I don't know how popular she was, but I want Sylvie Paula Paula back. She was a lot of fun to play and her design annoyed my opponents. I wouldn't object to toning down her design, but keep up her nutty antics.

 

She is next, after Kim. Looks like you'll get what you're asking for. She is the one I am most excited for in season 2.

 

Sigh.... and yet another weekly T8 reveal. TBH it's cool and all but starting to lose its charm lol

(Also I'm sure he'll be in it but I'm surprised no trailer or reveal Akuma yet in SF6?)

 

It's the modern fighting game market.

They'll slow drip the fan favorite characters as paid DLC to maximize profits and keep interest in the game piqued.

I will gladly eat crow to be proven wrong, but until the market changes - wait and be fleeced is the business model. I still love fighting games, but I hate how screwy they are and miss Japanese developers closing out the mainline entries with a disc based complete edition like they would do in the Seventh Console generation.

 

So crazy for me to think she's been in 1 Tekken game dating back to 1995! Of course if you dont count the Tag games lol

That stage is beautiful!

EDiT: Well I'll be damned! Back to back trailers/reveals and I foresure thought there wouldn't be a new trailer until Evo or next TWT.

 

Big ASS PUNCH at 1:12. Pugilist Proctologist Jun!

Been thinking about obscure fighting games I'd like to see return.

- Bloody Roar, Konami is sleeping on this since acquiring Hudson Soft's library. Combat similar to Sega's Fighting Vipers, but you had a beast mode instead of breakable armor.

- Battle Arena Toshinden, the first polygon based fighter with special/magic moves and rudimentary 3D movement, and character designs by Tsukasa Kotobuki that I've always enjoyed. Would like to see this return with more Kotobuki emphasis in the visuals using modern anime aesthetics in fighting games.

- War of the Monsters, less a hardcore fighting game and more of a party brawler. It was a shame that Sony has never made a modern version (PS3, PS4, etc) for this online generation. Not to discount couch play as well, but the original game did some very interesting screen splitting for multiple players, which an online connection wouldn't need to do. From what I've read Gigabash is a spiritual successor to this one, and it recently received big Toho DLC!

 

Battle Arena Toshinden was the first 3D fighter I ever got into. Played it against the guys in my college dorm. Fo was my usual pick, with his long Vega-like claws, weird noises, and giant mystic blue spheres. The music in the first two BAT games was BANGING. Only issue was the really stiff controls; you had to be REALLY precise to pull off special moves.

It was popular enough to spawn an anime OVA, but unfortunately it wasn’t very good.

 

My friends and I were dinosaurs from the Arcade era, so we used fight sticks for all fighting games. Still do. Never really had issues with inputs, but do agree game was - shall we say, very deliberate in it's pacing. That may have also been by design, similar to AM2's moon gravity jumps in early Virtua Fighter titles. Less a means of a tactical attack and more "Oh god don't let me lose my quarter to a ring out."

That reminds me of Zero Divide, which was another neat 3D fighter where you would cling to the edge of the stage as a concession to not get ringed out; which honestly somebody should bring back. Looking at you Soul Calibur...

The goofy ring out protections Namco has for that series is just one of many goofy concessions Namco always made to players who couldn't cope with arenas (Tekken and it's infinite scrolling plane stages for the first three games).

This makes me really long for the experimental 3D fighter era (Tobal series, Bushido Blade, Eretzvaju, Destrega, Psychic Force, Ehrgeiz), when fighting game developers were trying to find ways to make use of actual movement in the stage instead of sticking to the tried and true 2D left to right battles. Many of the people I play with never cottoned to these experiments, and most flat out refuse to play anything involving 3D movement. Such a shame as when done well (Virtua Fighter, Tobal, Dead or Alive) it adds a new layer of depth to the games, and alleviates frustration people could have with corner traps and whatnot in traditional 2D fighters.

Playstation pad was TERRIBLE for arcade fighters, and that is why Tekken was designed with cardinal direction inputs. Namco was running interference for Sony's atrocious controller design.  

