Remix Culture, how Asian designers changed the game, part 5

In a previous blog I mentioned that I thought Pal Wong was doing a disservice to the art toy community when he released his own line of 12” figures. Especially as he was poaching the earlier style, and designs of Michael Lau. Then I mentioned that Korean figure artist CoolRain was capitalizing on the movement, and like Eric So from Hong Kong I didn’t seem to have a big problem with it. Where did I draw the line? I think context had a lot to do with it, and I think the intent of the creatives could easily be taken out of context because they were Asian.

In the US we often considered luxury products coming from China to be cheap counterfeits. The nation was notorious for loose copyright protections. Clothing, shoes, and entire stores had been written about as poaching established brands. When it came to copying an IP nothing seemed out of bounds, least of all 12” vinyl figures. These things were not isolated to one country. South Korea had similar counterfeit markets as well. A portion of customers buying knock-offs was because they weren’t aware that they were fake. They wanted to appear like conspicuous consumers, to keep up with their neighbors, so they spent billions of dollars supporting the gray market. On this blog I’ve called out time, and time again how manhua artists copied illustrations from SNK, and Capcom manga when creating licensed, and unlicensed comics. I even did a multi-part series on the game Xuan Dou Zhi Wang / King of Combat for poaching designs, and elements from several fighting games. At the bottom of the blog I linked all the entries in that series.

The thing about Chinese, or Hong Kong creators was that anything they worked on was met with suspicion from consumers in the west. It didn’t matter if they were making a comic, game, toy, or fashion piece. The first thing that people overseas did (myself included) was try to dissect what they were doing, or try to find the direct connection to something that existed previously. I don’t think that this level of skepticism was equal compared to creators from Japan, or the US. It seemed all but impossible for me to give the Chinese credit for the work they were doing, and any new ground they were breaking. One of the things that hurt the reception from people in the west was that any new trends were instantly jumped on by contemporaries, and competitors. Copycats flooded the market as soon as a trend started.

I’m sure you’ve seen countless ads for Chinese, and Korean MMO’s that looked identical to each other. Worse yet they were poaching the designs from popular RPGs. I saw it happen in the figure market with Lau, where several contemporaries became much better known from being at the right place, at the right time. It didn’t seem fair to me that he didn’t get his flowers from the west for the movement he started. As I started putting together this series I took a hard look at the trends of copying, counterfeiting, and thought that maybe I had the wrong mindset. Maybe I was looking at the process from the wrong perspective. If I considered the intent, and context of Korean, Chinese, Hong Kong, and even Taiwanese creators then I might come to a different conclusion.

I began thinking of the culture, how the Chinese were manufacturing the lion’s share of consumer goods that the west enjoyed, but getting none of the respect for the labels. When it came to fighting games I thought of how many marital arts from China had been presented by studios the world over, but were always met with skepticism when a fighting game came from a Chinese developer. I thought of how many artists in the West were called geniuses for “remixing” established brands. Andy Warhol and his can of Campbells soup, Roy Lichtenstein making millions for copying old comic book panels, or Ron English taking jabs at US icons. It was art when they did it, but when the Chinese artist did it then it became a counterfeit. The oddest thing was that counterfeits could boost the sales of genuine products.

What if the Chinese were remixing culture, remixing brands, and not hung up on IP because it was not part of their cultural lexicon? This could work in a society that favored the collective good, rather than the individual achievement. Yes there were some creators intent on creating a knock-off to dupe prospective buyers. They wanted to sell a cheaper alternative to people searching for a brand name product. There were also some creating an homage to an established brand, but determined to put their own unique spin on it. They would make up variations of established logos, colors, and brands. Sometimes with a lot of creativity. Who would be the judges in determining what was on brand, versus a fake, versus an artistic interpretation?

Context had a lot to do with how we reported, and perceived these copies. In any case the nation was able to turn an idea into a product in record time. The volume, and speed that Chinese, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese creators were able to get toys, games, and fashion out there was dizzying. They were remixing products before the trends were even able to spread around the world. This approach made me reconsider the way I thought about the games, toys, and fashion items they were putting into the market. The difference between what Michael Lau, Eric So, Pal Wong, Jason Siu, CoolRain, and the Brothersfree trio did was so subtle that to many collectors it was imperceptible.

