The aesthetic versus graphics debate, part 1...

Aesthetics were critically important in fighting games. They were the visual cues that set each company apart. In the previous blog I showed that a number of games and studios were developing on the same graphics engine. This made the titles all look eerily similar whether they were made in Japan, the US or the UK. A great fighting game had to set itself apart from the competition. The longest surviving studios knew this. It was the reason why many companies hired teams of unique artists. Look very carefully at the way different artists, from within Capcom and outsiders, presented Chun-Li.

   

The costume was the same but the style varied widely from artist to artist. Perhaps one artist drew her make up and the other with none. Style also trickled down to the details. Things like how big the spikes on the bracelet should be, how tall her boots were, how slender Chun-Li’s waist was or how wide her thighs should be. All of these things depended on the artist. Once the artist finalized the designs they created turnarounds so they could see the character from all sides. These turnarounds were used for the official character guides. In this way every other artist and animator at the studio could be consistent. Back when fighting games were in 2D is was very easy to capture an artists’ individual style.

 

Once the game engines started going into 3D then things got much harder. The proportions used in 2D wouldn’t necessarily work in 3D without making the characters appear grossly disproportionate. This became more obvious as the entire Street Fighter cast was more swollen in SF IV. Suddenly Chun-Li looked like a tank. She was almost as wide as she was tall. This mass made sense for the burly Zangief but not for Chun-Li. Her increase in size didn’t really go with her lighting quick moves and it broke the player’s suspension of disbelief. This was especially obvious with the character Rufus, a man that was extremely fat yet moved as fast as Chun-Li. Capcom tried to pay more attention to aesthetics in Street Fighter V. They listened to the feedback that they got from the community and they slimmed down the cast. There was a difference in how Daigo Ikeno’s Chun-Li looked in SFIV and how the new version looked in SFV. Sorry but the name of the new lead artist escapes me. Capcom was moving in the right direction but I was surprised that they didn’t learn from the past a little bit sooner.

 

In the first wave of fighting games, during the early to mid-1990s, each studio had their own unique style. The games that were lost to time, titles like Fighters History and Martial Masters, copied the Street Fighter II aesthetic but failed to innovate the format. They didn’t do much in terms of new control schemes, moves or even character origins. Other studios like SNK and Midway learned that in order to stand out each game had to have a distinct visual style. All of the studios were using similar sprite technology but their aesthetics varied widely. Compare how different the lead characters were in Street Fighter II, Samurai Showdown, Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer and Mortal Kombat. The games were released within five years yet were vastly different in terms of aesthetics. Many fans simply commented on how great the graphics looked between games even if they were all built with comparable hardware and software.

   

As technology evolved so too did the techniques used to build a fighter. Midway and Atari experimented with stop motion figures to create the monsters featured in Mortal Kombad and Primal Rage respectively. Rare began creating sprites out of high-end CGI workstations for Killer Instinct. Aesthetically speaking all of these games were very diverse too. Then Sega planted the seeds for the future of the genre, and the industry itself. They used a polygon-based graphics engine. It didn’t have the detailed backgrounds or high speed game play of the 2D titles but it did have an entirely new aesthetic. Clean, simple shapes, creating actual 3D objects that had weight, dimension and shape.

   

In the mid-90s other studios saw the potential of 3D engines. The technology could be applied in multiple formats and genres. Space shooters, racing games, RPGs, action titles and even platformers could all be done in 3D. When the studios began developing 3D fighting games it was as if they had reset the clock on aesthetics. Every studio was so focused on learning the new technology that they did not bother to push the envelope on aesthetics. The original 2D fighting games all stuck to the tropes. A karate master, a kung fu practitioner, a boxer and wrestler could all be guaranteed to appear in the early games. They were all drawn in a style that fell somewhere in between a Japanese animé or manga. The exact same tropes happened in 3D. There were some minor differences but think about how Chun-Li set the standard for the Chinese fighter. Pai Chan (and her father Lau Chan) was the first Chinese polygon star in Sega’s Virtua Fighter (1993). Her color scheme of blue with gold trim was very much based on Chun-Li. This set the template for the Chinese dress on Tekken’s Anna Williams (Namco 1994) and Dead or Alive’s Leifang (Tecmo 1996). The graphics were cutting edge at the time yet the aesthetics in the games were almost universal.

   

Think about how the majority of the fighting games today are built on the same graphics engine. Think about how the majority are using the same aesthetic. From Street Fighter IV to Injustice, every modern title was dark and gritty. It was as if the studios forgot everything they had learned in the ‘90s. How they forgot the importance of having a strong aesthetic. It stands to reason however, many of the new designers and developers were kids when the first fighting game boom happened. They are now programmers, artists and animators in their own right. They are recreating all the things they loved about their favorite games. This is where I present a challenge to them. Do not recreate what was great. Do not settle for what the graphics standards are now but instead carve out an entirely new path. Take a creative risk. Change up the format without erasing the original formula. Fighting games, and video games in general, are very much a visually based form of storytelling. Just because you are given the same tools as your contemporaries it doesn’t mean your games have to all look the same. Think about what makes an animé unique when compared to a CGI film. Think about the Transformer’s series of the ‘80s and the live action Transformers film of today. The reason that fans remembered the original was because of how unique it looked when compared to the western cartoons. Thirty years later when a western and eastern studio developed a 3D version of the franchise there was a striking difference between the aesthetic styles. One managed to capture the look of the animated series while the other looked like every other 3rd person shooter.

 

Be bold with your designs! Regardless of what surveys tell you simply know that the fans are there. They are waiting for something to change their perception. The market will follow those that take a chance. Street Fighter II was only the beginning of the revolution. Mortal Kombat, Samurai Shodown, Primal Rage, King of Fighters and Killer Instinct were some of the biggest risk takers. Their gambles didn’t always pay off but they gave audiences a reason to return. In doing so the market grew and grew. More people were playing fighting games because of the diversity in subjects and aesthetics. A good director knows when to push the envelope, when to challenge their designers. They know what things the audience expects and doesn’t. In the next blog we will look at the impact a good director and a strong aesthetic can have on the industry. 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!

Teasing the next Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer, part 3

ARIKA gave fighting game fans many reasons to celebrate on April 1, 2017. They had not given up on fighting game development as many had assumed. They wanted a follow up to their cult favorites Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer almost as much as their fans did. They went to the trouble of putting together a technical demo using current hardware just as they had done on previous April fools days. What really stuck out to me was how much the footage of Fighting EX Layer reflected the current aesthetic featured in the genre. The graphics had gone from bright and colorful, previously animé inspired, to something much darker and grittier. It happened with the characters featured and it happened with the stages they were showing off.

