Figuring out the changing Street Fighter style, part 3

In the previous blog I talked about how different studios tried to create fighting game characters by using Capcom’s template from Street Fighter II. One of the missteps that some studios made was in overtly pandering to the western audience. The examples I used were Max Eagle, and Magic Dunker who wore costumes made up the stars, and stripes of the USA flag. There was no mistaking who these characters were, and what they represented when they literally wore the nation’s colors on their shorts. Yet great character design was more often subtle. It was subtle in the sense of how people thought Chun-Li’s costume was traditionally Chinese even if there wasn’t’t really anything classical about it. There was another way this subtlety was accomplished. SNK would not always use traditional outfits on their fighters. Instead they would put their martial arts masters in street clothes. But they weren’t just any outfits from the mall. They were on the leading edge of fashion, if not predicting it by a few years. These outfits were more than just flashy, they were carefully assembled to tell a story. The star of Fatal Fury, and poster boy for a lot of SNK’s greatest hits was Terry Bogard. Take a look at the evolution of his costume over 30 years, and see what you could identify. For the sake of this blog I am going to leave out the updated look that he received in Garou Mark of the Wolves. Since that involved a time jump.

Terry was the “Wild Wolf” of the King of Fighters universe. He didn’t represent any traditional form, like his brother Andy, instead Terry learned how to fight on the streets. He was a western character, the typical blonde-haired protagonist, however SNK didn’t play up those features. They covered him up with a trucker cap. His colors were red, white, and blue, but they weren’t the shades that you would find on the US flag. The blue on his jeans was a very faded light blue. This signaled to players that he spent a lot of time living, and working outdoors. He wore a white tee shirt, something classic, and humble. He wore a leather jacket, tough, and durable. It had a single star on the back, but it was saturated with more orange than crimson. He wore white sneakers, casual, but sporty. These would be swapped out for red ones which contrasted better with his outfit in later revisions. The tweaks that SNK gave his outfit only further reinforced the story elements from his costume. The sleeves on his jacket would be torn off to reveal huge muscles. By King of Fighters XII he was at his most muscular form. A few years later he was slimmed down, and the sleeves put back on his jacket. His jacket turned from leather to jean material, lighter, and more flexible. The majority of characters got similar makeovers post KOF XIII. Why was this?

With the exception of Ryo Sakazaki, SNK had mainly pushed leading characters in very fashionable street costumes. The character that carried the torch in the KOF series was Kyo Kusanagi, he wore a very hip take of a gakuran, or school uniform. Not unlike the way Jamie wore his kung-fu outfit with a Hip Hop vibe in SF6. The young Kyo’s powers were cloned for the even more fashionable Ash Crimson. There were many characters introduced in the KOF series who wore flashy outfits. This was one of the things that distinguished their lineup from Street Fighter’s. SNK changed the look, feel, and overall aesthetic of KOF with XIV. They saw that the swollen characters in XII, and XIII weren’t necessarily going over well with audiences. The studio then put former Capcom developer, and SFIV team member Yatsuyuki Oda in charge of KOF. He focused more on making cool-looking characters that would appeal to their target audience. In this case they wouldn’t try to guess western tastes, but instead try to create archetypes that would be more popular in Asia.

Fighting games enjoyed popularity all around the world. North, and South America, the Middle East, Europe, and England had millions of fans, all eager to get the next game, and hopefully see a little representation in the lineup. In Asia there were countless fans, more so than just Japan. People in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand loved the game. There were a number of changes happening between developers, and publishers all throughout Asia, some of which directly influenced the franchises. 37Games from China bought a majority stake of SNK in 2015. The studio created, and distributed browser, and mobile games in North America, and Europe, as well as China. The owners were fairly large company with a market cap of $7.14 billion. By comparison Capcom headquartered in Japan had a market cap of $5.18 billion. Both companies were of course mindful of the new media juggernaut. The biggest publisher in China was Tencent. That company had a market cap of $446 billion, by comparison Disney had a market cap of $175 billion. It would make sense to try and get Tencent’s attention, and become partners on a game somewhere down the road.

Since China was becoming the biggest gaming market. It only made sense for SNK to make a title that could win over Chinese fans. This was why the two new leads in KOF were added to Team China. Meitenkun, and Shun’ei made more sense in that role than the “Psycho Soldier” team of Athena, and Sie Kensou. The team also had the elderly master trope of Tung Fu Ru, who was a mentor to Terry, and Andy Bogard. Meitenkun, and Shun’ei were decidedly unlike the super-strong brawlers that Americans were used to seeing. They weren’t tall, weren’t buff, and weren’t “manly” by western standards. The sleepy Meitenkun was a decidedly soft boy with incredible internal power. He was a sort of pretty boy that could be appealing to female fans. His name actually sounded like the Mandarin saying “mei tian kun” which meant “sleepy everyday". The other character Shun’ei was meant to be the star character. He was an updated take on the cool guy, the new Kyo essentially. His school uniform was just as fashionable, and he even wore it with one pant leg rolled up, take that Jamie! The designers behind Rock Howard, the young star of Garou Mark of the Wolves, had a hand in creating Shun’ei.

