Hiding the master in plain sight, the genius of SNK's character design...part 1

For this series I will be looking at the design elements behind the SNK fighters. I won't be talking about every fighting game that appeared on the Neo Geo console, that would take years to put together. Instead I will focus on a few titles and some of the most influential characters, and designers. This blog has been a long time coming. The little bit that I talk about SNK will not be enough for most fans. It will hopefully get a discussion going with the design community. If I could boil down the SNK school of design, the reason why their characters were so long-lived, it would be because they hid the fighting masters in plain site. That's it. That's the secret to their success. Okay so maybe it is a little bit more complicated. Let's go back in time and see how the people that made Street Fighter changed the course of SNK as well. The late ‘70s and most of the ‘80s were considered a boom time for the arcade industry. Hundreds of studios popped up in the hopes of striking it rich. They wanted to create the next Space Invaders, the next Pac Man or Donkey Kong. Everything was an experiment and when one idea worked you could expect other studios to copy the formula. If one company had a racing game then everyone else had to have a racing game. If one company had a successful space shooter then other studios needed their own. This type of thinking sunk many developers. If they were only copying and not innovating then audiences would often pass over their games. SNK was a company that took many chances, in doing so they were often financially drained. The games they produced in the early days were the results of a small team of very dedicated employees. One of the biggest changes for the company happened when Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto left Capcom to join SNK. The pair had designed many of Capcom’s early arcade hits, including the original Street Fighter.

 

SNK founder and boss Eikichi Kawasaki had a keen insight to what gamers wanted. Unlike other company presidents who sat back and let his team develop hits he was actively involved producing many of their early titles. Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Matsumoto had plans for a Street Fighter successor but the industry was evolving so rapidly that what it meant to have a fighting game was literally changing from month to month. Many arcade veterans would consider Technos’ game Karate Champ as the forefather of the modern fighting game. In 1984 it introduced audiences to the idea of traveling from place to place to fight other karate masters. There were even bonus stages in the game where players broke bricks and punched bulls. Some of these things found their way into the original Street Fighter. The colors for player 1 and player 2 could even be considered the inspiration for Ryu and Ken respectively.

 

To say that Street Fighter was solely based on one game, or even one myth was wrong. There were a few other games that shaped the industry as well. In 1984 Irem released Kung-Fu Master, that Mr. Nishiyama had also developed when he was with Irem. This game had a hero fighting wave after wave of different types of opponents in a nonstop showdown. It was essentially the foundation of the brawler as well as a key piece in the development of the fighting game genre. 1984 was also important because of Punch-Out!! The Nintendo hit introduced stylized opponents from different countries and different weight classes as well. The first-person perspective in a fighter was rarely used but Nintendo demonstrated that it could be done. Then there was Yie-ar Kung Fu by Konami. In 1985 the company added the concept of life bars to the genre. Also it introduced different schools of martial arts, some with weapons, and it featured the first Chinese female martial arts opponent as well.

 

The action titles from ’84 and ’85 things colored the development of the fighting genre. When Street Fighter was released in 1987 Capcom made sure that it was bigger and better than anything that preceded it. Karate Champ may have been the roots but this game was so much more. The new stars, Ken and Ryu, would travel the globe and take on challengers of every background. Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Matsumoto didn’t create a generic martial arts tournament, they instead pulled in influences from pop culture. The movies, the comics and cartoons they enjoyed inspired the setting and opponents of Street Fighter. More than that they helped inspire the development of special attacks like the hadouken or fireball. Street Fighter wasn’t the breakout hit that the company expected it to be. Instead there was a game by Technos that ruled arcades that year. Double Dragon was a new type of fighting game. Audiences all over the world were instantly hooked on this brawler. It was essentially a pseudo-3D version of the Kung-Fu Master story. An evil gang kidnaped a girl but instead of one person fighting to get her back it was two. These two could punch, kick, grab and throw opponents. No other game had that many attacks or “combination” moves. Billy and Jimmy Lee were stars for a new generation. There was nothing traditional about these heroes. They were tough guys from the street, vigilantes that took justice into their own hands. Audiences could identify with them easier than they could a martial artist in ancient China.