 It was uncanny how a studio that had not released a fighting game in 17 years was able to fall right in and match the pace, style and presentation of the new fighting games. It stood to reason. Most of the team had created Street Fighter II. They set the precedence for modern fighting games. Yet go back and look at the video. Look at the stage design. Look at the character models. Look at the level of detail applied to their skin and costumes. Look at the moves they were assigned. Look at how special attacks were animated. Look at the effects applied to super moves. The world that ARIKA presented was much more visceral than anything they had previously done. It was much darker than the grim tournament presented in Fighting Layer. This was clearly a conscious decision. The studio looked at the trends and made sure that they were able to replicate what was going on in the industry. If audiences wanted dark and gritty then they were going to deliver. If they wanted to be immersed in worlds with tremendous atmosphere, evolving stages, including weather effects, then they were going to deliver on that as well.

 

The game that ARIKA had demonstrated was a number of shades much darker than I had expected. It certainly hit the mark of the current crop of fighting games. But was that necessarily a good thing? Consider how many of the games today looked similar. The graphics engine, the moves, the effects and stages had become homogenized in less than 10 years. There was a reason for this when you look at the developers themselves. Street Fighter IV used the Taito Type X2 engine, it had been the backbone of a number of fighting games including Battle Fantasia, BlazBlue, The King of Fighters XII and XIII. A number of studios, including DIMPS and SNK were familiar with the hardware and what it was capable of. A few things changed in 2008 with the release of Street Fighter IV. Capcom had given up on the franchise until Yoshinori Ono pushed the company to develop a new game. Capcom didn’t want to risk it being a commercial success, especially in North America where a good chunk of their consumer base was. So the lead artist on this project, Daigo Ikeno, wanted to make the characters more appealing to American players. He looked at Western games, comics and movies. He saw how hyper-muscular they were. How gritty our graphics tended to be and began beefing up the Street Fighter characters because of this. Many fans the world over noticed how swollen the World Warriors had become. They weren’t as attractive in 3D but the game itself played like a traditional 2D title and that was good enough. Street Fighter IV was a smash hit and it relaunched interest in the genre. Other studios began developing their own fighting games, some even brought back long-extinct IP.

   

Fighting games were now being developed in Japan, China, North America and Europe. Despite the different regions and tastes the graphics for each game started to look eerily similar. Part of the reason for this was because many games were using identical graphics engines. The Unreal Engine 3 was used in the Western-produced Injustice: Gods Among Us (2013) and Mortal Kombat X (2015). The Unreal Engine 4 was the backbone for Tekken 7 (2015), Tekken 7: Fated Retribution (2017) and Street Fighter V (2016). Street Fighter X Tekken was a console exclusive and built on Playstation 3 and Microsoft 360 development kits, which used and adapted engine from Street Fighter IV. Microsoft purchased the rights to Killer Instinct, a title that was popular at the peak of the fighting game boom of the ‘90s. They resurrected the title in 2013 with the help of Double Helix Games. The game itself was built on the HEX engine. Regardless of who developed the games and on what engine, they all started to look eerily similar.

   

Within seven years the biggest franchise titles, Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct had nearly identical graphics. Only the King of Fighter, Samurai Spirits / Showdown and Guilty Gear titles seemed immune to this homogenized design. When ARIKA showed off Fighting EX Layer they pretty much reflected this reality. I wondered if company boss Akira Nishitani was actually calling out how gritty realism and flashy graphics effects did nothing to make a game better. Balance, control, animation and character design were the cornerstones of great fighting games. Graphics evolved but no matter how pretty a game looked if it did not play well then it was doomed to fail. This was a distinction that I think many players cannot make. A good number of video game developers look to their fans via forums, surveys, and market research to shape their next games. When they ask a game player how important graphics are their audience might rank it first. This makes the studio think that building a game on a powerful graphics engine, like the Unreal 4 engine, would help insure a hit. I think what many audiences mean to say are the Aesthetics, the Style of the game is really the most important thing. This is not a new argument. Many writers and artists have written about it, some have even produced videos explaining the differences.

   

Street Fighter IV worked very hard to try and preserve the aesthetics of Street Fighter II. The exact cut of Ken and Ryu’s gi for example. Most people overlooked this detail but Ken actually had a gi where his sleeves and pant cuffs were hemmed. Ryu’s were torn by comparison in the official character art. This was a subtle difference that told audiences a little bit about the personality of each fighter. Street Fighter IV reproduced all of these tiny details yet placed them on 3D models that were far more swollen than they were ever drawn by the original Japanese artists. It was a bit of a mixed message for long-time fans. Here’s everything you remember and don’t. In Street Fighter V the graphics stayed similar but the studio modified the aesthetics. It was subtle for some characters and more obvious for others. Ken for example had a different top. His trademark gi was tied around his waist and he wore a black rash guard instead. His hair went from long and flowing to what many would call lumps of Play Doh. This wouldn’t be the first time the studio had changed the aesthetic for the characters. Every game in the series had a different lead artist. These people were responsible for setting the tone of the art. The size and proportions of each character were standardized. For the most part the characters kept their trademark appearance. Ken kept his hair and costume and for the most part even his stance. Different artists, like Shoei, Akin and Kinu left different fingerprints on how the cast appeared.

   

One of the most influential of these artists was Bengus. He had designed the characters for Street Fighter Alpha / Zero. These fighters were meant to be younger versions of the original World Warriors. He changed a few details on each person to make them stand out. He exaggerated the muscles, the size of the hands and feet so they were easier to track and draw. These exaggerations made the characters look lanky, like older teens that were on the verge of adulthood. Even tiny details like the size and shapes of the eyes and eyebrows were not overlooked. They looked more cartoonish but couldn’t necessarily be tied to any one anime or manga style. It was Bengus’ own unique style that audiences loved. His use of shape, proportion and presentation really took the industry by storm. No fighting game before had ever used an aesthetic so effectively. Bengus didn’t only change the approach that Capcom had to sprite creation, he influenced all the other developers as well. These changes didn’t happen overnight but instead little by little. A cartoon here, a comic book there, a fighting game down the road. Other artists and creators could not ignore his unique aesthetic and how audiences were attracted to them. Street Fighter Zero (SFZ) was released in 1995, the ripples of the Bengus style made it to SNK when they released Garou: Mark of the Wolves (MoTW) in 1999.