Many of the KOF star characters did not represent a traditional martial arts style, they were given awesome powers instead. Very much like comic book heroes. Kyo had flame powers, as did Ash. Shun’ei had both flame, and water powers. These were reflected in the red, and blue psychic hands that he attacked with. The design, and choice of colors I think was done in response to the popular home-grown Chinese game Xuan Dou Zhi Wang aka King of Combat. Jade Studio developed the game for publisher Tencent Games in 2011. It would receive new characters, and stages over the next eight years. This was well before 37Games acquired SNK. Those that had seen King of Combat, and had played it could say that it was a clone of the KOF series. The character selection, and even stage design seemed lifted from SNK’s best work. I had already talked about this connection with Shun’ei, but essentially his look was an amalgamation of Ell Blue, and Yan Fung, the stars of that game. 

Two years before SNK was sold Tencent announced a crossover where KOF characters would appear in King of Combat. This raised the status of the game, and made the copycat title appear more legit to the Chinese fighting game community. It also helped make sure that the aesthetic that SNK used would remain more Asian influenced. These things helped explain the shift in changes from slim-to-buff, back-to-slim characters in KOF. There was something happening in Capcom as well. I'm going to talk about it on the next blog. I hope to see you back for that. I’d like to hear your take in the comments section. Let me know what you think defines the Capcom, SNK, or the style of any publisher. 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!

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

SNK had spent more than 25 years creating a library of amazing fighting game characters. The best ones were the results of talented artists and insightful creative decisions. To stand out from the rival studios they created fighting archetypes that were hidden in plain sight. Martial arts masters could wear street clothing, or in some cases trendy fashion and still work within the context of the game. This rule was not set in stone. Some of the early design choices were made because of what audiences expected from fighters. After all, how would the player be able to tell a karate fighter apart from a boxer if they both wore identical suits? Because of this some martial arts were represented by characters in classic costumes. Some boxers wore shorts and punching gloves. Some karate fighters wore gi's and black belts. China was considered the birthplace of modern martial arts. Just about every major studio, Capcom, Sega, Namco, Midway and SNK at one point or another created a kung-fu master wearing a traditional uniform. Some of these designs were actually quite memorable. In the Art of Fighting for example the character Lee Pai Long not only wore a classic costume, he also sported a monkey mask. This was the type of outfit an actor from the Chinese Opera would actually wear.

 

Lee was a mysterious figure, his actual face was known only by a few people in King of Fighters continuity. As memorable as the character was, he didn't work well enough to be used as often as some other fighters. The seeds however had been planted to include the traditional costumed fighter from time to time. Almost 25 years later the studio went back to the classics and introduced another masked Chinese character. Mian was not a representative of the Chinese team in the KOF series, she was instead a member invited by tournament organizer Antonov. The dancer and master of the Chinese art of mask changing, was breaking down stereotypes. Her Sichuanese Opera costume was traditionally worn by male actors and even the historic mask changing magic was performed almost exclusively by men. SNK had become more attuned to the Chinese consumer over the past few years. Chinese gaming had exploded in popularity the past decade and every major studio was trying to make headway into the Chinese market. SNK had even partnered with Shanda, one of the largest publishers, to get a KOF massively multiplayer online (MMO) game launched. They were paying closer attention to the growing markets than just about any other fighting game publisher had in the past few years. After facing a few financial crisis, a merger with Playmore and restructuring, SNK had to ensure that they made business savvy moves. This wasn't the case when they originally fleshed out the Chinese team or even Brazilian team in KOF '94.

 

SNK wanted to create a sense of a global competition in the KOF series, the only problem was that they lacked familiar characters from each nation. To circumvent this they relied on characters from other games to act as representatives of a country. The Chinese team of Athena Asamiya and her partner Sie Kensou for example were pulled from the game Psycho Soldier. They were not necessarily fighters trained in a specific named form. The two relied instead on psychic attacks to supplement their martial arts training. The third Chinese representative, Chin Gentsai, was modeled after the "Drunken Master" a movie character named Beggar So played by Yuen Siu-tien. The three barely had a thread that connected them to China. How do you think that Chinese audiences reacted to the characters? The same thing could be observed with the Ikari Warriors, Ralf Jones and Clark Still. The two had appeared in an action shooter set in the jungle but it was not known if they, or team captain Heidern, were actually from Brazil. The three were mercenaries and didn't represent any school of Brazilian martial arts. More than 20 years later SNK had become more attuned to their audiences. The Japanese publishers (Capcom included) were surprised to learn how popular their games were in Central and South America. The Brazil Game Show for example had more than 300,000 attendees in 2017! Because of this the designers took a little more time in crafting new characters for the King of Fighters XIV. Nelson the boxer was from Brazil. I had mentioned previously in this series, but he was joined by two new Brazilians as well.

