Remembering some rare fighting game news in Arcadia

A couple of weeks ago I talked about bringing my Arcadia magazines out of the garage, and into the house. I’ve been flipping through them, and remembered that many of the games featured within never came to the USA. Not only that, but even Japanese audiences didn’t always get a chance to play some of these games, as they were only in location tests, or never saw a wider release. If you follow this blog you’ll remember that I talked about Psy-Phi that last two Fridays. It was a touch screen arcade game made by Sega.

In addition to being a touch screen game, it was also notable because the mechanic was an evolved version of Psychic Force. Psychic Force was a Taito fighter from 1995. Its sequel Psychic Force 2012 came out in 1998, and was published on multiple consoles including the Sega Dreamcast. Those games featured a cast of psychic powered characters that could float, and battled in the sky using their mental powers. I could imagine that arcade visitors didn’t like the touch mechanic, despite the buzz it generated at the AOU trade show. After 2005 nothing came from it.

It wasn’t the only rare fighting game immortalized in the pages of Arcadia. There was also Ken-Ju. The 3D fighting game had a lot of unique things going for it, including online matchmaking, and character customization when these things weren’t even available in the biggest titles of the time. I was able to do a deep dive on Ken-Ju on the blog. I was thankful that I held onto these issues, and share them here.

Possibly the most important cancelled fighting game that was covered was War of the Grail. It was a fantasy-strategy-fighting game from Capcom. Kinu Nishimura created some fantastic designs for the game, and it would get a limited location test in a few arcades. Sadly the project was scrapped, and very little on the game was released after this issue came out.

It would be the first game directed by Yoshinori Ono, who had moved up from sound production in the studio. When he was appearing in his first San Diego Comic Con in 2008 I brought my issue with me for him to autograph. He was blown away that there were people in the US had been following his career. It wouldn’t be the only time I surprised him with these rare issues. When he did another signing to celebrate the release of Super Street Fighter IV I brought out two more Arcadia issues to autograph. I remember him asking his translator where I was getting these issues, and telling him that I had a subscription to the magazine.

Some of the games featured in Arcadia were unique. Although I was getting the issues mostly for info on fighters, it was nice to see those characters pop up in other games. The Korean title Perfect K.O. for example featured Ken, and Chun-Li from Street Fighter. It was neat seeing how they would fare in 3D combat. It wasn’t the only unique cameo. This was the case for Guilty Gear, when it crossed over with Lost Saga, the free-to-play game developed by I.O. Entertainment in 2009. The game was brawling chaos, like many other games in that vein.

Were there any fighting games you wished you had played, or you wished had been published? I’d like to read about it in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

What about touch-based fighting games? - A 1UP Classic from April 7, 2011

Since fighting games are on the mind right now and the GDC had recently past I was reminded of an arcade fighter that came and went. SegaNerds covered Yu Suzuki talking about a cancelled fighting game project called Psy Phi. The veteran game designer and godfather of 3D fighters was trying to bring entirely new mechanics to the arcade with a touch screen based fighter. 

I mentioned this game years ago here and was not impressed when 1UP declared it the best game of the 2005 JAMMA show. I have tremendous respect for Mr. Suzuki but the game did not have groundbreaking gameplay elements. The idea of warriors with awesome psychic powers, or at the very least fighters that could fly are nothing new in gaming. These genres were done before the Dragon Ball Z series went 3D. The two best console standouts in the genre were Bastard! on the Super Famicom and Psychic Force on the Dreamcast.

 

I was never sold on the concept of a fighting game using touch screen controls. Requiring gamers to move and activate special moves by sliding their hands all over the screen seemed to make the game more complex than it had to be. Yu was trying to make a fighting game more accessible to gamers but I felt his control scheme was far too cumbersome. It would be easy to lose an opponent if they moved behind an arm as it crossed the screen. Plus most fighting games require quick reflexes and reaction times, having to move by clicking the corners of the screen would have slowed down the gameplay tremendously. Who wants to play a sluggish fighter after all?

   

What do you think of touch based gaming? Does it work on the small screen of the DS or iPad but lose it's practicality on a larger scale? I know my wife would love a MS Surface but what types of games work best on touch-based TV-sized displays? Perhaps a strategy game, StarCraft or the like would make more sense than a fighter. I know a Dawn of War on a table-sized monitor would be mad fun. What do you think? As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

A glimpse at the psychic fighting games

I had originally posted a blog on this topic on my old 1UP page, but sadly couldn’t save the HTML before the site was disabled. I did however have the images, and will try to put together the topic as best as I can remember. If you’re a regular on this blog you know that I like to talk about different types of fighting games, and bring back some little known titles. One of my favorites was based on the manga, and anime BASTARD!! Ankoku no Hakaishin (The Dark God of Destruction). My brothers, and I enjoyed playing import games in the early ‘90s. One of the benefits of living in the southland was being able to visit Little Tokyo where they had import games for a reasonable markup. We were literally watching Dragon Ball Z on VHS a month after they aired in Japan. Plus we were playing DBZ fighting game on the Super Nintendo while kids were waiting for Super Street Fighter II to come to come out on the same console.