   

The proportions used on the SNK characters were not as pronounced but they were there. It was apparent when you compared how much the designs had changed from game to game. The sprites in both Street Fighter II and the original Fatal Fury were very comparable. Possibly because the director of Fatal Fury, Takashi Nishiyama, had designed the original Street Fighter. In the early days of fighting game development the artists focused on recreating easily identifiable fighters and their respective styles. A karate person, a kung fu person, a boxer and a wrestler. They were easy to plan for, create and animate. The first batch of fighters following Street Fighter II in 1991 looked very homogenized. Their styles, moves and appearance were very much like Capcom’s World Warriors. Eventually studios began experimenting with different styles to set their cast apart. When Street Fighter Zero debuted it created another paradigm for designers. The other studios began shaping their cast after Bengus. It wasn’t heavy-handed poaching either. Simple things like the way the art team at SNK drew eyes, faces and even hair had changed. For example, Bengus captured the shape of a hairline but he didn’t bother to put too much detail into it. Instead haircuts were represented by a few solid shapes. It worked well in 2D. Look carefully at the character profiles in both SFZ and MoTW. When Capcom tried to stylize the heads of the models in 3D then we ended up with the lumpy Play-doh hair.

 

Capcom had learned how difficult it was to set their cast apart in the sea of sameness. It looked as if every studio was using the same engine. The aesthetic was universal. Everything was dark and gritty, it didn’t matter if we were looking at Superman, Necalli, Jago or Scorpion. They could have all fit in the same game. Even Fighting EX Layer had the sameness of the current batch of fighters. The question (which was actually a challenge) to the developers was what were they doing to distinguish their game from the rest? How could they convince players that they had something new when the graphics all looked the same? It was not impossible to create a 3D model that actually looked like the artist concept. It might have been difficult but not impossible to preserve a certain aesthetic. The best example I could give you of this was how Ken appeared In the South Korean fighting MMO Perfect K.O. Ken and Chun-Li were licensed from Capcom. The developers at Thingsoft arguably did a better job at preserving the Street Fighter III aesthetic, designed by Kinu Nishimura, than Capcom did in Street Fighter IV. Study the model they created carefully. Ken was muscular but not swollen. His proportions were not greatly exaggerated. Kinu scaled things back slightly from the Bengus school of design. The face, hair and features she designed were actually captured on this new model.

 

I do not think that North American fans would have been put off if the models In SF IV looked more like the Perfect K.O. ones. As long as the control, animation, balance and mechanics were preserved then it would have been just as successful if not more so. Yet the people at Capcom seemed to lack faith in their designs. They wanted to pander to Americans by making the cast swollen as the figures were in comic books and Western-produced titles. I think that is a shame for two reasons. Many US players became fans of Street Fighter because it was aesthetically different than any Western title before it. They loved the “Japanese graphics” when what they meant to say was they liked the Japanese style. It was also a shame that Capcom was choosing to follow the industry rather than set its pace. If all the studio did was follow trends then at some point they might make the next Street Fighter appeal to the South Korean or the Chinese market because of how fast they were growing. They would look at Chinese manhua or South Korean manhwa comic book artists and try to copy what they were doing. In essence they would be copying a country that was trying to copy the Japanese aesthetic. It was redundant and simply bad for business.

 

This issue was so important from a design standpoint that I would have to explore It a little further on 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!

Teasing the next Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer, part 2

The previous blog celebrated the teaser that ARIKA gave us of Fighting EX Layer. If it was an April Fools joke then it was a very well produced one, it raised the hopes of thousands of players around the world. Even if the studio had no plans on releasing the game we could still learn a lot about storytelling through the character designs. I was discussing the Mizukami family; Kairi, Hokuto and Nanase in the previous blog. I had also mentioned that the Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer were built on a universe filled with mystical characters and spiritual arts. In the genre it was not the only game to feature these types of figures.

   

Buddhist and Shinto monks had been featured in pop culture for decades. These mysterious robed men were popular in action cinema and animé. Their identity was hid under a large bamboo straw hat, called a takuhatsugasa, and they were often experienced in the martial arts. Usually it was some form of Shaolin Kung-Fu. When the Chinese settled in parts of Japan they brought with them their religions too. Before karate was synonymous with the “empty hand” techniques it was actually associated with “Chinese fist.” That is to say the oldest schools of karate in Japan were founded on Zen Buddhist principles. The lion's share of fighting monks appeared in the SNK universe. Nicotine Caffeine debuted in the 1994 smash hit Samurai Shodown II. It was a game set a few centuries ago in feudal Japan. He would have been a period appropriate character. His massive grandson Gaira Caffeine appeared the following year in Samurai Shodown 3. Both Nicotine and Gaira wore variations of traditional monk clothing. Nicotine could summon powerful spirits to fight on his behalf whereas Gaira used bowling ball-sized prayers beads to flatten opponents. Zinsuke was a samurai-like-monk that appeared in the game Asura Buster: Eternal Warriors by Fuuki Co. Ltd. Monks were not permitted to carry weapons, and especially not swords as part of their code. Asura Buster was set in a fantasy world so that different designs elements worked for the character. In 1995 SNK also debuted another fighting monk, Sokaku Mochizuki. This character had all the trappings of a classical monk and would have fit into the Samurai Shodown universe. Yet he appeared in Fatal Fury 3, which was based in the modern era. It turned out that the uniform actually hadn't changed much in centuries.

 

To this day Buddhist monks still traveled through Asia and served in temples both ancient and modern. If they were on a pilgrimage they would wear a motsuke or robe. Their takuhatsugasa was wide for a reason, it protected the monk from the elements, but it also shielded their face to protect their identity. In many regions practicing and outside religion was against the law. Secrecy was for the safety of the practitioner or followers. The large hat also shielded the monk from distractions and noise so that they could mediate. Monks sometimes traveled with a khakkhara. This was a ringed "sounding staff" that had originated in India. The number of rings, 4, 6 or 12 was more than an ornament. They symbolized the Four Truths, the Six Perfections or the 12 chains of cause and effect. Only the Buddha would wield a 12-ring staff. When the monk walked with the staff it would ring. The sound would warn small animals to stay out of the path or alert people that there was a monk nearby. Although not widely practiced anymore by Buddhist monks there was an actual form of fighting associated with the khakkhara. It differed slightly from the forms used with a staff or spade, which monks were also allowed to fight with. Having Nicotine use it as a weapon in game was actually authentic.

   

The legend of the fighting monk grew in pop culture until it was even associated with pro wrestling. Jinsei Shinzaki, aka Hakushi in the WWF/E, was an exceptional Japanese performer. Having studied under the “lucharesu” school which combined the high flying acrobatics of Mexico’s lucha libra with the hard striking of Japan’s puroresu (pro wrestling). He was a well-rounded fighter. If his opponent came at him with strikes and grapples then he had a counter attack ready. If his opponent was a fast worker and wanted to perform death defying moves then he too could launch himself off the top rope. Mr. Shinzaki could always be counted on to perform well in a match. He was very serious in and out of the ring and never broke character. He was portrayed as a fighting monk and would power bomb and slam his opponents and then follow up with a prayer. One of his trademark moves, the ogami watari, was an arm twist rope walk that ended in a flying chop. As he walked along the top rope he would pray aloud. He did this move in just about every type of ring set up, including hardcore “death” matches where the ropes would be replaced with razor wire. He was doing this move in Japan at about the same time the Undertaker was using it in the USA. The two actually had a rivalry which worked because they were both using a similar persona. In many Asian countries people only wore white at religious ceremonies if there was a funeral. Jinsei was like a monk praying for those about to die, usually his opponents. By the same token the Undertaker was a sort of ghostly monster in the USA. You could expect him to bury his opponents as well. In real life Mr. Shinzaki was as generous as you could expect a monk to be. After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami he actually spend weeks delivering food and water to those displaced by the disaster, most of it coming from his savings.