 

The masked Bandieras Hattori was obsessed with ninjitsu. He idolized Andy Bogard and Mai Shiranui and wanted to become a full-fledged ninja. His ultimate goal was teaching his own form of ninjitsu in Japan. His dark skin, armor and light pants, with sumi-e waves painted on the cuffs created some incredible contrast. His mask and pulled up braided hair made him appear unlike any other modern fighting game character. The character could be seen as an homage (or even parody depending on your perspective) of how passionate South Americans were about Japanese culture. The third new character was Zarina. She sported the colors of the Brazilian flag and most assumed that she would be a capoeirista. Despite her ginga, or dancing stance, she was actually a samba dancer that happened to be a good fighter. It was strange that the new developers would focus on her dance more than the martial arts. Capoeira had been a part of the SNK legacy since Street Smart back in 1989. Richard Meyer and Bob Wilson were two of the more famous Capoeira stars from the Fatal Fury series. I had talked about the origins of Capoeira in fighting games on a previous blog. I don’t understand why the newer generation of SNK developers would have missed this connection to their actual legacy. To be fair I think that many of the Street Fighter IV and V designs also failed to live up to the legacy designs. But I digress. The mix of new Brazilians was a unique choice, not quite the masters hidden in plain sight but perhaps something the studio could build on and learn from. Just like Heavy D was a change in direction for boxers, I’m certain that Bandeiras, Zarina and Nelson were the start of a new direction as well.

 

What really surprised me for the new characters in KOF XIV was the Chinese star Shun’ Ei. The design was pandering very heavily to what some Chinese gamers thought made a cool design. Many in the community saw the character as even poaching the design of a couple of characters from Xuan Duo Zhi Wang / the King of Combat. To be fair I had also brought up that fighting games had been stealing things from each other as much as from pop culture for over 30 years. When the Japanese studios did it nobody seemed to mind but when Chinese developers began doing it then suddenly audiences were in an uproar. If anything Shun’Ei was reinforcing the themes that many Chinese audiences favored in the character designs. King of Combat focused on martial arts masters in plain clothes, their inspirations were pulled from post KOF ’94 stars. Terry Bogard was probably the first plain clothes master in a franchise but it was Kyo Kusanagi that redefined the look. From that point going forward the characters in KOF didn’t even need a named fighting art. They could be dressed in trendy fashion and have psychic or elemental powers at their disposal. Ell Blue and Yan were distilled from that understanding.

 

Kyo Kusanagi, Iori Yagami, Shen Woo and Ash Crimson were some of the templates that the designers from Jade Studio were working from. The majority of the cast was supposed to look cool and trendy and there was no better studio to borrow from. The Chinese developers built a 3D fighter that was presented in 2D so that it played like a classic arcade fighter. They recreated all the elements found in latter KOF games, going so far as to capture the feel of SNK’s level and stage designs. They even sprinkled in elements from Street Fighter and Tekken as well to make a terrific mash-up for the PC. The artists working on the game knew enough of the origins behind characters like Kyo and Iori when they created their stars Ell Blue and Yan. The former being more western-themed and the latter being closer to the East. In case you weren’t familiar Kyo and Iori from the KOF series had costumes that were rooted in high school uniforms. The cut of their clothing was a little bit more fashionable, making them really stand out among the rest of the KOF lineup. Ell Blue had a certain Western hip hop flair to his design, sporting bright blue hair, headphones, and even a rolled up pant leg. He looked like a super producer, a DJ-turned-fighter. Yan had more of the high school uniform mixed with a belt and other stylist accessories.

 

When Shun’Ei was unveiled his design was so familiar it was uncanny. It was as if the designers at SNK took both Ell Blue and Yan and combined them into one character. There were the elemental powers, fire and electricity, but there was also the strong red and blue theme to accompany those powers. Then there was the costume itself. Part school uniform, with stylish belt, accessories, headphones and rolled up pant leg. There were too many elements brought in to be more than coincidence. They were reflecting back to the Chinese what they assumed they wanted to see in the star of their team. It wasn’t necessarily a case of the Japanese artists copying the Chinese. The publisher of King of Combat, Tencent, was one of the biggest publishers in the world, and they even licensed some KOF stars to appear in their game. There was a good chance that some of the Jade developers helped program or design some of the new faces in KOF IV. Of course only SNK could confirm or deny that observation. Regardless, the company had been at the forefront of fighting game development for almost as long as the genre had existed. Budding developers hoping to capture that SNK-style need to understand why their characters are unlike those in Capcom, Namco, or any other studio. They managed to hide the fighting master in plain sight. Remember this the next time a new character is announced for the series. Now there were two other characters on the new Team China. But I'll talk about them some other day. 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 aesthetic versus graphics debate, part 2...