The manga was high fantasy, with lots of violence, and nudity thrown in for good measure. It predated Berserk by years, and is owed its flowers. What separated it from other violent fantasy titles was that the characters had magic, and psychic attacks, in addition to their traditional swordplay. Adapting the series to a game format was Cobra Team, and SETA Corporation. They actually did a fantastic job recreating the flying/fighting mechanics on the 16-bit console. Most games based on a property were platform titles, you would follow the main character from stage to stage fighting the various bosses, in a Castlevania-tyope quest. Sometimes a licensed game would be a fighter, but those were sloppily done. But this was different. It was actually a brilliant game with a lot of originality.

You had a sort of behind the back mechanic where you could see your opponents in the distance, flying over the various kingdoms. You could circle each other, fly at each other, and change elevation slightly. As fresh as the gameplay was, it also made a clever use of the special attacks. In order to perform a special move you would use button combinations, and these were inspired by the magical seal attacks from the manga. You know, where the main character draws a sort of spell over a pentagram? These were things that had been seen several times in manga, and anime. Most notably in Fullmetal Alchemist. I was lucky to have picked up an issue of V-Jump magazine which let me know all the magical seal combinations of the main characters. It became intuitive after a few rounds of battles with my brothers.

This mechanic of drawing special attacks would pop up in RPGs, and other titles some years later, when touchscreens had entered the mainstream. But the idea for creating spell patterns with button combinations? That was all thanks to Bastard!!. Speaking of which, the manga, and game ended up setting a sort of standard that would predate the evolution of the Dragon Ball Z fighting games. The downside was that 3D flying, and fighting mechanics were difficult to present accurately using 2D sprites.

While Dragon Ball was known for its impressive fight scenes, there were other manga, and anime shows that showed combat that was equally unique. One of those was X / 1999, a series by CLAMP. The main characters looked like typical high school teenagers, however they fought using awesome psychic powers. Think about how Tatsumaki from One Punch Man, or Mob from Mob Psycho 100 fight in their respective shows. They’re able to fold buildings, and turn cities into rubble with just a glance. Mind you these archetypes were made popular in the early 1990’s. It was about that time when 3D models were replacing sprites in arcade games.

Taito took a chance on free floating 3D psychic combat in their cult hit Psychic Force. The arcade game from 1995 was a breath of fresh air. In a sea of 2D fighting games this one truly stood out. The characters had a heavy anime design to them, and players battled within psychic cubes, this contained the force of their attacks, and prevented innocent civilians from getting hurt. You could float in three dimensions, and direct close, and ranged attacks at your opponent. It was an even more polished version of the Bastard!!, and Dragon Ball flying mechanics. Its sequel Psychic Force 2012 came out in 1998, and was published on multiple consoles including the Sega Dreamcast. I urge you to track down a copy if you have a DC, or play on an emulator. It’s still a fresh game.

With the exception of the more recent Dragon Ball games the free-floating fighting game genre seemed to hit a dead-end at the end of the 20th century. That was until Psy-Phi was announced by Sega, and actually demoed in 2005. It was the first new fighting game designed by Yu Suzuki, the legendary mind behind many of Sega’s biggest hits, including Virtua Fighter. His goal was to completely rewrite the fighting genre, while at the same time making it more accessible to audiences. He saw the limitations of gamers using frame data, and other gameplay nuances to take the creativity out of fighting. So he designed a touch screen interface. And rather than rely on quick reactions like a martial arts game would demand, his characters had psychic powers, so there was more strategy involved in each battle.

It was a good idea in theory, but for more than a decade I worked in a computer lab. I knew how reliable touch screen technology could be. Not only that, I knew how filthy monitors would get after a few hours of playing. There was no way you would have convinced me, or my brothers to put our fingerprints all over a display, and pick up some nasty germs. I had no idea how Sega was going to handle that question, or how much it would cost arcade operators to buy touch screen games. What would the maintenance have been on these screens, or whether the technology was even viable in the arcade.

The character designs in Psy-Phi were nice, but not memorable. They didn’t seem to break any new ground as far as influences went. I’m glad that Mr. Suzuki, and Sega were willing to try out new ideas, but it seemed so far out of left field I couldn’t help but wonder if the studio was simply trying to see if their technology was even viable. Shortly after this demo Sega, and a number of other studios started releasing card-based games in the arcade. Where you could play your physical cards on screen, these included sports games, as well as RPGs. In futbol / soccer games you could actually field your players, and choose what formation you wanted to use based on the card placement on the screen. This allowed you to change formations in the middle of the game, as a good manager would be able to do in real life. These mid 2000’s games seemed to last a while, but never took off outside of Japan. I think it had something to do with relying on the technology.

Psy-Phi would be hard to bring to consoles without touch displays as well, or some sort of new controller. For anybody that has a stack of unused guitars, conga drums, and dance pads in their collection could tell you that games with peripherals did not usually last very long. What do you think? Would you have liked a chance to play a touch screen fighting game? Were you a fan of psychic characters in games, or pop culture? Did you ever play any rare import games at home, or in the arcade? Tell me about it in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!