 

Double Dragon would have a profound influence on the industry. Studios were forced to change with the times or audiences might skip their next release. Any plans for a Street Fighter sequel were scrubbed as Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Matsumoto left to join SNK. The designers taking over at Capcom, Yoshiki Okamoto, Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda wanted to make the next Street Fighter a superior version of Double Dragon. You know the story by now of how Final Fight was originally called Street Fighter ’89. It was no accident that the stars of this game were not Ken and Ryu but instead a more contemporary Cody and Guy. Their sprites were bigger and more detailed than Billy and Jimmy Lee. They fought through a bigger city and had more moves and more opponents to deal with as well. Final Fight was one of dozens of Double Dragon clones that came out over the next few years. Many for the arcade but some for the consoles as well. Of these developers Konami put out some of the best brawlers and I dare say that Vendetta (1991) might be peak Double Dragon clone.

 

SNK had not yet released the Neo Geo console but the company saw where the arcade industry was headed. Specifically the President and Founder Eikichi Kawasaki saw that fighting games was the next big trend. He had his team begin working on new experiences. One of the most important and often overlooked titles that Mr. Kawasaki produced was called Street Smart. It was a sort of “missing link” between the brawler and the modern fighting game. It had a sense of depth like Double Dragon and even had a broad stage that allowed players to move far left and right. There were a number of different opponents each with techniques and abilities. It was the first fighting game to feature the Brazilian art of Capoeira, the Stage 2 boss “Slippery” Sam Santana could flip, tumble and strike. This game also featured an unlicensed version of I can’t turn you loose, an old Otis Redding tune made popular by the Blues Brothers. Poached music aside this game was important because it allowed for two players to team up against two opponents at the same time. It had a frenetic energy about it and being able to double-team an opponent felt very rewarding.

 

Mr. Kawasaki was a fan of the fighting arts and was even an amateur boxer in his youth. He knew a thing or two about real fighting. The idea of mixing up the forms intrigued him and he made sure that he had both a karate or wrestler be playable in Street Smart. It was SNK’s next game that helped put them on the map. Mr. Nishiyama and Mr. Matsumoto had their hands full trying to stay one step ahead of the competition. Street Fighter II exploded on the scene in February 1991. Somewhere in between Street Fighter and the original Fatal Fury the duo considered making a fighting game like Double Dragon with at least three playable characters. They had to act fast as Street Fighter II was gaining momentum. They narrowed their idea to a traditional fighting game but kept three main characters and even the ability to jump between the foreground and background. Fatal Fury was released at the end of 1991 and was an answer to both Final Fight and Street Fighter II. Audiences gravitated to the unique library of characters. Traditional fighting arts masters were balanced out by modern brawlers in street clothing. In fact you could see the spectrum in the main characters. Joe Higashi looked like a traditional May Thai specialist. His shorts, his taped hands and feet, dark tan and bold colors were classic. Andy Bogard was a sort of ninja-hybrid, his costume wasn’t quite classic nor was it quite modern, his design was literally a bridge between the old world and the new. If Joe was a nod to the past then Terry Bogard represented the future.

 

Terry Bogard was a new type of hero, the modern action film star. The days of Japanese karate masters being the heroes of the game were coming to an end. Some companies didn’t get the memo and kept rehashing old ideas, that’s why not many of those copycat fighting games were around today. Terry was a literal street fighter. He wore street clothing; a trucker cap, leather jacket, jeans and sneakers. He learned how to fight growing up on the rough streets of South Town. Of all the SNK heroes he was the one that went the furthest despite having a formal martial arts instructor. When SNK put him up against Geese Howard, the man who murdered his father, they created one of the great rivalries in fighting game history. Mr. Kawasaki and his star developers had a hit on their hands. It was the mix of traditional and modern character designs that helped put SNK on the map. When SNK’s next major fighting game was released it cemented their school of design. We will look at this in 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, Part 1

The Brawling genre, also known as the Beat-Em-Up among arcade aficionados, has been a part of gaming history for over 30 years. Players can identify the genre thanks to some trademark elements. The games traditionally consist of one or more players taking on waves of opponents using mostly punches and kicks. Players can usually pick up health and weapons along the way. At some point a boss or sub boss appears to fight the players. The game basically repeats this formula until the end, or until the player runs out of continues.