A good portion of our entertainment media is visually based. Video games succeed when they have a strong visual style to go with a solid control scheme and innovative game play. In the previous blogs I have talked about the importance of having a good aesthetic. It was essentially more important than having great graphics. The demo for Fighting EX Layer reminded audiences how similar the graphics in most fighting games were today. When Street Fighter EX debuted almost 20 years ago it was visually much different than the sprite-based fighting games from Capcom. This helped set it apart from the traditional fighters. The challenge for modern game developers was whether or not they could the match the aesthetic of a lead artist or if indeed all of the aesthetics had to look the same because of the modern hardware. When graphics technology was sprite-based it was easy to draw characters in the styles of a particular artist. Once the graphics engines moved to 3D it became harder to preserve the aesthetic of hand-drawn art. SNK made a very ambitious go at it when the created Dot Art graphics for the King of Fighters XII in 2009. The studio created 3D models of each character and then used cel-shading technology to outline the figure and create general points of light and shadow. Artists then went in and redrew the models and painted in the gradients.

The end result was brilliant but most studios could not afford to spend a good chunk of their budget creating sprites. The Dot Art process was a slow, expensive and time-consuming process. Studios had to balance the game and fine tune the controls as well. There was only so much money to go around, especially for a genre that many considered had peaked in the ‘90s. One of the largest Chinese developers, Tencent, licensed a few of the SNK characters for their game Xuan Dot Zhi Wang in 2015. They created 3D models and used textures and lighting effects to make them appear as close to the Dot Art versions as possible. The end result was amazing. The Chinese studio demonstrated that 3D games could not only play like their 2D counterparts, they could also look like them as well.

 

Directors working on fighting games, or any game in general have to find a visual balance between what the art director wants and what the audience expects. Each artist after all has their own way of illustrating. They each have their own sense of shape, scale, proportion and movement. How they frame the action, how they color the world. All of these things are done in concept art even before the first line of code is written. The best directors for animation have historically been people that understand the visual language. Stop for a moment and consider how different artists interpret Batman from the DC comics.

 

Bruce Timm for example has an extensive amount of history with character design and animation. He reduces the lines in his illustrations to the bare minimum. His shapes are clean and easy to read and perfect for cartoons. Jim Lee on the other hand is from the world of comic books. He had a unique style that made him a breakout artist on the X-Men comics in the ‘90s. Now he is in charge of comics at DC. His trademark style, made up of tight lines is easy to identify. Frank Miller is a screenwriter and artist that has experience in storyboarding. His style is unique. His lines are jagged and thick, they make his characters look like they are wearing crumpled paper bags. He likes to create panels with very strong shapes and poses when he works on Batman. Simon Bisley is in his own world. He paints his panels and uses very exaggerated shapes and proportions. His panels bleed into each other and come off as dream-like. It is easy to identify each of the artists based on their own style. It is important for the comic book industry to have a diversity of styles. After all who would like to read a comic book if they were all written alike and drawn alike? Of these artists the one that has proven to be the most influential for the industry has been Bruce Timm.

   

Bruce and writer Paul Dini were responsible for the popular Batman the Animated Series, which debuted in 1992. The duo went on to help shape the DC animated universe for over the next 20 years. The Timm-style of art was very flexible. It worked well in animation and in comic books. Not every comic book artist was allowed to show off their trademark style. Some were hired for their ability to draw in the style of another artist. Ty Templeton for example did a number of the Batman Adventures comic books and was able to capture the style of the animated show. Imagine Templeton as a member of the DC art team. They each had their own style but when called upon could help fill in for their lead artist or designer. Similar things applied to the artists and freelancers working at Capcom, SNK or other studios. The Bengus and Akiman styles were very different but whichever person set the style guide for a particular Street Fighter everyone else in the team followed it to the letter. This ensured consistency throughout the project. The magic of having an animation director like Bruce Timm was how well his style adapted across platforms. His shape and proportion worked as well in 3D as they did in 2D.

   

Here was the thing, a studio didn’t even have to work on a Batman game in order to take advantage of Mr. Timm’s aesthetic. Take the game Drake of the 99 Dragons for example. Developed by Idol FX in 2003, the studio created a 3rd person action game featuring an immortal yakuza hitman. The company made use of cel-shading technology to make the graphics appear more two-dimensional. The game was remembered mostly because it was bad. The control was bad, the animation less than stellar, the game play a bit redundant and the overall experience was poor. The reason it stood out were because of the aesthetics. It looked like an episode of the Batman Adventures come to life. It was and remains the best example of how the Bruce Timm aesthetic really compliments the look of an action project. Yet the Timm style didn’t always have to apply. For example in Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) the developers at Rocksteady Studios were trying to create a world that had pulled its inspiration from the realism of the Chris Nolan Batman film, as well as the serious Jim Lee reboot of the Batman comics. That game succeeded not so much for its graphics, the Unreal Engine 3 that it was using were comparable to the graphics in just about every other 3D game. It was the control, animation and ease of play that really put audiences in the role of the Batman. I’m certain that if Drake of the 99 Dragons had the control of Arkham Asylum it would have become a franchise title. 