The figures that Michael Lau released were always a step ahead of his contemporaries. They were layered with details that some people missed. Take Meter Chen for example. The initial for the character’s name was based on the familiar McDonald’s fast food “Golden Arches” but it also represented the three legs of the character. The story behind the design made much more sense in context. Meterchen was based on an actual friend of Michael, the globe trotting journalist from East Touch magazine walked everywhere, hence the three legs. He spent more time in airports than at home, hence the rolling suitcase. He lived off of fast food, hence his packaging looked like a black, and gold McDonald’s bag. The levels of storytelling were amazing, but you could still enjoy the three-legged figure without any other context. It wasn’t always this deep with figures from some of his contemporaries. Not that it mattered, the style of his characters, and toys inspired countless variations, or “remixes” if you prefer.

Michael was aware of what the contemporaries were working on the entire decade of 2000. He was creating paintings, sculptures, and other mixed media projects in the interim. Like many artists he didn’t want to rest on his laurels, he wanted to be seen as something other than the vinyl figure guy. He made sure to share his toy influences on his future projects, but in entirely new formats, including massive resin, and fiberglass statues. He coined the term ar+oy, pronounced ArtToy, the meaning was that 'All Art Are Toys, All Toys Are Art'.

Many of the larger pieces he created went to private collectors, and international galleries. He didn’t want to leave his community of vinyl figure fans out of the loop. He released a few 12” figures between 2011 through 2015. A young version of Maxx called STREETMAXX, and an older version called WORKMAXX in which he had a mustache, and was wearing Carhartt brand workwear. This helped appease the demands of audiences for his original gardeners. These were limited to around 800 or less for each character. Of course fans wanted more. In the middle of the decade he dropped another line that would force his contemporaries to take notice.

The Michael Lau x How2Work Garden(palm)er series came out in 2013. The name itself was chosen because they could fit in the palm of your hand. Each drop featured nine figures in a box that looked just like a case of spray cans. It wouldn’t be the first time he had released art toys this way. A collectors set of the NY-Fat graffiti gardener figures in spray can cases came out a few years prior. What made the palmers unique was that they were 1/12 scale figures. Unlike the squat 6-inch mini-gardeners these figures were proportional to the original gardeners, but now roughly eight-inches in height. Each character even featured the same clothing as the original gardeners from 1999. Michael had a tradition of rewarding his most die-hard collectors. In a callout to his 2001 Crazy Children series each of the nine Garden(palm)er figures came with a bonus piece. If you collected all nine figures then you had enough pieces to assemble the mystery 10th figure. The mystery figures across all four seasons introduced entirely new gardeners into canon.

The rest of the figure community soon caught on that they could release figures in different scales, and proportions as well. They would not be locked into 1/6 scale, they could go 1/12, or 1/9 scale, just as easily. Or they could make figures that were round, or square, out of wood, resin, metal, or any number of material. The point was that fans would show up. The community was hungry for more. The studio that understood the assignment was Come4Arts. Their Corner Bar Series were essentially drinking buddies in roughly the same 8” area. Instead of spray cans each figure came in a fake beer can. Of course a set came in a six-pack. It was some very clever work from the Chinese group. I only wish I had bought the palmer figures when I had a chance, but I was on a very tight budget at the time. The toy importers were selling them at roughly $400 a box. So imagine that spending $1600 in four years on figures wouldn’t work out for me. I understand that serious collectors out there spend that much on single items. Good on them, I’m totally not jealous! (imveryjealousactually)

As fantastic as the palmer set was, they didn’t feature my favorite of the gardeners. A few of the original 6” mini gardeners did have some of my absolute favorite characters. I’d like to talk about them in a future blog. For now I would like to hear your thoughts on remix culture. Was it possible for Chinese, Korean, or other creators to get credit for remixing familiar brands, and logos without being accused of being counterfeiters? Or here’s another question for you. What’s the most you’ve ever spent on a toy, or figure? Tell me about it in the comments section please. If you wanted to read about the birth of the Chinese fighting game Xuan Dou Zhi Wang / King of Combat the series is below. 

Copycat Culture, part 1 

Copycat Culture, part 2 

Copycat Culture, part 3 

Copycat Culture, part 4 

Copycat Culture, part 5 

Copycat Culture, part 6 

Copycat Culture, part 7 

Copycat Culture, final part 

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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!

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 7...

The easy thing for most game “journalists” to do is make up a controversy. For example bring up a list of images from the cast of Xuan Dou Zhi Wang / King of Combat and say which character the company Tencent was poaching. I’ve already talked about how King was basically Ken from Street Fighter with a chance of clothes. The character could also have been called a clone of Ryu.

Audiences were upset that the King introduced in King of Combat was not the same King from the King of Fighters universe or even King from the Tekken series. The character looked instead like a blend of various KOF characters including Rock Howard and Shen Woo.



