The Fighting Game topic

i asked myself the same question when Under Night In-Birth was going through its first installment on PS 3. from what little i read of the game's community on the SRK forums, apparently the PS 3 online scene died off relatively quickly. obviously it's seen *some* success now, if their presence in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is any indication...

Xenoverse wasn't made by um who are they? Cyberconnect 2? No and I'd say while not a super deep fighting marvel Xenoverse is a legitimately enjoyable game.

Dimps Co. is actually the developers of the Dragon Ball Xenoverse series. In fact, they're a long-time developer for the Dragon Ball franchise. They're also known for creating the Budokai games and their spin-offs, the upcoming mobile game "Dragon Ball Legends", and Japanese-exclusive series "(Super) Dragon Ball Heroes" that has loose ties to Xenoverse.

That being said, Dimps has conveniently worked a Naruto game or two (one being a side-scroller beat-em-up, and the other...a board game).

edited 7th Apr '18 12:40:09 AM by XMenMutant22

They also worked on SF 4, sonic advance games and sonic rush. Dimps seems to be outsourced to a lot.

x5: I guess the answer to that question would be if you consider Skullgirls a success.

I lost track of that game does it even have a scene anymore

It does, but outside it I wouldn't really call it all that successful since the scene's relatively small and it doesn't have a very large audience.

Fighting games have become so niche that I don't really think it's possible for a new title to break big. The Capcom fighters, Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive and Tekken have largely been able to hold on because they were released in a time when fighting games were way more mainstream, while Smash's main appeal is the IP involved and the fact that it's designed to be simple enough for anyone to play.

I feel like Guilty Gear has grown in popularity than what it was 20 years ago or so.

I'll be interested if Under-Night can keep growing in popularity.

Cyber Connect 2 do the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Series and Dot Hack.

Just to clear up any confusion.

I want to say it was here I saw it, but there was some long time rumor about deejay's design from Capcom of Japan being so offensive that Capcom U.S had to design him, but supposedly this isn't true at all and Capcom specifically asked James Goddard(an American) to design deejay after their idea for another ken/ryu headswap duo was rejected for being too redundant. The other half of the duo became Fei long

Funnily enough Deejay gets/got flack anyway for being overly stereotypical despite the intention of his character being a positive black fighting game character. Guess that didn't work out, though yeah they certainly could've done a better job with him in general.

edited 8th Apr '18 9:01:28 AM by Vertigo_High

The US didn't do much better. Deejay's design is garbage.

Basically everyone from SFII is uncomfortably stereotypical, yet have gone through the series relatively unchanged due to Grandfather Clause. It's something that the series has awkwardly avoided addressing for a really long time.

Not that Capcom has been great at that sort of thing since. I used to joke that most of the Street Fighter IV cast had "racial sensitivity" DLC costumes that consisted of literally the most stereotypical things Capcom could think of.

edited 8th Apr '18 7:13:46 PM by KnownUnknown

Stereotypes aren't exactly the worst thing either. Look at Punch-Out!!

Nobody is hailing any Punch Out characters as great.

And even if they were, most people want a little something more to their characters. All of the most popular fighting game characters have more going on than just patriotic fervor and stereotypes.

edited 10th Apr '18 9:08:43 AM by Hashil

Yea & that's mostly because of their designs. I could argue that Johnny Cage is a good character but it took 10 games for him to finally reach that kind of depth. And even then what I consider good is very subjective

edited 10th Apr '18 5:09:45 PM by agent-trunks

Speak for yourself. I love me some Aran Ryan.

I think bringing up Punch-Out!! characters in a discussion on stereotypes in fighting games is a bad example, because with them it's obvious they're not supposed to be taken seriously, evidenced by the fact that Nintendo and Next Level Games included stereotypes of their own home countries (Piston Hondo and Bear Hugger, respectively), and generally how their stereotypical nature is so ludicrously over-the-top that taking them seriously is impossible.