Bruce Timm was also gifted in the fact that he could direct in the style of a different artist. In the episode “Legends of the Dark Knight” from the New Batman Adventures he actually directed in three different styles. That of himself, that of Frank Miller from the Dark Knight Returns and of Richard Sprang who inspired the opening credits of the 1966 live action series. In the episode three kids, Matt, Carrie and Nick take turns telling a story about Batman. Each story is unique and matched perfectly with a particular art style. The sequences capture an era in the history of Batman. The boys are actually based on a young Bruce Timm and Paul Dini. They come across a fourth kid named Joel who happens to be trying out pink feather boa in front of a store called Shoemaker. He says some thinly-veiled homoerotic things about Batman. This was a jab at the live action movie director Joel Schumacher for his overly camp, overly glam and somewhat homosexual take in the Batman and Robin and Batman Forever films. Schumacher had never read the comics, had no knowledge of the character outside of the television series but was hired to make the films more mainstream. The studio was looking for a reason to increase licensing, where the real money of a film was made. He was asked to cram in as many gadgets and characters as possible because toys=sales. It was Schumacher’s decision to give the costumes of Batman and Robin nipples. To turn Bane into a brainless slave of Poison Ivy. To add wacky sound effects and visuals at every turn. He wanted to cast as many big-name actors as he could into the film. It didn’t matter if they were right for the part or if their characters were even remotely true to the comics.

 

There was a strong contrast with how well the Warner Bros. animated films were compared to the live action features (with the exception of the Chris Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy). The people working in animation knew the universe of the DC characters, respected the source material and were able to adapt individual comics, graphic novels and original screenplays into award winning cartoons. The people working in live action, for the most part, had little to no respect for the source material and tried to follow the popular trends when making decisions about a property. Warner Bros. animation would have been at a loss without Bruce Timm. He knew the importance of visual storytelling. He knew how to frame his scenes, how to choreograph his fights and how to design original heroes and villains when the time required. In art, in animation, you need a director that knows the importance of visual storytelling. Having a unique art style is not enough.

 

Think of the artist Tim Burton. He has a very strong aesthetic. His style, like those of the aforementioned Batman artists, is very unique. Like Bruce Timm he also came from an animation background. Burton loved to film his own stop-motion and live action projects. They all carried his own unique aesthetic. He designed and directed for the first and second live action Batman features in 1989 and 1992. They all had a strong vision and put forward unique takes on Batman and the villains, including the first black Harvey Dent (Two-Face) as played by Billy Dee William. Burton was familiar with the comics and characters and was able to adapt them to live action with his own unique spin. Warner Bros felt that they could make more money by hiring a big-name director and that was when they went after Schumacher. Burton went on to great commercial and critical success while the Schumacher films were panned by audiences and critics. Burton’s work on Edward Scissorhands, the cult film-turned stop-motion feature Frankenweenie, and the Corpse Bride were all memorable. Some would argue that his crown jewel was the film the Nightmare Before Christmas. Yet not many people realize that while Burton wrote the story and did the design work, it was actually directed by Henry Selick. Mr. Selick was also a master of visual storytelling. He was a director on par with Timm. He knew how to work with different types of artists, and different visual languages. He knew how to best frame the scenes and bring the artists intention to life. His directing on James and the Giant Peach for Disney and Coraline for Laika demonstrated his range.

   

The reason that I bring up the importance of visual storytelling and directors is because they choose a lot of what ends up in the project. The same rules apply for fighting games. If you have a fighting game like Street Fighter IV and V where the new female characters were fairly well received but the majority of the new male characters seemed a little bit outlandish you might look at the director for answers. Yoshinori Ono, the most accessible and entertaining senior person at Capcom, has a unique background. His first eight credits with the studio in chronological order are: Sound Manager, Sound Producer, Opening FMV Sound Manager, Sound Producer, Publicist, Sound Design Coordinator, Sound Manager and Sound Producer. Mr. Ono has tremendous experience with sound but you start to wonder if an audio person rather than a visual arts person should be spearheading a game. He graduated to Assistant Producer and Producer on his next projects. In the next two games he is credited for visual work; CG Modeling and Character Design Director. The first fighting game he was a Producer for was Capcom Fighting Jam in 2004. Salvaging what was left of Capcom Fighting All Stars. Mr. Ono was the one that decided to turn a powerful young black fighter into a big fat white guy with Rufus. The other odd characters like Hakan, Necalli, and F.A.N.G. were his to approve to ask for a redesign. He couldn’t even manage to put a masked lucha libra character in the game without giving his moves silly Spanish names. Understanding the visual language was something that I think Mr. Ono lacked. He was passionate about the projects but made a few bad decisions because he didn’t truly understand all of the subtleties that went into the visual appeal of Street Fighter. That’s however my opinion. 