Some of the most enjoyable gaming experiences are connected to long-running titles, many of which are saturated with murder, violence, tragedy and revenge. The genre remains popular despite the (sometimes) graphic content because the titles are among the easiest to get into, play and enjoy. The mechanics of a great brawling experience are rooted in very simple gameplay elements. A joystick and two buttons are usually all that is required to begin playing, navigating and interacting with any number of virtual worlds. A player that has mastered one good brawler has probably experienced the best elements of all of them. The key to the success for most in the genre has been accessibility. The fantastic premises, over-the-top characters and simple control schemes could make players feel like they were literally taking on the world. The repetitive nature of the combat system and sheer number of opponents made gamers believe that they were advancing through a rich narrative even though the gameplay remained the same from beginning to end. These lessons would be applied to other genres and helped shape the gaming industry. However before we talk about what became of the brawler we have to go back to the beginning. Where did the brawler come from?

The brawler as you can imagine is closely related to the fighting game. Traditional one-on-one combat was made popular in Karate Champ, released by Data East in 1984. This game established the concepts of traveling to challenge other masters, two-player vs combat and even mini games to break up the monotony. In 1985 the concepts behind Karate Champ were expanded. New narratives, fighting mechanics and character designs were explored in Yie Ar Kung Fu. Released by Konami this new game had more in tune with modern fighting games. It featured a colorful cast of masters in different styles of kung fu, instead of the singular karate style from Data East. Most of the rivals had fantastic abilities such as being able to fly through the air.

These characters were inspired by archetypes featured in kung-fu cinema and based on legendary heroes from past dynasties. Some of the masters in Yie Ar used weapons against the players, adding a bit of a challenge and forcing the player to adapt to those styles of combat. The addition of digitized voices, spouting one-word statements, helped add dimension to the game. Both Karate Champ and Yie Ar Kung-Fu predated the original Street Fighter by years. They made player vs computer combat possible and more important, entertaining. They helped lay the foundation for brawling games however they were not the biggest influence on the creation of the genre.

If you were to poll a gamer old enough to remember the golden age of the arcade what the first brawler was there would be an almost unanimous title. Double Dragon, developed by Technos and under license from Taito, was released in 1987. This game heralded the introduction of a genre that would explode in popularity and then fade quickly as the arcade and home console markets transitioned through the late 80's and early 90's.

The game was unlike anything that arcade visitors had ever seen before. It began with a scene of a girl getting punched in the gut and kidnapped by a gang of pseudo-futuristic thugs. This intro was shocking to most gamers. It gave young gamers a dose of sex on top of violence as the pixelated panties of the damsel were clearly visible as she was thrown over the shoulders of a gang member. Right after the kidnapping the main characters Billy and Jimmy Lee appeared from a garage to chase down the attackers.

The rest of the game was a textbook example of brawling design. Rival characters fought with certain techniques, the larger characters had greater range and could often do more damage to players so they had to be kept at bay. Smaller characters could be rushed by players. Players could even battle female gang members. It was the first equal opportunity brawler! The control was simple, there were only three buttons; jump, punch and kick. Players could move in any direction on the screen but their character would always face either right or left. The same thing applied for opponents. This allowed the player to focus on attacks on a 2D plane and not worry about directional attacks from below or above the character. The fighting system was quite robust for only using a few buttons. A player could switch between punches and kicks and find which combination of attacks worked best to drop different sized opponents. Players could stun rivals with a punch and then throw an elbow at an opponent sneaking up behind them, then return to the original attacker with a kick. Players could even perform grapple attacks by pressing toward opponents and pressing the right action button. The player could grab the opponent by the hair and smash a knee into their face or perform a judo throw and toss the opponents over their shoulder. Players could also interact with the environment, such as throwing objects at opponents and even take weapons from rivals to use against them.

Visually the game was vey stylized. Characters didn't quite have Eastern animé or Western comic book proportions but instead something in the middle. The muscles were exaggerated on most of the characters and especially on the rival characters to make them appear more imposing. Each character was given a solid color choice to make them easy to identify on screen especially when a half dozen or more characters were engaged in battle. The world of Double Dragon was urban and just a hint futuristic with the choice of gang outfits and vehicles on the stages. The stages and environments shifted from the streets to the countryside and even the underground of the dystopian world. Players could take advantage of the level designs and throw opponents into rivers or down spike pits. The changing scenery and interactive environments would become a staple of all brawling games. Players felt as if they were on the ultimate quest for revenge as they battled nonstop through a city. For young gamers, especially boys, the experience could be exhilarating.