   

Sometimes Jinsei would go all-out for his character. He would wear the full monk costume and walk with a khakkhara to the ring. Sometimes his face and body were covered in shakyo or calligraphic characters. The messages written on his body were sutras or scripture. These showed humility and piety for his belief. In Buddhism practitioners would write down shakyo as a form of reverence. Families could commission monks and nuns to write down scripture to honor their family or loved ones. Although not practiced widely there have been many examples of tattooed shakyo written on people over the centuries. In Japan the practice of carved tattoos, called horimono, extended back to the Jomon era. These tattoos were thought to have spiritual connotations and had appeared more than 10,000 years ago. Some people did indeed tattoo their faces as well as bodies with elaborate designs. About 2000 years ago Chinese travelers to Japan had recorded these tattoos on the native Japanese and saw that they were associated with status. Only later on did tattoos start to have a negative association in society. This was because criminals were tattooed for various offenses. Regular people wouldn’t hire these people however the criminal underworld, better known as the yakuza would. To this day you can still find examples of irezumi, Japanese tattoos, that incorporate shakyo for decoration, or devotion. A mantra and symbol of Buddha or even Hindu Dharmas could be found tattooed on people all over the world.

   

There is a reason why I bring up all of this history. As the EX series progressed the spiritual themes became more relevant to the development of the game. Only the Samurai Showdown series had invested more mysticism into their canon. Garuda had some very distinct Buddhist symbolism associated with him. His sitting lotus position, that he teleported around the stage with, and even the actual lotus flower, a symbol of purity were seen in his animations and endings. I had described the origins of Kairi and his spiritual powers as well on previous blogs. Kairi and Hokuto had a unique bond. They were both monk-like in their training. Yet their relationship was more profound than anyone in Street Fighter. Ken and Ryu might consider themselves brothers but the Mizukami characters were actual (cursed) blood relatives. Imagine how different the Street Fighter series would have been if Ryu and Chun-Li were brother and sister. Imagine the heartbreak of Chun-Li if her brother had become a murderer. If she remained loyal to her job as an officer then she would have to arrest him, or worse, kill him in the line of duty. This was the type of character development that made the EX series so unique. This was something that the former Street Fighter II developers were thinking out lout. The lead characters were related, and they were both the heroes and villains of the universe. The drama that pulled audiences in was built because of this bond. The curse was something that would destroy the family or unite it. I think the latter was entirely possible. Kairi was headed for self-destruction at the end of the first EX game. Unless Hokuto could intervene there wouldn’t be much left of him to save.

 

Between Street Fighter EX 3 and Fighting EX Layer something did change. Kairi had defeated Gouki, and had elevated his powers in the process. Kairi no longer performed like a tortured soul. It was obvious in his new animations and the moves that ARIKA demonstrated on April 1. I believe the secret to his evolution lay in the marks on his arms. He now had shakyo tattoos on his wrists when previously he had none. These markings must have placed the evil energy driving him mad under his command. The spiritual forces were confined to his hands and not in his mind. He was fully in control of his abilities yet unlike Garuda these strikes were not centered around maiming an opponent. In a previous blog I mentioned how spirits could be bound to objects and people. Kairi was a "yorimashi" or a possessed person. The shakyo tattoos bent the spirits to his will. In shinto tradition it could have been a rope belt or blessed paper streamers to do that as well. Gouki by contrast used prayer beads to keep control of the evil spirits within him.

Kairi had achieved a strength of boss character and established an entirely new template. He was not bent on global domination, that was Gill and the Dictator’s hang up. He had become a master, a sort of anti-Gouki. He had little interest in tracking down the most powerful Street Fighters. If they wanted a challenge then they would have to seek him out. How this would effect the relationship between himself and his sisters would have to be explored in the actual games. The Fighting EX Layer reveal also introduced something else to the fighting game conversation. We will look at this 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!

Teasing the next Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer, part 1

On April 1, 2017 ARIKA studios did a live demonstration of a game called Fighting EX Layer. It was a successor to their popular Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer games. When it came to April Fools jokes ARIKA has consistently gone above and beyond. Previously the studio teased a Street Fighter EX remake on the Game Boy 3DS. They had also shown off the character select screen for a Street Fighter EX 2 remake they were allegedly working on. None of the games they teased has actually been released. The fact that they would make a working game engine just to pull off the prank was commendable. Yet there was something different about teasing this new build. It came at a time where even Capcom was acknowledging the Street Fighter EX legacy characters.

Prior to this April Fools it was understood that ARIKA and Capcom were not on the friendliest terms. ARIKA was founded by a former Capcom staffer, Akira Nishitani. He was one of the lead designers on Street Fighter II and he took a good portion of his team when he left the studio. He developed and proposed the first 3D Street Fighter game, it was labeled EX so that audiences wouldn't confuse it for one of the numbered Capcom titles. It also revolved around the EX tournament rather than the Street Fighter tournament. The original World Warriors (except for Blanka) appeared in EX, as did Sakura who had made her debut in Street Fighter Zero 2 at around the same time. They were paired off against an entirely new cast of characters. It was the last time the majority of the Street Fighter II team would work together. Some legal and licensing issues popped up around 1998 during the release of Fighting Layer. ARIKA wanted to expand their catalog so they developed a new arcade game that would be published by Namco. This new game featured two EX characters, Blair Dame and Allen Snider. By doing this the company wanted to build their library of characters. The assumption was that they could cross over in the future. ARIKA owned the rights to the new characters created for Street Fighter EX. We assume that they also owned the new characters created for Fighting Layer. They were technically allowed to use them in other games. This was a problem for Capcom because Namco was a perennial rival. If ARIKA wanted they could have featured a character or two in the Tekken series. This would have been great for fighting game fans but would have been a thorn in the side of Capcom. I don't know if there was a non-compete agreement between Capcom and ARIKA but many noticed that there was tension between the two companies after Fighting Layer. The speculation was that ARIKA had to take Capcom to court to ensure the EX series would be published per their previous agreements.

