be caricatured time and time again by many studios. His moves, his look and even the costumes from his films would be copied for years to come.

 

Kim Dragon was the first identifiable Bruce Lee clone. He appeared in the 1992 ADK game World Heroes. The Neo Geo title took fighters from different periods of time and put them into one tournament. To help keep from getting sued by the Lee family it was decided that Kim would be a Korean fighter of course fans could tell whom he was based on. The most popular 2D copy of Lee appeared a year later in Super Street Fighter II. Fei Long (Mandarin for Flying Dragon) made his debut in 1993 and was an eerily close copy of the iconic hero. Like Kim before him he had the trademark yell and leaping kicks. The first and longest running 3D version of the actor was Marshall Law. He appeared in Namco's Tekken in 1994. The boxing footwork and lightning fast punches that Lee was famous for looked amazing in three-dimensions. There were a few fighting characters that used Jeet-Kun Do in other franchises but they weren't as memorable as those based on Lee. The most recent clone of the actor was named Long (Dragon). He appeared in Xuan Dou Zhi Wang / King of Combat in 2013. The game was produced by Chinese developer Tencent, it was the first time that a Chinese developer built an homage to Lee in a major fighting game. Long appeared in an update to King of Combat almost 20 years to the day that Fei Long was introduced in Super Street Fighter II and almost 40 years to the day that Lee had died. Bruce Lee would continue to make cameos in various EA fighting games with permission from his family. The legend would live on forever because of how much he contributed to the martial arts and cinema in such a short amount of time. 

Even though Lee's fights were refreshing on the big screen they still had a touch of the fantastic and even implausible. By a similar token (no pun intended) Kung-Fu Master lacked the special attacks of SF but it still preserved some of the more fantastic elements from kung-fu cinema. Gamers fought all sorts of rivals, including knife throwers, giants and even snakes and dragons. These fantastic creatures and opponents were a staple of the classic wuxia legends. The Sword and Sabre story that inspired the creation of the Buddha's Palm was probably as influential to the development of the wuxia genre as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or the Water Margin. The sword was an ancient symbol of power and in theSabre story, the sword held a list of secret fighting techniques as well as a hidden treaty. Whoever could lay claim to the sword and unlock its secrets became a powerful physical person, but also had dominion over all of Asia. The Mongolians and Chinese were at war over this sword in the series. Many heroes and legends grew out of this conflict. The symbolism behind the weapons would be revisited in manhua.

In addition to a manhua retelling of the Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre there were other books by Tony Wong that made the weapons the central focus. The Weapons of the Gods granted martial arts masters power over nature itself, turning the owner of the weapon into a demigod. This series became extremely popular even though it followed the basic premise from the Sabrestory. The Four Constables were on the search for the Delirium Dagger in one of their adventures. Mr. Wong sold the story as based on an actual weapon that had made the wielder near invincible in combat. The Delirium Dagger increased the strength and speed of the wielder and caused opponents to suffer from extreme vertigo.

In the movie and manhua of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the main characters were fighting over a jade-colored sword named the Green Destiny. The story was part of the Crane Iron Pentalogy, a series written by Wang Dulu that captured the qualities of a hero in the classic tradition. Chinese Hero by Wing Shing Ma was an attempt at using the wuxia novel tradition in a manhua format, it was like a mid-century retelling of the heroes in the Crane Iron books. The Chinese Hero had inherited a red sword, the fabled Blood Sword which caused nothing but trouble for the young master. The fantastic art and memorable battles that Wing Shing Ma put on paper caused Tony Wong to completely change his drawing style. Prior to the 1980's Tony drew in a very early manga style, with oversized eyes and cartoonish physical proportions. After 1980, when Chinese Hero because a hit, Tony began to focus on more realistic proportions and higher quality painted panels to rival Mr. Ma.

The Iron Marshal also used a fabled sword as a plot device. The Unicorn Sword was said to grant the owner unrivaled powers if they could figure out the mystery of its origin. In the series the sword traded hands several times, each owner discovered something different about the sword, including finding a secret compartment with a map to the Unicorn treasure. At one point in the story the sword edge was broken, revealing that it was a key to the treasure. Fans of the Kingdom Hearts series might be surprised to learn that the "keyblade" was not a new idea. The Unicorn Sword was undoubtedly based on the secrets hidden on the blade and scabbard of the Sabre story.

Chasing after the sword of power was even explored in the best wuxia brawling game ever, Gladiator: Road of Sword by IGS. However what was it about the wuxia legends and powerful weapons that influenced the development of Street Fighter?

The martial arts myth had a basic framework from which to work from. The pursuit of weapons with magical properties was one plot device. Substitute the weapons with the secret scrolls, books and techniques protected by martial arts masters and the template became more obvious for comics and film. Those that pursued these techniques for selfish reasons would become obsessed with achieving power. These people would betray a brother or even master to achieve more power. They became the villains. Those that accepted these techniques also accepted the responsibility to maintain peace and order became heroes. The selfish master and the selfless master would end up doing battle at some point in the story. This was far removed from the legends that created Ryu and Sagat. Fighters that wanted to prove who was the best was a good story but a greater story involved good versus evil. Sagat was a great bad guy in the Street Fighter mythos but the greater villain was the one that murdered the master of Ken and Ryu.

Gouki would become the model for all great fighting game bosses. He had exceptional storytelling and character designs applied to him. The archetypes in Hong Kong cinema were perfect templates for game designers to work from. All the characters needed was a little background to give them dimension. Audiences believed that these sorts of good guy and bad guy martial artists really did get together in secret tournaments but what were the origins of the mixed martial arts tournaments? The UFC would have you believe that they were the first to host such tournaments. While they are popular they were far from being the originators. In fact the roots of mixed format fights are older than Bruce Lee and even Mas Oyama. In the next entry we will look at the godfathers of mixed martial arts. 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!