Gamers assumed the role of the ultimate tough guys. They fought off wave after wave of gang members coming at them from every direction. Using everything they could to fend off attackers and fighting just as dirty as their opponents. Double Dragon allowed players to turn into digital representations of martial arts movie stars and live out the fantasy in one extended battle sequence.

Unlike the legendary non-stop 4 minute fight sequence featuring Tony Jaa in the film Tom Young Goong aka the Protector, many brawling games were anywhere from a half hour to an hour of nonstop fighting. This level of intense engagement (and monetary investment) gave players that beat the game a strong emotional attachment to the characters and title itself. Yet most of the seasoned arcade players would be surprised to learn that Double Dragon was not the original brawling game, at least not by the definition we’ve explored here.

This series will go over some of the most important, some of the worst and some of the most unique brawling games released over the past three decades. The series is in no way meant to be comprehensive or even cover all the sub-genres associated with the brawler. Additionally this series deals mostly with the original titles and will rarely bring up sequels. The blogs will go chronologically through the years, so if I fail to bring up a title please be patient. Chances are I'll mention a few fan-favorite games through the course of the series. Next time I shall talk about the brawling game that predated Double Dragon and got a generation started on beat-em-ups. 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!

How fight culture became fighting game history, part 42

Gouki and Silber demonstrated the price that had to be paid to be two of the best fighting game bosses ever. They were willing to fight to the death at each and every encounter. Very few fighting game characters were ever written with that level of intensity. The pair were willing to kill in order to achieve their goals. The Dictator and the other bosses were willing to do the same but Gouki and Silber did not have a different agenda. They did not want to rule the world or even a small nation. They simply wanted to be the greatest fighters that had ever lived. By their definition the most lethal art proved who had true power. This took them out of the realm of bosses and made them symbols of evil.

The lack of respect that the two villains had for human life extended to themselves. These boss characters were willing to enter a fight even if the numbers were against them. They were willing to punish their own bodies, cripple their own bones and deform themselves for the sake of mastering killing strikes. Gouki and Silber had powerful bodies but gruesome expressions. Their faces were a mockery of the humanity they left behind. In the official character are they almost looked like they were wearing masks. Their features carved by a life of constant battle. The scars that Silber wore were clearly visible but Gouki's were hidden, they were scars on his soul. When Gouki killed his own master and brother he had done damage to himself that he would never be able to undo.

The pair had achieved a level of power that few could ever hope to reach in canon. Their training was so hard that no opponent was strong enough to spar with them and live to talk about it. The two had turned to nature to push themselves further. Instead of breaking rocks and trees they began fighting predators from the animal kingdom. This legend was taken from reality itself. Mas Oyama had travelled the world, defeating masters of just about every fighting style. When he ran out of people to fight he turned to animals. He would put on demonstrations of his Kyokushin karate style by fighting a bull. He would wrestle with the bull, break off its horns with a chop and then kill the bull with a punch to the head. When the bull was examined by a local butcher they would discover that Oyama had broken its ribs in several places and had actually shattered enough bone to make portions of the animal unfit for consumption. This legend evolved to make several Street Fighter characters seem as powerful in comparison and at a younger age at that!

It was such a powerful story that one of Oyama's students played his master in the film Karate Bear Fighter. Sonny Chiba appeared in several other moves based on the life of Oyama. These movies and characterizations helped shape the development of Takuma Sakazaki in the Fatal Fury and King of Fighters series.

Oyama inspired millions with his exploits and made many people believe that they too could follow in his footsteps. However none have proven to be a Godhand since. This was the cautionary tale of karate, the master that never quite made it. This was the lesson and legend of Willie Williams. Some karate practitioners took Soeno's fight against a bear as a literal challenge. Willie Williams was one of those. At 6" 7" and 230lbs. of lean muscle Williams was an imposing karateka. The African-American moved to Japan to train and follow the path laid out by Oyama. He immersed himself completely in the training regiment and wanted to prove that Kyokushin was indeed the Ultimate Truth.