 

For almost 20 years neither studio mentioned the other, except when interviewed for the occasional Street Fighter retrospective. When they did that they were always cordial. In recent years ARIKA had began teasing their fans with rumors of a new EX game. They made sure to highlight their own characters and not the Capcom stars. About a year ago during the development of Street Fighter V (SFV) Capcom began releasing official character art. The studio not only released illustrations of the SFV cast, but they also began releasing illustrations of the supporting characters. Then they started releasing art for the Street Fighter IV cast, Street Fighter III and the original SF lineup. The Street Fighter Zero / Alpha characters and Final Fight cast soon followed. These were under the umbrella of the "Street Fighter Universe." The company wanted to canonize their official cast. Then Capcom did something unexpected, they released brand new art for "Other Title" characters. These were the EX and Capcom Fighting All-Star characters. It was as if Hell had frozen over. Capcom had acknowledged that there had been an EX cast and ARIKA was teasing a new EX game. Fans online were hoping that the two companies were working on a reconciliation. Perhaps with new producers, and the fact that fighting games are popular once again, both companies were considering a compromise. Stranger things had happened. I mean who could have ever predicted that the Tekken and Street Fighter characters would cross over in a versus title. Or that Gouki / Akuma would not only be a surprise character in Tekken 7, but that he would be important to the plot of the game.

 

I couldn't say if either Capcom or ARIKA had the resources to pull off a new EX game even if they wanted to. Don't forget that DIMPS did most of the development on Street Fighter IV and V. It would take the combined efforts of both Capcom and ARIKA to create a proper EX reboot. Before any development began the legalities of which characters to feature would be a chore. Audiences wanted Street Fighters and EX masters, but would they welcome any Fighting Layer characters as well? I for one would like to see Exodus hit a chair shot on an opponent at least one more time. Also, the canon of the EX series meant that at least one of the most popular villains would not appear. Kairi was the star of the EX universe. He was a much more tortured soul than Ryu ever was. Kairi had cursed blood and it caused him to lose control of himself. He would not only severely injure opponents in fights but he would often injure himself. He suffered from amnesia and at the end of the first EX tournament he killed Gouki and evolved into an even more powerful version of himself. Plenty of Street Fighter fans could never imagine that anybody but Ryu would be capable of defeating Gouki. Not only that but it made more sense for either Ryu or Ken to avenge the death of their master than a stranger introduced in EX. Yet that was the canon that ARIKA established and that’s why it exists in a different timeline / different continuity than the numbered SF series.

   

ARIKA was much more heavily influenced by the mystical elements of the fighting arts. By comparison the SF series was rooted more in science. The Dictator and his Shadowlaw / Shadaloo organization were unlocking the secrets of the martial arts masters through medical experiments. They used drugs, hypnosis and even cloning to crack the secrets of the ancient masters. There was a rational, scientific explanation for all of the amazing things that the fighters were capable of in that world. The EX universe was much more open to metaphysical origins. There were spirits, monsters and demons inhabiting the EX / Fighting Layer world. Garuda, designed to be the ultimate evil was demon animating some ancient samurai armor. It was assumed that he possessed the body of a human and turned him immortal. He could summon blades from his flesh and impale opponents with them. The powers that Kairi exploited were from a dark dimension and not meant for humans to control. It was possible that these energies came from the same place that Garuda had emerged from. Each time Kairi performed his special moves it took a toll on his body and spirit. By contrast Ryu could control his abilities and did not suffer any ill effects as they were from the natural world. Both characters however did have a light and a dark side. If Ryu used the forbidden techniques taught to him by his master then he opened himself to the Dark Hadou, a corrupting force. If Ryu gave in to the dark energy then he would become “Evil” and end up like Gouki. Kairi ended up having an almost opposite approach to this design. His “good” self, when he had black hair, was tormented by self-harm and nightmares. When he defeated Gouki he evolved into a more powerful version, his hair had turned white in the process, but he did not become “Evil Kairi.” He had gained a sort of peace with his strength. He accepted that he was now the most powerful fighter in the universe, neither a force for good or evil but destined to wander alone.

   

Garuda on the other hand was the constant force for evil. The Dictator Vega / M. Bison existed in the EX universe as well and had evolved somewhat since his introduction in Street Fighter II as well. He was as powerful as he had always been and was expanding his military might all over the globe. The Illuminati, introduced through Gill in Street Fighter III did not exist in this continuity. Instead it was all Shadowlaw and all Dictator running things. His R&D wings had created evolved cyborgs, known as the Cycloids. They could learn the fighting techniques of their opponents and use them in battle. The Dictator was looking to create a synthetic army that could fight as well as the best Street Fighters. His run-ins with the most powerful EX characters, whether it was Kairi or Garuda almost certainly spelled his death as well. When ARIKA teased Fighting EX Layer it was amazing to see how far the graphics had evolved and how visceral the new characters appeared.

   

Garuda had more details in his armor than his original concept art had ever shown. There were cracks in it, but there was also a unique gold trim. Centuries ago perhaps the armor originally belonged to some warlord or even noble. When he performed special attacks we could see that the spikes that came out of his skin were glowing red hot. Not only that but his skin seemed to glow and crackle with fissures of energy. He had a surplus of mystical energy to expel and it showed in every strike and ghost summon he performed. Garuda remained a fearsome character, and now that we could see him in high definition we could tell how he would appear in real life. I had talked about Garuda's design and the influence of both Buddhism and Shinto spirituality in previous blogs. The same level of detail applied to the other characters that ARIKA showed off in their April demo.

 

Hokuto, one of Kairi's younger sisters, appeared in the demo. She wore a hakama, a traditional uniform. She also wore an armored breastplate and archery gloves. Although she did not carry a bow and arrow she could shoot her spiritual energy in the form of an energy bolt. Her style of fighting was based on Kyudo, the a traditional archery techniques reserved for the samurai class but she also knew aikido moves as well. When she fired her energy bolts, the Kiren'Eki, she would go through the motions of shooting an arrow and could even hold her arms back to make the energy strike even stronger. In the series Hokuto was being raised to be the leader of the Mizukami clan. Yet it was revealed to her that she had an older brother. She was tasked with returning him home. She was unaware that the family had cursed blood or that Kairi was the result of an illicit affair. Hotukto had a curse placed on her as well, so that if she ever crossed paths with Kairi she would be forced to kill him. Hokuto would enter a trance and a seal would appear on her forehead. She became Bloody Hokuto at this point and her moves were much more dangerous. Hokuto never crossed paths with her brother in the EX series. In the games she would be joined by Nanase, the youngest sister of the family. She was a warrior in training. Although she didn't enjoy the strict training regiment she did so because she did not want to disappoint her sister. Nanase's costume was that of an Onna bugeisha, a warrior from the noble class. She fought with an expanding staff. It was never revealed if she had some sort of curse as well. Was she planned for Fighting EX Layer? Would she be reunited with her brother? Would she have to choose a side if Hokuto or Kairi ever crossed paths? Or would she abandon her family altogether? We don't know the answers to these questions yet. The ways in which ARIKA designed them was very unique for the genre. They contributed greatly to the mythology of fighting games. We will be exploring how in the next blog. As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

Battle Fantasia, the great fantasy fighting games, final part...