The Street Fighter II cast is a different case because, for the most part, they're played completely straight and without irony, or at least they were in their debut appearances (I feel Zangief is mostly used for comic relief these days). Though I'd argue some are more stereotypical than others (Blanka in particular being a less national stereotype-filled example. I didn't think 'wild man who lives in the jungle' was ever a particularly prevalent stereotype of Brazilian people, it seems more like his nationality was an afterthought after they decided he was indeed a wild man who lives in the jungle; if you ask me, Laura Matsuda is more stereotypical than he is).

Furthermore, I'd also say the impact of their stereotypical-ness has been lessened since then via the introduction of other characters hailing from the same place that are not as stereotypical, providing alternate perspectives - so Zangief may be an archetypal Husky Russkie, but we also have Decapre and especially Necro, who, like Blanka, don't seem like they were designed with any specific stereotypes in mind, but just happen to be from Russia anyway. On the other hand, T. Hawk and Dee Jay are still the only prominent Native American/Jamaican characters in the series, so their stereotypical traits are more noticeable (although in my opinion there exist other 'serious' characters in other games more stereotypical than them; Nightwolf puts T. Hawk to shame. :V)

edited 10th Apr '18 3:54:16 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

T. Hawk is apparently a Mexican Indian

Which I found pretty neat

I will admit, I actually do like T. Hawk despite his stereotypical nature (I do appreciate how, besides the facepaint and the feathers, his actual clothes are just jeans and a vest), but I do think he could do with a visual and moveset overhaul if they bring him back in the future. Making a special move out of parts of his Raging Slash would be nice - that Ultra looked painfully awesome. :V

edited 10th Apr '18 4:22:13 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

As much as people tend to dislike the cast or III, I think it did a better example of avoiding the national stereotypes for the new characters or even turning them on their ear, like having the new big black boxer guy be an eloquent, upper class gentleman.

edited 10th Apr '18 5:40:38 PM by comicwriter

If you're referring to the cast of Street Fighter III as I assume you are, I'm fairly certain most people who actively follow Street Fighter have warmed up to the SFIII cast by now, or at the very least learned to tolerate them (see all the fan demand for Alex and Urien in SFV, and when they were added they've moved on to demanding Q), and everyone who doesn't follow the series probably doesn't know them at all, given III's poor reception when first released - it's gotten a lot more recognition since then.

I'm reminded of when Alex was first added to SFV back in 2016, I listened to a gaming podcast by some fellows who aren't really fighting game players, and their prime complaint about the game's roster as it was back then is that it lacked a lot of the 'classic' cast (by which they meant the SFII cast that weren't already in, like Guile and E. Honda). Someone mentioned 'some guy called Alex' is being added in and that he was from Street Fighter III, and their reaction was 'but nobody played that, everyone played Street Fighter II and skipped over to Street Fighter IV" (completely forgetting about Alpha, but you get the idea :V).

edited 10th Apr '18 5:39:59 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

Problem is T-hawk does a poor job of repping Mexican indians as he seems more a Plains tribe Indian and comes off as thinking all indians are the same, which Capcom sort of repeated in powerstone with the worse side effect of getting the mythology reference completely wrong by giving Galuda a Hindu-based name. DERP. At least Galuda comes from a fantasy counterpart representation of the Americas anyway so him being an amerindian mishmash design wise is a bit justified, though the name is not.

Also T-hawk's original name was going to be Geronimo before an American member told them that was kind of in bad taste, which shows you Capcom has no clue what they were doing lol.

edited 10th Apr '18 5:41:55 PM by Vertigo_High

Punch Out embraces the fact that their characters are ridiculous and a joke to the point of completely exaggerating everything, as well as freely making fun of themselves as well.

Street Fighter doesn't really do that. They just kind of draw attention away from the elephants in the room.

edited 10th Apr '18 5:41:23 PM by KnownUnknown

TBH the majority of SF's cast aren't THAT stereotypical, or rather their fighting style defines the character moreso than the nationality or culture they are. There are definitely cases where sadly this does happen(t-hawk being a prime example) but I feel people overweigh the stereotypeness of SF's cast and a big reason so many copycats failed where SF succeeded.

You see it a lot in street fighter fan character threads and people make terrible suggestions by just shoving whatever stereotype they can think of for some given country.

edited 10th Apr '18 5:56:02 PM by Vertigo_High