You can imagine that a tall black man in Japan studying karate, dressing in traditional garb, training in the traditional format was a strange sight for conservatives and traditionalists. Surely no gaijin could grasp the nuances of Kyokushin, the fighting spirit. Williams, and most Americans are want to believe that anything is possible and a form can be learned and understood by the people, not solely the Japanese. To prove the authenticity of the karate format and dispel the legends from the truth Williams and his trainers staged some fights. One pitted the man against a bear. News reporters were invited to capture contest on film.When news of this encounter reached the states a few die-hards like Willie Williams began training in the Kyokushin style to become fighting machines as well. Williams even staged a match against a bear for the documentary "The Strongest Karate."

The "fight" was highly debated as the bear seemed disoriented. Critics argued that the bear was clearly drugged and possibly even declawed so that Williams wouldn't have been mauled by the animal. Despite the imposing frame that a young Williams carried his strikes seemed ineffective against the bear. The press that covered the event ended up participating is what was called nothing more than a propaganda film. Williams and his instructor, sensei Shigeru Oyama (no relation to Mas Oyama) spent a lot of time trying to prove the authenticity and effectiveness of the art. In 1980 he and Shigeru were suspended from the International Karate Organization Kyoukushinkaikan because of a fight they had participated in. Williams fought Antoni Inoki to a draw. Williams had suffered a broken arm and Inoki a broken rib. The legend of Inoki grew after the battle while Williams was relegated to the footnotes. It seemed that the best he could do was inspire characters for pop culture.

Marco Rodrguez (translated to Khushnood Butt for the US) for the game Garou, Mark of the Wolves was very closely modeled after Williams. To be fair he was inspired by William Oliver, Willie Williams and Charles Martin, the three black Americans better known as the Fighting Black Kings, from the 1976 documentary on the first world Kyokushin fighting tournament. Marco had immersed himself in the study of the fictional Kyokugen (extreme) form of Karate. This is the form invented by Takuma Sakazaki and passed onto his son Ryo and his friend Robert Garcia. Marco believed in the form as the absolute best and touted its superiority with a fanatical zeal in the game, his eyes welling with pride every time he thought about the art and his master. This level of passion, combined with his moves actually being solid, enamored him to gamers. The character worked abroad despite the double stigma of race and karate fool. Gamers were able to see past those conventions because he was a reliable karate-style fighter who played like the traditional Art of Fighting heroes even within a Fatal Fury title. Marco worked very well within the game as well as canon and wasn't simply a joke character for the sake of being a joke character.

There was a world of difference between a bull and and actual predatory animal however. According to legend Oyama had once staged a battle with a bear. He did not dominate the creature and ended up fighting for his life. A version of that fight was featured in the manga and animé series Karate Baka Ichidai.The idea of a martial artist versus a wild animal had inspired many legends, but the stories themselves were sometimes inspired by actual events. In ancient tradition the heroes of a story were the ones that fought off a colossal beast. Sometimes these animals were real and sometimes they were mythical. In ancient Greece the hero Hercules was said to have wrestler both a lion and boar with his bare hands. The fabled 12 Labors included Hercules against The Erymanthean Boar, The Cretan Bull, The Nemean Lion, The Lemean Hydra and The Cerberus. These were certainly monsters perfect for a video game. Also unlike Mas Oyama the contest was not a fight for survival but a chance for the character to cement his legendary strength.

Oyama and his fans would pontificate on his karate and how it was used to defeat other fighters and other forms. Some of his lessons were based on actual encounters. He would describe in detail how his karate form was used to beat boxers and pro wrestlers from the west. These lessons would then be applied in the abstract and authors (including Oyama himself) would come up with scenarios where karate could be used against wild animals. Imagine the situation where a karate expert is ever wandering through a forest and is attacked by a wild ape. The fighter would be no match for the strength of the beast but they would be able to use their long legs to target open spots on the body. Not unlike fighting a musclebound wrestler I'm sure. The story of karate versus an ape would be used by other manga storytellers over the years. The ape would take on demonic features in many retellings and become more of a monster than wild animal when the legends became animated.