The final game in our series of fantasy fighters debuted a decade ago. Battle Fantasia was created by Arc System Works. The studio had been in business since 1988. In the early days they were contract developers for Taito, Sega, Atari, Namco and Capcom. They learned a tremendous amount from the industry by working on many major console adaptations. They had experience in racing games, brawlers, platformers and sports titles. When it came time to create their own games they were always very imaginative. Their biggest hits came from the fighting game arena. It stood to reason to, their very first project was a Sega Master System adaptation of Double Dragon in 1988. Being one of the first studios to see the popularity of brawlers first hand certainly stuck with the company. Battle Fantasia was a tribute to everything they had learned over the generations. Many gamers unfortunately slept on the title when it debuted in 2007. Looking back at it we can’t help but appreciate how innovative it was.

 

Battle Fantasia had all of the important elements that I had brought up over the course of the series. It was a Japanese take on a traditional western fantasy story. The setting, character classes, and mix of magic and medieval weaponry was something that most audiences would have expected. What no one could expect was how the Japanese were going to reinterpret the western tropes. As with other titles featured on the blog this game took us to a whole new world. This world had an origin, it had alliances, entire kingdoms, remote villages and uncharted territories. We were given a glimpse of the world in the loading screen. Each of the main characters came from a unique place on the map.

   

The game was meant to evoke images of classic fairy tales, as if you were looking at animated pages in a book. The soft colors, subdued lighting and animation style were very inviting, they were very family friendly. Arc System Works (ASW) tried very hard to make sure that each and every fighting game they created had its own unique style. When they worked on an IP owned by a different company they made sure that it was in the exact style of that publisher. For example the fighting game Persona 4 Arena maintained the look that Atlus director Katsura Hashino and designers Atsushi Watanabe and Azusa Kido had worked to create. When ASW developed Sengouku Basara X for Capcom they made sure that it carried the over-the-top sword-fighting mechanics that Koei had used in the original 3D brawler but with a new “Capcom-style” 2D aesthetic. When ASW developed Dragon Ball Z: Supersonic Warriors for the Game Boy Advance they maintained the look of the classic Akira Toriyama show and the familiar Super Nintendo adaptations. In many ways ASW was like a chameleon, able to adapt to the work of another studio without anyone noticing. However when they created their own IP things really stood out.

 

No other fighting game before or since looked like Battle Fantasia. The world created by ASW was perfect to get lost in. The characters were the types of heroes and villains we’d like to see return again and again. It was easy to fall in love with the game because of how unique this fantasy world was. It could never be mistaken for poaching the ideas of Games Workshop or any other western studio. I mean who else could have thought up of a knight carrying around a two-cylinder gas powered light saber? The title was directed by Emiko Iwasaki. She was one of the main artists behind Guilty Gear. If you know your fighting game history then you remember that in 1998 Guilty Gear was a breath of fresh air for the genre. It was completely unlike anything that SNK or Capcom had released, yet at the same time it honored their contributions to the format. Guilty Gear had the bold designs and weapons-based combat from SNK with the fluid animation and exaggerated proportions of a Capcom title. Guilty Gear and it’s spiritual successor BlazBlue were deeply rooted in an anime style but Battle Fantasia really stood apart for its storybook appearance.

 

To be fair, the designs in Battle Fantasia did have a hint of the rockstar vibe that Guilty Gear was built on. Some of the men looked like feathery-haired models rather than the swollen barbarians you might expect from a western-produced RPG. Yet at the same time there were fear inducing monsters, covered in black armor occupying the same world. There were variations of the traditional classes of heroes and villains, knights, princesses, etc. Then there were maids, pirates, gunslingers and magical rabbits as well. Battle Fantasia covered a number of different classes and influences with a fresh perspective. The painted portraits on the character select screen captured the spirit that Emiko was going for.

   

Battle Fantasia had multiple game modes as audiences had come to expect from a fighter. The story mode brought audiences in and allowed them to explore the different relationships in the game. It also allowed them to sink their teeth into a game that had more personality than most other titles. This game like several other ASW titles had a certain level of humor written into it. Characters could be sly or cheeky, their moves meant to reinforce their personality. Their in-game and cut scene animations showed a wide range of expressions. The young knight Urs carried a light sword that was equal parts magic and motor. He was brave but he could be a little bit clueless at times. Princess Olivia had a heart of gold but her daintiness did not stop her from being an exceptional fighter. Marco Van de Land, the younger brother of Urs, was among the smaller characters in the game yet deftly wielded a sword twice his size. There weren't many fighting games that I would ever call whimsical, Battle Fantasia was one of them.

 

Arc System Works had been in the industry for a long while they knew the subtleties that every great fighting game needed. For example, every great fighting game had a cast of complimentary character designs. That is to say that there was a lot of symmetry when the studio was building a cast. The main characters often had a rival, sometimes a friendly rival like Ken and Ryu in Street Fighter. Sometimes they were bitter enemies, like Sub-Zero and Scorpion in Mortal Kombat. These rivals often had some sort of visual design that was a balance to the main character. Not every major studio knew about this idea or used the concept. Some studios eventually discovered the value of having new characters balance out the established fighters. They would add these characters in a sequel. Such was the case of Iori Yagami introduced as an evil rival for Kyo Kusanagi in the King of Fighters series. For Battle Fantasia it was the delicate Olivia getting balanced out with the chaotic Odile and her animated skeleton staff Dokurod. Olivia's design was rooted in "lolita" fashion rather than the traditional princess gowns in western games. Lolita clothing consisted of ruffled dresses, ornate petticoats and bright stockings worn by trendy Japanese girls. This fashion made its way overseas as did many things that young Japanese trendsetters did. Odile by comparison was clothed in "gothic lolita" fashion, substituting black and white for pastels and looking more grim in appearance.

 

Arc System Works also knew enough about role playing game (RPG) tropes to include them in the game too. This game displayed hit points during attacks as they would have during a turn-based RPG. Each physical and magical attack did x-amount of damage. Characters that used healing spells would even recover x-amount of health. Most studios would simply whittle away at the opponents health or reward players points for long combo strings. The character classes that ASW introduced also revolved around the classic RPG tropes. Cedric for example was a cleric. He appeared bookish, sincere and very devout in his faith. He came across as a little bit snobbish and this rubbed Urs the wrong way. Yet beneath the charm of schoolboy-meets-healer was a vicious persona. When his faith was put to the test he fought with a spiked ball and chain and all manner of brutal techniques. His face twisted into an evil grimace as he flogged his opponents. Then to add insult to injury after each round he would kneel on top of his defeated opponent to offer a prayer. ASW was great at storytelling in every detail they added.