Fighting games weren't the only sources of inspiration for the King of Combat characters. Simca, one of the stars from the manga and animé series Air Gear was part of the basis for Ciel.



What modern fighting game wouldn't be complete without a weird long haired character? There's no doubt that Freeman from Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Remy from Street Fighter III: Third Strike were the sources used for Tsukikage Arashi.



SNK had a well established history of using male and female Tae Kwon-Do practitioners in their Fatal Fury and King of Fighters games. When rival studio Capcom finally decided to add a TKD fighter into the lineup they made a very unique design choice. The revealing costume of Juri Han was anything but traditional, unlike the clothing featured on the SNK fighters. The character became a hit and it was only a matter of time before Tencent answered with Lee Won Hee.

These characters were just a sampling of the parallels that could be drawn between King of Combat and the other fighting games. Pointing out the similarities was not hard at all. Any fighting game aficionado could do the same. The more important question was why did Tencent do this? Why did they feel that it would be acceptable for their game to take so many elements from other sources? Money was the primary reason. They could follow in the footsteps in the longest-lived and most successful franchises and make a quick buck. By going with free-to-play and selling costumes and other upgrades via micro transactions they could make their money back on the millions and millions of Chinese gamers that loved the genre. There was another reason for why the studio thought it was acceptable to poach so many ideas.

When it came to pop culture, especially comics, cartoons and toys, the Chinese had an ingrained concept that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. It was part of the reason why the nation pursued the creation of counterfeit goods. The western world idolized many brands, turning Nike, Prada and Rolex into the labels that everyone wanted. When the genuine article could not be had the Chinese economy rewarded counterfeiters for making the next-best thing at a reasonable price. This way of thinking was very pragmatic. It extended to many levels of society especially in major cities. The residents of the big towns like Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong wanted to be recognized as having the same sophisticated tastes as their global counterparts. The best way to do that was by imitating the buying patterns of their western brethren. In the entertainment front it also meant copying what the rest of the world was into. Street Fighter II was a smash hit in China and fans wanted anything and everything with the characters in it.

 

The nation began adapting the legend of the World Warriors into comic book format. The Chinese actually had the first licensed Street Fighter comics in the world, before the US and even Japan! Of course the comic industry in China also produced tons of unlicensed comics as well. But I digress... Many of the best panels and covers featured in the comics were based on the official character art from Capcom. To western comic book fans this was clearly more poaching from a nation of counterfeiters.

If only those comic book fans would have looked a little closer though, they would have seen some tremendous material. Some was silly but most was sincere. Many of the licensed comcis had well written stories and superb art. The best authors and artists treated the material with as much respect as it deserved. They certainly did much more for the franchise than the horrid Malibu comics did in the US. There was a generation growing up in China that identified with the SF characters as much as those in the US or Japan did.



Imagine how difficult this perception of imitation and fraud was on the Chinese nationals and even Chinese-Americans that had migrated to the US centuries earlier. They were the ones who built the railroads and factories and did the work once the slaves had been freed. Their culture was up for grabs, their labor welcome but their opinion wasn't. Chinese culture had been appropriated by Japan and the US. It did not matter if it was accurate or insulting as it was being put in television and gaming. The Chinese were not allowed to contribute to this presentation for most of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Chinese wanted to show the world that they too knew a thing about the popular trends. They could make restaurants that looked just like fast food franchises in the West. They could make television shows that matched the popular titles in the West. They could make apparel that looked like the hot fashion labels. They could even make comic books that looked every bit as good as the official art from the studios. When they produced these things in sweatshops under a license then they were contractors, when they did it on their own volition they were thieves. Instead of being acknowledged as contributors to pop culture they were called copycats. The line between homage and rip-off seemed arbitrary. It was hypocritical especially when the creators were passionate about the projects they worked on unlike those in the west that took the license and ran it into the ground. It was a slap in the face to the audiences saw a lot of their own culture within the context of the Street Fighter series.



The Chinese fans did not readily have access to the arcade boards produced in the US or Japan. They were often playing a bootleg copy of Street Fighter II. Specifically a version that had been modified to adjust the speed up the gameplay and allow players to perform special moves mid-air where the original version did neither. These bootleg copies would make their way to the US and the rest of the world, known as the "Rainbow" kits. These releases would influence the direction of the franchise. Gamers and arcade owners would demand legal upgrade kits that had the same elements of the bootleg roms. Capcom listened and released the Hyper, Turbo and Super upgrades for SFII in the early '90s. The Japanese courted their western partners while stealing in the design elements created by the Chinese. This portion of history was glossed over in most retrospective articles concerning the evolution of the franchise.