Some of the myths that Oyama shared were based on recorded history. Such as a samurai having to defend himself from a pack of wild dogs. The fighter would have to find a way to use the environment to their advantage and not allow themselves to be surrounded by the dogs. Then they would have to focus their attacks so that every strike was lethal. A miss could leave the fighter open to a counter-attack and that could be the difference between life and death. Wandering swordsmen in feudal-era Japan were sometimes targeted by bandits and these same lessons would have been used to ensure their survival. But when it came to bare handed fighting against natural predators there weren't too many success stories to rely on. Oyama had defeated bulls but he often wondered how he, or his karate form would have faired against a more aggressive predator.

It turned out that a thousand years ago there was an encounter that could go down as something too amazing to be true. The pilgrim Wu Song was traveling through a village in China. He had stopped by an in for some rest. The villagers warned Wu that there was a man-eating tiger nearby and that it was dangerous to take a certain bridge out of town, especially once it started to get dark. After a few drinks Wu thought that it would be a good idea to take the bridge and see what happened. Sure enough the tiger was there and being courageous (or crazed with booze) Song attacked the tiger. He had a stick with him but the tiger broke that quickly. Song in a fit of rage managed to get close to the tiger and kill it with repeated blows to the head. Wu Song was a character in The Water Margin. The character was fictional but many of the men and women in the novel were inspired by actual events. It was possible that a kung-fu practitioner with more ability than sense actually did kill a tiger with his bare hands. When the writer of the Water Margin heard of the legend he figured out a way to incorporate it into the series.

Oyama wasn't the first time that the man versus bear legend had been based on reality. The Bulgarian Dan Kolov was a wrestler and had to fight off a bear attack while he was out hunting. He lost his rifle for a moment when the bear was upon him, he grabbed and pulled at the bear with such ferocity that he pulled chunks of skin and fur off of the creature. Kolov was a self-taught catch wrestler, and circus strongman that was considered by some the greatest wrestler that ever lived. He regained his rifle after a brief struggle and killed the bear with a shot. With such a reputation he became a big draw for wrestling promoters. It was possible that the legend of Kolov had a hand in inspiring the legend of Zangief, who was known to wrestle bears in Street Fighter canon.

Domesticated bears had actually been used in some circus sideshows for over a century. The bears would usually only "wrestle" their trainers, because they were comfortable with them. Bears felt like they were playing and not actually fighting. In some rare cases a circus might let an audience member try to wrestler a muzzled bear. The bear would usually knock the person over and sit on them easily to end the match. But every now and then a story would come out where a person got the upper hand. This was the inspiration behind the Australian folk song about William Sinclair who defeated a bear in a match in Queensland.

It's easy to imagine that a version of these man-vs-beast myths could end up shaping the development of various fighting games. In the early days of the genre the developers did not have to go very far to bring the legends to the game screen. In Karate Champ the designers at Data East introduced a bonus stage that had fighters kicking stacks of tile. Oyama and his karate predecessors had often given breaking demonstration to audiences wherever they went. Sometimes they broke stones, bricks and blocks of ice. Karate Champ was the first fighting game to feature the bonus level and even had players take out a charging bull with a punch or kick.

As the developers got more comfortable with the genre they began experimenting with enemy types. The early fighting games had masters of various fighting styles competing against each other. After the studios ran out of identifiable forms they started throwing in monsters, animals and even robots and aliens to keep the genre interesting. A tiger, giant falcon, and even shark would be included in Fighting Layer, a game developed by former Street Fighter II designers.

In Battle K-Road the secret boss was named Mr. Bear. It turned out to be an actual grizzly bear and was among one of the most difficult opponents in any game. The game was over-the-top as one could imagine but it retained some charm. These types of encounters would not have been acceptable in the genre if not for people like Oyama and Kolov who actually fought the beasts and lived to tell the story.

Gouki and Silber should not be confused with the previously aforementioned legends. They did not spar against wild animals with their bare hands, they hunted them down. The two could not only dominate the other fighters that they came across but also the biggest and strongest creatures in nature. In canon Gouki had killed a large bear that was the terror of a nearby forest. A young and inexperienced Ryu went out trying to kill the bear himself but was almost gutted by the creature. Gouki jumped into the fight and punched a hole through the head of the bear. He did not do it as much to save the life of Ryu but to warn him there were things in the world that should be feared and respected more than any animal.