 

There were so many wonderful characters that I hadn't even mentioned. The cartoonish gun-toting outlaw Face, the massive inventor Donvalve, the magical rabbit Watson. These were the creative types of figures that first caught my eye. Sadly the game did not generate a lot of buzz. A reason for that had a lot to do with the decline of the arcade. There were few places to see, let alone play the game outside of Japan. Even then there were not a lot of new fighting games that would have brought in new crowd to try this out. Thankfully a year after it came out it was brought over to the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. In 2009 it found its way onto PSN and in 2015 it was brought to Windows PCs with some additional balance. Each iteration helped shed more light onto this gem. While it did not achieve enough success to warrant a sequel it did have an impact on the development of future fighting games.

 

Arc System Works has always believed in the fighting game market. When many other publishers abandoned the genre they stayed with it. Through the years they demonstrated that a well designed fighting game could always generate a following. They did not always rely on licenses and established IP. They took chances and created new experiences along the way. Guilty Gear was an attempt at a new type of fighter. It was not set in any known time or place, but influenced by equal amounts hard rock and anime. Fans took notice of this game right away. Battle Fantasia was another grand experiment. Instead of using sprites, as they did with the original Guilty Gear, ASW was trying out 3D models on traditional 2D play mechanics. It was not the first but possibly most influential 2.5D fighter. They used textures, modeling and lighting effects to make the graphics appear like the concept paintings. They were able to have a game that played like a classic fighting game but with all new technology. This inspired Yoshinori Ono at Capcom to pursue development on Street Fighter IV. He revealed in a 2009 Gamasutra article that Battle Fantasia demonstrated that the formerly 2D character models wouldn't necessarily look weird in 3D. Battle Fantasia also served as a sort of introductory fighting game. It was not as difficult as some of the biggest titles had become. It was easy to pick up with no previous fighting game experience, yet with enough content to make it rewarding for veteran players.

I think that Battle Fantasia was just the start of something even greater. Arc System Works had big plans for this game just like the other fantasy fighting games I had talked about. Every studio I had mentioned was trying to build a franchise title. Those plans gave way to reality. The market was not ready, or not interested in what they were developing. This did not mean that the games were necessarily bad. Every studio big and small took a chance on a new type of fighter. They transported audiences to a new world. One which was far more interesting than the typical fighter. These worlds had histories, mythologies and heroes. These games put down a template that could be copied even today. The industry learned how magic, armor and leveling could work in a fighter. They saw how different technology would affect their graphics engines. They discovered that great storytelling could be applied even in the most action-oriented of genres. Battle Fantasia, like the games previously mentioned, deserved a second chance. I don't think of it as last great fantasy fighter, just the last one for a while. You never know where the next great fantasy fighter will come from. Soon enough a studio will decide that they are ready to tell a new story, to take another chance. Maybe it will be a free-to-play web game. Maybe it will be for a mobile device. In which ever shape or form it takes I will be eager to explore this new world. I hope that you will be willing to come along for the ride. Thank you for staying with me. Please leave a question or comment if you have enjoyed any entry in this series. 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!

Chaos Breaker - Dark Awake, the great fantasy fighting games part 6...

The market for fighting games was very thin at the start of the millennium. Arcades, the last true domain for the community, were just about nonexistent in the USA and had been scaled back elsewhere around the world. The console was king and big-budget, open world AAA titles were leading the industry. A handful of studios, including SNK, ARC System Works and DIMPS were still catering to the fighting community. Capcom was focused in the early '00s on Mega Man, Devil May Cry and a few other properties, not so much on Street Fighter. With the focus on other genres the developers really had to try different things in order to attract audiences. The ones working on fighting games had to work even harder to be noticed. They did this by experimenting with new technology, including a bigger focus on net play, through new forms of storytelling, advances in game play and control as well. One of the most interesting fighting games in a decade came out in 2004. Chaos Breaker / Dark Awake: The king has no name - was published by Taito.

Taito was no stranger to the fighting genre. In fact the studio could be considered The Godfather of the brawler. It released Renegade in 1986 and Double Dragon in 1987, both of which had a profound influence on the industry, and especially Capcom. The studio had created a traditional sprite-based fighting game called Kaiser Knuckle in 1994. Yet their most revolutionary work came one year later with the released of Psychic Force. This new game featured a 3D engine and characters that could fly in all directions. and different formats and engines. A few years had passed since they had made a serious entry into the fighting game arena. What no one expected was a fantasy title with is much depth as Chaos Breaker.

The game was actually developed by a South Korean studio called Eolith. The studio had experience with one of the biggest franchises of all time. They developed the King of Fighters 2001 and 2002 after SNK went bankrupt. The 3-vs-3 battle system of KOF was carried over into Chaos Breaker. As SNK restructured they needed help keeping their IP afloat. This was when they began talking in earnest with not only South Korean developers but also Chinese publishers. Chaos Breaker was the last game by Eolith before they were acquired by NetBrain. The game itself was the first fighting game to take advantage of the Taito Type-X board. A lot of different arcade titles were developed for that board including properties like Mobile Suit Gundam, Half-Life 2, and Pokémon. None of the games was remotely close to Chaos Breaker.

   

Part of the reason that Chaos Breaker stood out was because of its graphics. The visuals were similar to the graphics used in early ‘90s fighting games, including Killer Instinct, Primal Rage and even Mortal Combat. The reason for this was because Eolith used similar techniques I creating the sprites. In the early ‘90s there weren’t many 3D games, and especially not fighting games. The quality of 3D graphics that we have with titles like Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 was simply impossible to pull off almost 30 years prior. Studios did whatever they could to try to top the hand-drawn graphics featured in the most popular games. Midway experimented with video capture to create sprites out of human actors in Mortal Kombat in 1992. Atari used stop motion animation to create sprites out of clay and plastic dinosaurs that they molded for the 1994 hit Primal Rage. One of the most revolutionary games was Killer Instinct, also released in 1994. Developed by Rare the studio used high-end Silicon Graphics workstations to create highly polished 3D models and levels. In the early ‘90s there wasn’t any arcade hardware powerful enough to render 3D visuals, complete with textures and lighting effects in real time. So what they did was create sprites out of their models. The two-dimensional graphics did not require as much storage as their 3D counterparts and the engines of the day could animate them fairly quickly. The end result for these games were the illusion of 3D figures and stages. This technology was mostly used by Western studios, so that they really stood apart from the graphics that the Japanese were creating. Almost 10 years later to the day Eolith used the same techniques and rendered characters and levels using 3D hardware but then converted those graphics into sprites. Chaos Breaker had the look of a more polished version of a classic fighting game, yet there was much more to it than that.