 

This is not a new observation. I’ve been against the tone of the new series while it was in development. I’ve been arguing about the direction of the game since 2008. I do it to remind Capcom that they could try harder that they could do more. They have made great characters out of questionable source material. They’ve also made some bad calls in the past 30 years. I’ve always been against the silly characters that Mr. Ono saw fit to introduce into the universe. I did give him credit for bringing back the series, for traveling the world promoting it, for getting the game outlets to start talking about it. He had faith in Street Fighter and the fighting game community when Capcom had given up. Mr. Ono has been a great ambassador for the brand. For that I am grateful. But remember that Rufus, Hakan and F.A.N.G. were put into the game on his watch, and often, at his insistence. I appreciate the man but I will never be content with his vision. It was possible to create a game on a property, in 3D, while still preserving the aesthetic of the designer. We’ll explore how in the next entry. 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!

Will the King of Fighter XIV be something old or something new?

Did you know that Chinese publisher Tencent licensed Terry Bogard and Benimaru Nikaido to appear in their own fighting game called the King of Combat a few years ago? The reason I bring this up is because some people online have speculated that a few characters revealed in the King of Fighters XIV trailers were originally created for the King of Combat. I do not know if the developers working on KOF XIV are a team from China or the SNK-Playmore team from Japan. I can say that the models and animations do not appear to have been used in the King Of Fighters XII, XIII, or in the King of Combat game.

The developers working for Tencent used resources and created 3D models that had the same shape, form and proportions as the "Dot Art" sprites created for the KOF XII and XIII games. There was an uncanny resemblance to the characters between the different games and it was a sort of trademark style.

If you compare the models and moves in the KOF XIV trailers with those used in either KOF XIII or the King of Combat you will see how the developers created entirely new resources. New models, textures, costumes, animations, the works. The differences are subtle but they are clearly there.

I have a few questions to run by you. Are you planning on picking up King of Fighters XIV when its released? Would you have cared if a Chinese, or Korean company had developed it instead of a Japanese company? Do you think KOF XIV will have a smoother release than Street Fighter V? I'd like to know in the comments.

Also an important question for anyone that reads or follows my posts here or on my personal blog. Would you be interested if I converted my blogs into podcasts? Would you tell your friends or even think about sponsoring me on Patron for that matter? Even $1 a month from a handful of people is enough to put some gas in the car and buy me some time to do some research and find something interesting to share. You may not know it but some of my longer posts sometimes take months to put together. I do everything on my free time, just about every weeknight and weekend I spend writing and editing pics. I don't have much of a social life aside from that. I enjoy sharing and would still do it even if I didn't get any sponsors but you can imagine it would be a little easier for me to focus on games when I'm not focused on paying bills. Just something to think about, here's my logo in the meantime...

Copycat Culture, final part...

So far in this series I had highlighted where Xuan Dou Zhi Wang / King of Combat had poached the designs of SNK and Capcom fighting games. It wouldn't be very fair to the Chinese developers if they were painted as wholesale thieves of IP. If you look at the Japanese and US fighting game developers they often took liberties with the characters that appeared in rival titles. In fact just after Street Fighter II debuted in 1991 there were a flood of copycat titles, the majority of which came from Japan. One of the more blatant entries was a 1993 game called Fighter's History by Data East. The game was so familiar in form and content that Capcom slapped the publisher with a lawsuit. The funny thing however was how much Capcom had stolen from other studios during the development of Final Fight, originally called Street Fighter '89 in addition to Street Fighter II. In the interest of time let me just point you towards AerialGroove's definitive list of Street Fighter rip-offs. On that website you can see the real life athletes, films, manga and animé characters that "inspired" the designers at Capcom.

Remember that Data East had released Kung-Fu Master in 1984. That game was a one player affair but it did feature villains of different backgrounds to fight against. Then Konami released Yie Ar Kung Fu in 1985 which added the familiar format of 1-on-1 combat against different martial arts forms. Yie Ar Kung Fu even featured a health meter at the top of the screen so players knew when they were close to a knock out. The original Street Fighter would not debut until 1987. It took elements of the aforementioned titles and Technos' Karate Champ from 1984 but was not called a copycat. That was because history always favored the most successful franchise, which was not necessarily the first.

Capcom actually lost the lawsuit to Data East and that ended up opening the floodgates for even more blatant Street Fighter rip-offs. There was little that Capcom could do in the face of some of the most glaring copies. The ADK developed and SNK published World Heroes was one of the first copies in arcades. The format was very similar to Street Fighter II and the character roster slightly familiar too. The same thing could be said of Kaiser Knuckle. The sleeper from 1994 was known for some of the cheesiest characters ever. I mean just how many Bruce Lee clones fighting power mad dictators did we really need to see before audiences had enough?