In a similar fashion Silber traveled the globe putting down the animals he tested himself against. He showed little mercy for the other fighters he faced and was willing to put them out of their misery as well. Silber seemed to relish in his power and technique. It had been speculated that the fur on his uniform was taken from a polar bear he had killed and not from a wolf. Few aside from Silber himself knew what points around the world he had visited. Gamers were left to believe that he had wandered into the frozen arctic looking for a new challenge and had returned with the pelt after finding no suitable opponent.

Gouki and Silber were fantastic character designs from Capcom and SNK respectively. They commanded the attention of the audience and held their interest throughout the battle. Each time they appeared in game they were treated with the same sense of awe and respect. Although they were powerful bosses and seemingly superhuman fighters they were not cheap characters from a balance perspective. They did not have attacks that were overpowered or could defeat a player with one or two hits. Even the Shun Goku Satsu at the most took 2/3 of an opponents energy and not the entire health bar. Every character in the game stood a chance against these villains provided that the player were willing to play aggressively and make few mistakes.

The physical appearance and attacks of the two bosses made them stand apart from the cast and even other villains. Yet there was a point where villains were too powerful and too evil for the genre. When pushed to the extreme ends the evil characters could break the suspension of disbelief from the gamer. Gouki had one such makeover in Street Fighter IV. It turned out that Gouki or even Shin Gouki (the white-haired variation) were not the most powerful incarnation of the character. A third form known only as Oni or Demon in Japanese was introduced by the SF IV designers. Oni was the manifestation of the Dark Hadou, or evil power which Gouki possessed, or rather which had possessed Gouki. The character grew long, spiky white hair, and a large underbite like an ogre with small tusks protruding. His skin even went from clay-colored to blue. Gouki no longer had the elements of a humanized lion but instead the wholesale appearance of a Nio, or protector of the underworld.

In Tekken a similar character had been unveiled as well. Jinpachi Mishima was a warlord and founder of the Mishima clan. He had spent a few decades locked under the Mishima castle. It was a sentence in Hell but Jinpachi had become so powerful that he broke out and returned to the real world. Oni and Jinpachi were so overpowered that seemingly no other character in the series could have even hurt them. Capcom had ignored all of the elements that made Gouki such an interesting character. They moved right into the realm of the absurd with Oni. The same thing could be said for Namco and the Tekken universe which Jinpachi now occupied. The two studios had been skirting the line between what was good character design, what was bad and what was simply pandering to the masses. Before Oni and Jinpachi the major challenge for the studios was showing gamers the creation of a villain right in the middle of a series. The next blog will look at how Capcom used the template of Gouki to rewrite the Street Fighter mythology. 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 14

In fighting games (and in popular culture) karate would be considered a top-tier technique. The actual versions of karate featured in games were not necessarily rooted in one school. The looser the connection with an established style the better it was for developers to adapt into a game. In this way they could invent special attacks for the cast without fear from purists calling out the technique. Before characters could shoot fireballs from their hands karate was shown in a much more realistic light. In 1984 Technos released Karate Champ. It was one of the forefathers of the fighting game genre. The "plot" of the game was simple. The main character would travel from town to town and fight the best karate practitioners there. Players earned a full point or a half a point depending on the severity of their attack. The strikes in the game were based on actual karate moves, the points based on organized tournament rules. Players could punch, kick, jump and even block by entering commands on two joysticks. It was a clumsy control setup that would not be revisited by any other company. There was a "sub-plot" in the game as well. At each location there was a woman that was torn over which fighter she preferred. The winner of the tournament would get the girl. The girl-as-a-prize would be a trope that Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency would point out in many other genres.

 

Karate Champ was notable for using different backgrounds and locations to help tell a story. The main character went from dojo to dojo and even traveled around the world challenging opponents. While the main characters wore red or white it was due to limitations in the hardware. They were supposed to represent different fighters and even nationalities. This globe-trotting fighter was a Mas Oyama-type, a karate as the superior fighting form stand-in. Even the bonus stages were reflective of the demonstrations that Oyama would put on. He would break boards and even stones with his bare hands and his fights against bulls were legendary. But I'll go into greater detail on that in a future blog. In Karate Champ players could also break boards or even ceramic pots and bottles thrown at them. It was a little silly but made the fighter look like a badass. Karate Champ was mildly popular but the runaway hit from 1984 was a different type of fighting game. Irem released Kung-Fu Master, a game based loosely on Bruce Lee's final film "Game of Death." Kung-Fu Master predated Renegade (Technos, 1986) and Double Dragon (Technos, 1987) and could actually be considered the forefather of the brawler.