 

Eolith made sure to create levels that told a story. Each stage reflected the world that these fantasy warriors were trying to save or destroy. They had as much forethought as the highly detailed stages created by Sega in Golden Axe: The Duel and Capcom’s Warzard. Eolith had learned as much as they could about fantasy settings, not only in video games but also in popular culture. They made sure to apply these things in every stage of the game. If you have ever seen or played Chaos Breaker then you have probably noticed level settings, weapons, armor and character designs borrowed from animé shows like Berzerk and Record of Loduss War. Of course the publisher had not slept on the highly influential World of WarCraft, after all they were a South Korean studio. It was impossible to get into any sort of fantasy game development without drawing immediate comparisons to WoW. Eolith did not disappoint the fighting game community. They expected the major fantasy races in Chaos Breaker and they were all there. Sorcerers, barbarians, rangers, goblins, orc, elves, dark elves, necromancers and even vampires.

The character designs had a decidedly anime influence to them but they were not based on any one particular series. Instead they reflected the fantasy tropes that audiences were used to. Busty women that wore revealing armor, and muscular men with big swords. Villains were grotesque and clad in spiky dark costumes while heroes were handsome and wore bright colors. Eolith did more than use pallet swaps when designing alternate colors, or while porting the game to consoles. They actually created different models of the heroes and villains in different costumes to make them look truly unique. Ramda for example was a long-haired barbarian but his alternate costume gave him a haircut and had him in warrior armor.

 

When it came to the design behind this game the most influential studio was not Japanese nor were they American. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again the British studio Games Workshop was the design house most copied by video game developers. This was the company that Eolith was modeling most of their character classes after. To be completely honest Games Workshop did not invent all of the fantasy characters. They had existed much earlier in fairy tales, Arthurian legends and the works of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Games Workshop standardized the designs of many fantasy characters and made them popular. When audiences think of goblins and orcs they imagine certain green-skinned characters in crude armor. When they think of dwarfs they think of hefty armor and ingenious artillery. When audiences think of chaos warriors, they think of horned helmets and oversized weapons. Many of these looks were popularized in Warhammer Fantasy Battle from Games Workshop over 30 years ago.

Eolith did not outright rip-off any specific character from the Games Workshop (GW) library, nor did Blizzard for that matter, but they took enough elements to make the designs more than coincidence. The roots of the Chaos Breaker designs were even more obvious as they less subtly mixed-and-matched details from different Games Workshop characters. For example the Night Goblins in Warhammer were known for riding giant spiders. But there were many types of creatures that the goblins rode, from including spiders, wolves and even toothed fungi known as squigs. Not all goblins fought with swords, some instead knew crude magics and spells and were known as goblin shaman. The developers at Eolith took pieces of the various types of GW goblins when creating their own variant. Similar things could be said of just about the entire cast. the industrious and stubborn dwarfs had been a staple of GW for decades. Eolith had a few versions of the dwarfs that actually covered several different classes. Vargan fought with a ranged weapon, a multi-shot blunderbuss. Dorgan fought with a melee weapon, a large axe. And Gerhassen II fought with artillery, a cannon.

 

The ways in which Eolith used the characters was inspired design. Most fans of the format know they can expect a small, fast character, usually a woman. A large, slow character, usually some sort of musclebound giant. Then the hero of the game, often a guy, with equal parts speed and strength. There was a troll in Chaos Breaker that filled in the role of the giant. Yet he was not the only oversized character. For the good guys it was Gerhassen II. While his cannon took up nearly a quarter of the screen he could actually move it quickly and use it as an extension of himself. Not many studios had the imagination to turn a dwarf into the token “big” character. Just about everyone in the cast had this sort of planning behind them. The game also featured some unique boss designs. I don’t recall seeing a Manticore, part-lion/scorpion/bat that had looked as awe-inspiring as the sub-boss in Chaos Breaker.

With it’s 3-vs-3 mechanics, weapons-based game play and unique characters there was still much more that Chaos Breaker had to offer. Eolith, just like every other developer that I have featured in this series, wanted audiences to fall in love with the world they had created. They hoped there was interest enough that they might turn it into a franchise. In order to do this they had to do things that few other fighting games had ever done. This title allowed players to unlock weapons, armor and other upgrades for their characters. These items acted just like their RPG counterparts. They would boost offense or defense, especially against certain types of classes and attacks. Warzard had something similar, and while leveling up did increase the health of a character or even grant them new abilities, it did not allow players to freely trade out weapons in between stages. Capcom did manage to capture a more RPG-centric experience with their Dungeons & Dragons arcade games, easily some of the best brawlers ever made, but for fantasy fighting games few could match the game play of Chaos Breaker.

   

The differences between character classes and customizable weapons came in handy during the final two encounters in the game. The sub-boss aside from the Manticore was a Witch Queen named Thiele. She could cast spells from afar and do physical attacks with her giant golden claw. Her appearance was somewhere in between a Vampire Countess and Dark Elf Sorceress. She floated above the ground, similar to Valdoll from Warzard, and had an equally ominous presence. Her design was simply fantastic and something that even Games Workshop would have been proud of. She was well done but the final boss of the game, the King with no name, was possibly the largest sprite ever created for a fighting game. The dragon was several screens high and had more animated pieces than the giant characters in the Capcom vs games or in any SNK game. It made for a memorable but not impossible villain.

The game succeeded on many fronts, not the least of which was originality. Fantasy fighting games, especially well made ones were few and far between. The other thing that Chaos Breaker had going for it was the net-play ability. It was one of the first entries into net arcade fighting games from Taito. The things they learned in this game could be applied in other genres, from space shooters to robot sims. Audiences might not realize that many of the things we take for granted in console fighters today were pioneered in the arcade. Some of the things featured in Chaos Breaker were never duplicated in other fighting games. Although it never got a sequel it was published on PSN in 2010.

I would recommend audiences check it out if they are interested in broadening their fighting game experience. Eolith managed to capture the epic locations that had been a staple of many great RPGs and turned them into the backdrops for a memorable fighting game. Budding artists might learn a thing or two about character design by seeing how the South Korean developers had distilled the British designs and turned them into fighting archetypes. Those interested in another fantasy action game with western influences might want to check out Dragon’s Crown, developed by Vanillaware and published by Atlus in 2013. There was one more fantasy fighting game worth mentioning that was released after Chaos Breaker and Dragon’s Crown. We’ll look at this title in the next entry. I hope to see you back for that. As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!