Latest on my love hate relationship for TEKKKKKKKENNNNN..!. ATE!!! lol 

 

Just a heads up, Capcom has an online sale on a lot of their stuff, including Capcom Fighting Collection, SF Anniversary Collection, MvsC Infinite, etc.

As much as I like Darkstalkers, $40 was pretty steep for Fighting Collection, but I might need to jump on it now that it’s $20.

 

Just revealed.

 

I'm guessing it's just because fighting games are less popular than they used to be, despite the fact fighting games would be absolutely perfect if they offered the versus mode as a Free to Play mode, and just watched the cash roll in from people buying skins for their favorite characters. It boggles my mind that no developer outside of Tecmo and that one DoA game cashed in on this.

I also say this as someone that generally resents the popularity of battle royal shooters. I don't like the game play, and I find queueing up for matches and waiting just absurd given how little enjoyment I get out of the game play. Dear fighting game developers, free to play versus modes! Let's get new blood in these waters. It would be a great hop on an play a few matches game without waiting all day for rooms to populate. Sheesh, too obvious?

There's also the matter that I don't trust current era Capcom to deliver a good Darkstalkers product. If they opted to hire Arc System Works to license the Guilty Gear Unreal Engine visual style to facilitate the anime aesthetic of classic Darkstalkers and then oversaw the production of the game, I'd be okay with that. Say even license ASW tech and hire Eighting to design the new Darkstalkers mechanics. That could work, but I don't want the generic modern Capcom aesthetic we've had since 2008 slapped on a Darkstalkers game.

Capcom and Sega both hate their intellectual properties and fans. Over here hoping Virtua Fighter 6 ever happens. Would love to see Dotemu work on a new Golden Axe or Altered Beast.

This is the profound sadness of growing old and watching all your beloved games fade into obscurity.  

Did they make him look like Luke's dad to facilitate the Tekken x SF crossover?  

Tekken has always been goofy, but Paul without his Kid'n Play Quaker Oats hairdo is just wrong. I fully expect it will be DLC.

 

Not just games, too. It’s been painful seeing cultural icons such as the Looney Tunes characters and Muppets fade out of popularity.

At least series like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, SoulCalibur, Tekken, and King of Fighters are still going. Though I agree it’s harder to attract new players now that you have to pay for online play, rather than simply walking up to an arcade game.

 

That was a large contributor to me caving and using a portion of my pandemic overtime income (the joy of being an essential worker, which was an interesting euphemism for no financial leverage to shelter in place) to buy a budget gaming PC. I'm at the mercy of crossplay development now, but at least I'm free of the cycle of pay for a console, pay a fee to console mafia to use the internet service I already pay a monthly fee for, pay for the fragment of a game, then pay to purchase the rest of the game as it's released through it's product cycle.

Gaming is in a really strange place now. I wouldn't mind if they maintained the finalized release re-release of a game, but it's pretty messed up that a lot of these modern fighting games will not exist in a complete form on physical media. Which was also a point of frustration when wanting to take games to a friend's house. Instead of packing a disk and memory card like the PS2 days, I'd need to pack the game, my console w/ DLC loaded on it, and my fight stick.

I pretty much play Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis these days, and even that's in a really screwy place. I had given up hope of Sega ever releasing it in the West, and nearly a decade later they release eight years of content over a year or two, then release a tacked on pseudo sequel that's in a really goofy place in terms of things you may want to do when playing the game. I appreciate the combat is very arcade inspired and the open world is a neat change of pace from previous PSO entries and the movement feels great, but man - many of my friends have dropped the game due to lack of compelling game design in favor of gacha hell.

I re-bought Samurai Shodown on Steam and picked up KoF'15 on sale recently. Although I haven't been too keen on the visuals of KoF for the last two games. I make allowances for SNK since they're constantly struggling in the modern era, despite cash investments. Hopefully we'll see some of that financial backing go into hiring visual development artisans. So many modern fighting games either look - suspect visually, or bland pseudo-realistic. It really hurt to watch Street Fighter take that path for the new game. Many of the mechanics look interesting, but I'll wait for a 90% off sale on Steam.

 

My birthday was yesterday so I went ahead and got the Capcom Fighting Collection on sale.
So logically, what’s the first thing I played?
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. DUH.  

But AFTER that…
Played the first Darkstalkers. God I missed this series. Took me a bit to get the hang of it again, and to get used to the unique super bar. Being an arcade game, naturally it’s tough as shit. Huitzil took me multiple tries. I’d say he’s actually harder than Pyron…but his animation is absolutely spectacular, so I didn’t mind seeing it multiple times  

Also tried Hyper SFII, which I never played before. Pretty intriguing being able to choose any character from any SFII incarnation. My main concern was, I was afraid it would suffer from the same glitched AI as SSF2T, but fortunately it was only very hard and not mind-blowingly insanely unfair.