 

 

The first few kung-fu games created a framework that would be followed by the rest of the industry. Konami released Yie Ar Kung-Fu in 1985. It featured masters of different forms of kung-fu against a hero named Oolong. Some of the fighters used weapons while others user their hands and feet. It was notable for the traditional locations players visited as well as being the first fighting game that featured female opponents. Yie-Ar Kung was a fast-paced, very frenetic fighting game. There were no pauses in action, no chance for the player to breathe. The focus was less on realism and more on capturing the energy and slick choreography of kung-fu action films. The slow, calculated scoring system of Karate Champ was thrown out the window. Nonstop action would become the style of gameplay that Capcom and the other studios would try to build upon. Because of this the kung-fu master would become a trope in fighting games, especially Japanese fighting games. Lee and Gen appeared just two years after Yie Ar Kung-Fu. They kept the classical costumes with them. Capcom had unveiled a game engine capable of putting larger sprites with greater fidelity and more colors on the screen than Konami had done. This engine was used as the backbone for the original Street Fighter.

 

Kung-Fu masters were so well known globally that almost every fighting game had to make use of them. Three of the greatest fighters in Virtua Fighter tournament play and also in canon were Pai Chan, her father Lau Chan and family friend and "Drunken Master" Shun Di. Sega was one of the pioneers of 3D technology in arcade games and created what is generally regarded as the first 3D fighting game. Virtua Fighter was a hit from 1993. It had realistic graphics, lighting and quasi-realistic physics as well. These were things that audiences hadn't really seen before. The game was set in the modern world but many of the fighters were presented with classic uniforms, especially the Chinese ones. Pai and Lau were in the original game and Shun Di appeared in the sequel a year later.

Not to be outdone Namco released their first 3D fighting game in 1994. The studio had a long standing rivalry with Sega. Anything one studio did the other studio tried to do better. It was seen in racing games, space shooters and especially fighting games. Tekken was the result of their work and audiences were split as to which 3D fighting game was better. The elderly kung-fu master Wang Jinrei appeared in the first Tekken. His understudy Lei Wulong, a "Super Cop" based on a Jackie Chan character, appeared in Tekken 2. A more classic villain Feng Wei debuted in Tekken 5. Again, despite being set in the modern world the characters were mostly stereotypes pulled from Hong Kong cinema.

 

While Buddhist monks were credited for introducing kung-fu to China they have actually been grossly underrepresented in fighting games. Fans of the Mortal Kombat series might mention that Liu Kang and Kung Lao from the Mortal Kombat series were monks although they did not look or dress traditionally. The series was about as inaccurate as a fighting game could be when it came to representing actual fighting arts. The purpose of Mortal Kombat was to shock players with its ultra violent moves and fatalities. It was well done but it was fairly insensitive to Asian culture and traditions. In the history of fighting games were have been only two fighters based on actual Shaolin Monks. Lei Fei, appeared in Virtua Fighter 5 in 2001. There wouldn't be another monk worth mentioning until 2008. Kuan Yin Shen was the younger of the two and he appeared in Capoeira Fighter 3 by Spiritonin. The character was actually named on a Buddhist deity. Sega was a Japanese developer and Spiritonin was a US developer. The representation of traditional Shaolin kung-fu was indeed extremely rare around the world. But why was this? Perhaps religious undertones made the monks appear less intimidating in the games. It didn't matter if they studied the iron body techniques, could run on water or knew the death touch. In western circles a person in a robe just didn't seem as formidable as say a seven-foot cyclops that practiced Muay Thai. In Hong Kong cinema this was not the case, monks of different schools could be the subjects of action films. The classic Shaolin vs Lama highlights the fighting capacity of religious followers.

 

Popular culture dictated which styles appeared in a fighting game and even how the fighters themselves would be presented. Hong Kong cinema was the root of many kung-fu tropes. Some of which were based on historical figures but the vast majority were made up. The next blog will highlight how cinema influenced the evolution of the fighting game genre. 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!