There was no internet in the early days of the genre. There were not forums calling out the developers for creating second-rate copies of a franchise. These things were accepted as status quo because, well, frankly the Japanese were the only ones in the market that knew how to develop a decent fighting game. It would take a few years for the West to catch on and when they did they offered experiences that were decidedly un-Japanese. The ultraviolent and combo heavy games like Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct and Primal Rage would help pull audiences away from the Japanese mechanics. On top of trying to copy the SF II format Mortal Kombat had taken a number of elements and characters from Big Trouble in Little China. There was no outrage amongst fans instead they saw the poaching as an homage to the film.

In return the Japanese studios would adapt their fighting engines to become faster paced and more focused on longer combo strings because that’s what the West seemed to enjoy. Remember that the Chinese SF II bootlegs had a hand in shaping the pace of the format during the early '90s. I would call the games that offered rapid juggling of opponents "combo porn" titles. It was during that era that Japan had a free pass on copying icons from different sources in order to put them in a fighting game. The most successful Japanese studios of today would not have grown as large without poaching characters that had been established in comics and even martial arts cinema.

 

Poaching ideas seemed okay during the early ‘90s. Part of that was because audiences were starved for unique fighters. They demanded new games with the fervor of a junkie looking for the next fix. I'm not going to lie, I was jonesin' for a new fighting game whenever I went to the arcade. The home consoles just weren’t up to par yet so the only way to experience the genre was outside of the house. In hindsight I could see how the runaway demand for fighting games eventually killed the genre. There were too many copycat titles and not enough innovative ones. Audiences today should actually be grateful that there are only few studios in China capable of developing quality fighters. Otherwise the market would be saturated once again with clones.

Imitation in and of itself was not necessarily a bad thing, especially not when the right developers were in charge. One of the best wrestling franchises ever created had poached dozens upon dozens of real wrestlers and promotions from around the world. Fire Pro Wrestling, a series which began in 1989, allowed console players to enjoy the spectacle of pro wrestling without paying one dime in licensing costs. The developer Human Entertainment / Spike, created a sprite-based wrestling game with a fixed camera. It sounded like an outdated visual format and it was compared to other wrestling games in the arcade. While it lacked 3D graphics it made up for it in the character, match and move editors. The game actually gave audiences all the tools they needed to create an entire library of wrestlers, each with their own trademark moves including taunts and finishing attacks.



The studio helped audiences out by including dozens of generic versions of wrestlers from the biggest promotions in the US and Japan. In later versions they also included MMA competitors and octagonal cages as well. Audiences were free to use the editing tools and rename the characters, change their appearances to make them identical to actual athletes. Audiences could even create comic book characters using the editors and assign them special moves as well. By building a solid but customizable engine the publisher could offer a tremendous wrestling experience that had all the spectacle of the biggest matches in the world. By giving audiences the liberty to mix formats they were free to combine the biggest promotions into a mega-crossover that would never exist in real life. Without having to pay licensing fees to a dozen different promotions or for use of the likenesses the company was able to sell the game very cheaply. Imagine how the publisher would have been talked about online if the game were to debut today? The game lacked originality, it was nothing but a collection of stolen likenesses and moves. I think that it would have gotten the same reception as King of Combat got from the fighting game community. Human Entertainment / Spike would have been shamed for something that other studios in the community had gotten away with.

Originality did count for a lot in the videogame world but audiences that think the biggest franchises appeared out of thin air were deluding themselves. The developers in Japan, the developers in the US, China and Europe were influenced by countless things. Some of those experiences were shared, like popular music or hit movies, while some were more regional. Those influences in turn were synthesized in the story, art and game design of the projects that the developers worked on. The things that worked well were copied by the developers again and again. Perhaps they would adjust a few details here and there but there was a lot of repetition of what worked. If you don’t believe me look at the number of sequels that the biggest franchises got. There was even repetition within many of the the games themselves. Count the number of karate fighters in the Street Fighter series that were similar to Ryu. Count the number of brooding cool guys in the King of Fighters and see how many were derived from Kyo Kusanagi.



Tencent did owe SNK and Capcom credit for the success of King of Combat. But SNK and Capcom also owed credit to other companies for the success of their respective franchises. I want visitors of this blog to remember how the genre evolved before taking sides in a debate. Regardless of what nation they were from no one company was perfect. As long as they pushed the genre forward, as long as they kept it evolving then I would call their contribution valid. King of Combat had a classic aesthetic but with a bunch of modern twists. The things that never made it into King of Fighter Online and King of Fighters World had at least a spiritual successor. I’m glad the company was staying true to the early format of the genre but was also not chained to it. Audiences in the west may never get to play Xuan Dou Zhi Wang but that wouldn’t stop the die-hard fans from pushing for it. If you’d like to give it a go then sign this petition to bring King of Combat to the US.