 

Crazy facial and muscle animations. You can even see his face turn red when he flexes.

 

IMHO the 1 character most ppl were looking forward to in T8.!

I seriously swear this damn game is hell of a Rollercoaster of emotions. I went from AWESOME,OK,KEWL,AIGHTZ AND HELLZ YEAH!.!!! Lol

 

I am honestly coming to the opinion with trailers dropping at about a 1 a week average we're getting this game this year. The fact we have had 2 this week is almost confirming it in my mind.

 

Namco should cash in on the DLC craze, I won't be crazy and suggest the old way of unlocking items by playing the game (but that would be nice), and always make the items to recreate old entry Yoshimitsu costumes. I have always liked Big Bad Beetleborg Yoshimitsu's look.



In fairness though, I believe the last Tekken may probably be one of the last "modern" fighting games that allowed you to relatively easily unlock customization items, compared to other games - looking at you Street Fighter 5 and the perpetual diminishing returns on Fight Money output through the life cycle of the game.

Unlocking items, costumes, and characters in a fighting game should not be a full time job. I really resent that aspect of modern fighting gaming.

 

The only thing i enjoyed about the Tekken 8 Lars reveal was JACK 8.

 

Thanks for the reminder. Yea this trailer was OK. Think the best one was Kazuya and Kings. Still wondering if Asuka will be in it with Jin in the game now.

I'm betting T8 will be out next year. I could be wrong but I believe the both directors of SF (Ono) and Tekken (Harada) have a mutual respect for their respected game and will let Street Fighter have their moment to shine then following year (I'm going with Middle '24) for T8 to drop.

 

As somebody that has been vocal against polygon based Street Fighter since the EX days, I have to admit the effort being put into this game is making me grudgingly admit it's not shaping up too badly. Despite my desire to have a game that more closely resembles the artwork of Akiman, Kinu Nishimura, or even Shinkirou whose art I feel would be the easiest to adapt to stylized polygon based visuals.

This stage looks pretty great. Nice depth of field. Plenty of activity going on. Feels like a Street Fighter stage of the sprite visuals era, something that has been sorely lacking since 2008.

Also really like Honda's super. Big honorable dork going for the take down instead of the ring out.

 

In my bonehead moment of the week:
I had been thinking “boy, it sure would be nice if Capcom Fighting Collection had a training mode” after playing it a few times and lamenting having to learn/relearn characters on the fly.

Then I turn it on later that day and notice at the bottom of the screen: Press Square for Training Mode. Available for almost all the games.
*insert Picard facepalm*

Immediately did some training with Victor and beat the hell out of the AI in Vampire Savior 2. His moves are just so fun because they’re so bizarre, with the oversized fists and feet. Very weird how the AI in that game is easier than earlier ones.

 

Ono left Capcom in 2020. Rumor was that the higher ups did not like the crazy things he was planning for SF6, so they nudged him away.

 

"Oh no" I didn't knw Ono got let go? Stupid jokes aside seriously I had no clue. Anyone know how longs he's been part of the Street Fighter franchise? I wanna say Harada took over since T3 but I could be wrong. Still though I believe we won't see T8 until start or middle of 2024. Gives me enough time to see if I really wanna get a Next Gen console or not as gaming as a whole doesn't excite me as much as it use to. Shit with even Resident Evil 4 ReMake coming out within 24hours as of today,I dunno... Not saying it's gonna be bad or anything,just don't game as much as I use to. (Apologies for the rant lol)

 

I think Ono started working with Street Fighter since 4. I think he was the reason Street Fighter 4 even got made-- he pushed Capcom really hard to make it at a time when the company thought the franchise was thoroughly dead and that fighting games as a genre didn't have a future. The launch of SF4 revived fighting games and Ono deserves a lot of credit. I think his enthusiasm and silliness was good during the SF4 days because it brought excitement during announcements. His friendship with Harada was always cool to see. It showed that companies were competitors but also valued each other and the overall health of the industry.

Regardless, as sad as it was to see him get pushed out by Capcom halfway through SF5-- it was a good move. The team behind the last parts of SF5 and the launch of SF6 have been phenomenal with their ideas on where to take the franchise. Ono was a showman and he loved SF and the fighting game community but I don't think he was a good "idea man." You need a leader and a team that can keep things fresh and interesting while not removing the core mechanics of what a Street Fighter game is about. I'm not sure Ono had those ideas unfortunately.

I will always remember the guy fondly though. I wasn't a huge fan of the presentation of SF4 (the visuals of the characters and overall look of the game) but I ultimately played a ton of the game and became a huge fan of the eSports aspect of Street Fighter because of it.