Here was where I take exception to most game "journalists" I was willing to argue on behalf of the "pirate" and not take history as it was presented by one side. The Chinese developers weren't acknowledged for their contribution to the fighting genre and worse yet, the Japanese were glorified for theirs. When Xuan Dou Zhi Wang came out many considered it a wholesale rip-off of the King of Fighters. Even I called it the Frankenstein approach to fighting game design. What audiences did online, myself included, did was have a knee-jerk reaction to the title. Now that it has been a few months the game deserves a second look and with it the industry as well. Looking back on the evolution of the fighting game genre I saw how important imitation was to the biggest franchises. We'll look at this more in the next and final blog in this series. 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 6...

Western audiences were quick to point out the characters that the Xuan Dou Zhi Wang / King of Combat lineup was based on. They would try to shame the Chinese developers by calling out their lack of originality. Yet if they were to look at the history of video games there was often some sort of poaching going on, and certainly some level of cultural appropriation that was never called out. This was especially true in the early days of the industry. Two of the most important games in the evolution of the fighting genre used China as a backdrop. Kung-Fu Master by Data East came out in 1984. The game was inspired by the Bruce Lee film the Game of Death. In the movie Bruce went from floor to floor, moving between harder and harder opponents until he fought the final "boss" at the top floor. Kung-Fu Master incorporated elements from that film as well as other Chinese hero or “wuxia” stories.

Kung-Fu Master was an important milestone because the evolving enemy types had not been done previously in a fighting game. It was also the basis of the brawler genre, in which one player had to fight off wave after wave of enemies. A year later Konami released a game that was the template that all fighting games would follow, including the original Street Fighter. Yie Ar Kung-Fu featured a Chinese hero named Oolong. He fought masters of different styles, including a few women. Some masters fought with hands and feet while others with a particular weapon. The characters were all grounded in classical styles and looked as if they had been plucked out of Chinese martial arts cinema. Even the backgrounds in the stages looked like traditional watercolor landscape paintings rather than photorealistic images.

The thing to remember was that China and the Chinese martial arts were welcome in video games. They were celebrated for their visual splendor and fancy moves. Fan and Star were featured opponents in Yie Ar Kung-Fu. They were the first female martial arts fighters in a game. They predated the iconic Chinese character Chun-Li by six years. In fact before Capcom even created Chun-Li they had designed a trio of female martial artists that could hold their own against the titular character Strider Hiryu in the arcade game Strider. The Kuniang Martial Arts Team aka The Tong Pooh Three Sisters appeared in 1989. Chun-Li would not appear until 1991. The sisters were fabled bounty hunters, selling their deadly talents to the highest bidder. Their pseudo-traditional Chinese martial arts uniforms beguiled their amazing powers. The sisters could cut tanks in half with their powerful kicks. They were the perfect challenge to the futuristic ninja Hiryu.

Capcom was without a doubt one of my favorite companies growing up. The arcade games the developed had no peer in my book, yet they could also be used as an example of the cultural appropriation that was happening within the gaming industry. Chinese characters in fighting games were often presented in some sort of pre-revolutionary martial arts costume. It didn't matter if the character were appearing in in a current timeline. Chances were they were dressed in the costume that would have been appropriate in the late 19th century rather than casual modern clothing. For example the Three Sisters were presented in costumes that made more sense in the classic Chinese Opera rather than in the science fiction future that Strider was set in. Even Chun-Li was presented in a pseudo-traditional costume in Street Fighter II. Within the context of the game however her costume made sense.



Chun-Li was a police officer that was going undercover into a fighting tournament. She couldn't exactly wear her badge into battle. I described the appeal of Chun-Li in a series called the Female Equation if you haven't read it yet I suggest visiting the link. The most important things that could be learned from Chun-Li were based on her name. She was inspired in part by Wing Chun, the legendary martial artist that had a fighting style named after her. Chun-Li was also inspired by the kicking speed and fearless spirit of Bruce Lee and the characters he played on screen. If you remember the undercover officer that Lee played in Enter the Dragon had also entered a martial arts tournament. Capcom flipped the script by turning Lee into a woman yet maintained her importance in the context of the story.