The only concern that I have with the genre is that Capcom is on the decline and has limited funds (somewhere over $100 million in cash) available to produce new games from. The board of directors in Japan declined an anti-buyout plan in summer 2014, meaning that a larger company with enough money could buy controlling shares of Capcom. Many journalists and fans hoped that a company like Nintendo or Sony might step in and buy them out and keep the licenses intact. This might not be the case. If Capcom dissolves then companies can pick and choose which IP's they want as part of a fire sale. Tencent is a company loaded with money and may very well buy Capcom in its entirety or buy the fighting game licenses and fold them into the King of Combat series. Having a Chinese publisher purchase a long-standing Japanese developer is both a scary and interesting scenario to consider. Whatever the case I hope that fighting games continue to grow and evolve. Tencent has shown through some of their more recent updates that they trust their designers a bit more than before and in doing so are coming up with fighters that compliment some of the best Japanese designs ever created. Maybe this trend will continue. Thanks for reading this series. If you have any questions or comments then please feel free to leave a note. Until next time take care! 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!

Copycat Culture, part 5...

Xuan Dou Zhi Wang / King of Combat was not all about characters and gameplay that were poached from the King of Fighters. The developers went out of their way to incorporate influences from Street Fighter, Guilty Gear and other franchises. One of the most blatant characters that they poached was a panda bear by the name of Wojownik. At first sight audiences knew that he had been based on the character Po from the animated film Kung Fu Panda. His alternate costume actually turned him into a red panda with the costume stylings of Gouki / Akuma from Street Fighter. The characters were certainly cute but many players couldn't get over how shameless Tencent was about poaching ideas from other studios.

Yet to be completely fair and objective those same gamers failed to identify the origins of Kung Fu Panda. The film series debuted in 2008 and was produced by DreamWorks Animation. The Chinese-influenced martial arts panda in a video game had appeared a few years prior. In 2003 Blizzard released some screenshots of the next expansion pack for Warcraft III. It was an elaborate April Fools joke revolving around a race of characters known as the Pandaren. It took the publisher more than a decade to actually put the race into the series. By the time the expansion pack his the World of Warcraft MMO many fans thought it was too little too late.

Even then Blizzard was not the first to put a martial arts panda bear in a video game. In 1999 DreamWorks Interactive developed a game called T'ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger. The game featured animal characters taking on the roles of kung-fu masters in ancient China. One of the supporting characters was a panda bear named Ping. If anything the game was the roots that the film grew out of. Yet that was not the whole story. According to rumors within the animation community the concept art of a young artist named Stephen Silver (Kim Possible / Clerks) were poached by DreamWorks. Some of his portfolio, which had been shown around the DreamWorks offices had included a martial arts panda bear and several other Chinese-themed animal warriors. These were shown years before T'ai Fu or Kung Fu Panda were in development. I can't say if the rumors had any validity because I've haven't gotten Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Silver in a room together to ask.



Yet even if Stephen Silver did create the template for Po, Ping and the other animal martial artists he was in no way coming up with an original idea, a least not when video games were concerned. Before T'ai Fu there was a game called Tekken 3, you might have heard of it. The 1997 hit introduced a fighting panda bear named Panda and a grizzly bear named Kuma. Both characters had roots in kung-fu forms and fought while standing on their hind legs. Of course even Namco's Panda was anything but original. A smaller studio called Psykio, known for their shooters, was trying to cash in on the fighting game craze. They had created a title called Battle K-Road. The little-known game from 1994 had a final opponent called Mr. Bear. He was a very difficult opponent and by many estimates one of the hardest bosses ever created. Even Mr. Bear was not original.

The game Ranma ½ Hard Battle for the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo had debuted in 1992. The game was based on the popular animé and manga series titled Ranma ½. The panda bear in the series was actually a human named Genma. He was the father of Ranma and changed into an animal whenever he got wet. The character retained all of his human memories and even ability to fight. Both Ranma and Genma were Chinese martial arts masters. The series debuted in 1987 and unless Steven Silver was living in a bubble then chances are he was familiar with the work of creator Rumiko Takahashi.

 

Genma would communicate as a panda bear by holding up wooden signs with a message on them. In the comics, cartoons and games he would sometimes attack his opponents with the sign. Wojownik actually did the same thing in King of Combat, making him a perfect blend of Po and Genma. Despite being a poached character he was also somewhat endearing to audiences.

While reading the message boards online about reactions to King of Combat I saw how selective many gamers were in remembering the legacy of fighting games. The studios in the US and Japan had been poaching ideas off of each other for decades. Worse than that they often used classical Chinese elements without actually allowing the nation to be reflected accurately. It was cultural appropriation for the sake of entertainment. Was it defensible or discriminatory? The next blog would look at this a little closer. 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!