Chun-Li was not a token hyper-sexualized character nor was she some sort of damsel in distress. She was one of the most carefully planned out and respectable characters in the history of video games. This was something that I had yet to hear Anita Sarkeesian bring up in her game criticisms. The inclusion of Chun-Li was something that the Chinese audiences could be proud of. Through the history of Chinese martial arts cinema there had been formidable female protagonists. Going back to the 1920's strong female characters had always been a part of the movie experience. In other countries women were often the prize for the hero, they were in need of rescue or vindication. That was not always the case in China. Certainly there were revenge stories where women were raped, murdered or kidnapped, but there were also many more films where women were tremendous fighters and leads in the films. In several cases they upstaged the men. Some women played major villains as well adding more weight to their contribution in action cinema. This was something that the Japanese developers had picked up on and made sure to use when introducing Chun-Li and the Three Sisters into gaming history. Sadly the action films from the west rarely used a female lead. Rare was a director like Luc Besson, who knew that women could make for amazing action stars and not just be used as eye candy on the big screen. But I digress. The Japanese studios were becoming hung up on presenting one take of the Chinese in fighting games.

In Capcom's Final Fight, which also debuted before Street Fighter II, the Chinese characters looked very stereotypical. Even when the series moved to the consoles in following years the studio did not try to evolve with the times. They made sure to give the Chinese characters a very particular look. The males had long braided ponytails, wore slippers and had names like Wong Who, Won Won and Wong. I wish I could say that they were based on a particular movie hero or villain but they were instead gross generalizations of Chinese thugs and gangsters. It was an easy tool for the majority to caricature foreigners and immigrants, especially in a nation that had never had a civil rights movement. The characters in many fighting games, not just by Capcom, were skirting the line of racial pandering. This was not limited to the Chinese either. Blacks were by and large known for only a few things according to game culture. They were good at sports and dancing. The two stereotypes were combined when they appeared in a fighting game. I wish there were more positive role models in games like Dudley the boxer but he was few and far between. Instead audiences got Boggy the Dancing Master, Magic Dunker and a slew of other basketball playing figures.



The Chinese heroes in brawlers and fighting games were again placed in classic costumes. Some wore decorative robes and some looked like Shaolin Monks. Sometimes they appeared like Bruce Lee and fought with nunchakus or costumes that he would have worn in a movie. SNK, Capcom, Data East, Namco and Midway were just some of the many developers in the East and West that relied on trope to design Chinese martial artists. What none of the studios seemed to grasp was the effect that this was having on the Chinese audiences. When it came to fair representation in gaming China wanted to be part of the conversation. They wanted to be seen as more than a costume. After all the majority of martial arts, especially those in Japan were rooted in China. The practitioners in Mainland China may have been strict traditionalists for certain styles but this was not the case for every form of self-defense.

There was a broad diversity of styles that had never been captured accurately in film and especially not in the game screen. These true arts deserved some exposure. Even Chinese-Americans like Bruce Lee were excluded from the conversation. He wanted to adapt the elements that worked from different systems and mix them together into a hybrid form which he called Jeet Kun Do. As much as Lee was imitated by the rest of the world the lessons that he set out to teach were missed by most of the producers. They turned him into a caricature based on his movie roles. He became just like the Chinese practitioners that came before him. He was something that could be synthesized into a few visual cues and put into a fighting game. He went from fighting drug lords and fighting for the respect of Chinese nationals on film to fighting panda bears and robots on the video game screen.



The Chinese were in a conundrum. Those that lived in the country and those that lived in the city were keenly aware of how they were being represented in popular media. The nation had grown tremendously since the Cultural Revolution but you wouldn't know it if you relied on fighting games to give you the news. When the developers at Jade Studio tried to create a fighting game and join the conversation the world saw nothing but the blatant rip-off of the King of Fighters. Those that took a moment to understand the roots of the characters saw something else. The costumes, colors, moves, abilities and even story had a distinct Chinese aesthetic. The developers were keenly aware of what was going on in sports, street culture, music and the martial arts. They knew how all of these elements contributed to pop culture. They knew how these elements should be incorporated into the design of their characters, stages and gameplay. In short they knew how to make the game into something their own. Certainly the characters had a familiar KOF design to them but I would challenge critics to look a little closer. The stylization of the characters was more manhua (Chinese comic book) than manga.

The diversity of the characters was also more inclusive of people of color than most KOF or Street Fighter titles. Characters could have dark skin, light skin and still be Chinese. They weren’t simply given a basketball or shown to be some sort of b-boy (break dancer). The racial gimmicks were left on the sidelines. When was the last time a mixed ethnicity character was featured in a fighting game? When was the last time a minority was shown without some sort of cultural trope? Imitation was the biggest sticking point for the community but sometimes the community missed how much imitation helped the industry grow. We will visit this idea in the next blog. 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!