Zero Divide developer Zoom eventually went on to make a licensed Ruroni Kenshin fighter which wasn't as good as Zero Divide, probably because you need to skew licensed games complexity down to the fan base of the manga/anime. It also went the Namco fighter route of those days, ditching the arena based matches of Zero Divide in favor of the unga bunga infinite scrolling plane stages...

The Toshinden anime was pretty disappointing. I don't know why they mostly ditched Kotobuki's artstyle for them. He had been working in the anime industry for a while at that time, and his designs and art style were a massive selling point. I still have my TSD Pencil Boards from my anime con days, and I may have some TSD posters I picked up as well. Fun aside, I had the chance to meet Kotobuki at - I think it was Anime Central when he caught wind that we had the latest episodes of South Park on VHS and he came to our room to watch them.

Absolutely wish I knew rudimentary Japanese so I could have thanked him for being awesome!

 

So it was said here that T8 may not come out until next year to not shit on the SF6 release but now i’m seeing gameplay reviews. that means there it is a good chance it could come out this year right?

 

Are they console reviews or arcade loctest reviews?

While I don't believe there's huge overlap in the Tekken and Street Fighter audience, despite what ill-fated crossover may imply, I wouldn't be shocked to see Namco do what they did with Tekken 7 and let it enjoy it's time in Japanese arcades (two years) before a console release.

 

the few i watched appear to be PS5 gameplays.

 

I never played a Tekken game in my life until T7 and that was only because Street Fighter 5 was so bad and made me quit playing fighting games. Now after seeing SF6 and Tekken 8 I think I'm going to strictly be a Tekken player from here on out lol. T8 is looking amazing and SF6 looks like complete trash to me I'm sorry. Animations look terrible, character models look terrible, and most importantly gameplay looks boring af.

 

Meh, everyone only bought Tobal No. 1 for the Final Fantasy VII demo…  

Not kidding that was the only reason I bought that game, but it was an intriguing era with all the experimentation with 3D movement. I personally never got into the Virtua Fighter series (far too reversal-heavy, which is beyond my meager abilities). I actually stuck with only 2D until I finally got into Tekken on PS1, and even that took a while for me to warm to it. I recall renting it from Blockbuster and hating it, but something told me to give it another shot, and now it’s second or third on my personal list of favorite fighting series (Darkstalkers is #1).

But boy, that era sure did give Matt McMuscles plenty of fodder for his Worst Fighting Game video series. Seems like a large percentage of those awful games are experimental 3D.
It’s not 3D, but I’ve been encouraging him to try Mondu’s Fight Palace/Slaughter Sport on his series…holy shit is that game HORRIBLE.

YES. I’ve always said this, I HATE the PS control pad, and it is AWFUL for fighting games. However, I always appreciated the dual shoulder buttons, which I could assign to button combinations difficult to achieve on a console controller, like 3P or 3K, or SoulCalibur’s weird combinations.

That’s pretty cool. Reminds me of Charticon 2012 when Jon Bailey and a couple of friends came to my room to buy some of the TFs I was looking to unload. It’s on topic since Jon apparently did the menu voiceover for Capcom Fighting Collection, using his unmistakable Honest Trailers voice. Not credited though, and no mention online either, not even on IMDB. Weird.

 

The most lukewarm / basic take. Pretty much every Westerner parrots that sentiment.

Tobal 1 was fun, but Tobal 2 is where Dream Factory went hard on the game mechanics and it set the standard for 3D fighting games for years to come. With members of Dream Factory going on to work for Namco, which is why Tekken 4 took off the training wheels and incorporated actual stages. Most Americans don't know this. Tobal 2 is truly a forgotten / undiscovered gem to the West.

Tobal 2 also offered "muh single player content" in the form on a quest mode that made use of the game's combat engine.

Pour one out for Dream Factory:

I find the best use of most fighting game youtube eCelebs is testing to see if your wood chipper is in good working condition.

 

Some good news regarding SF6 and cat owners.

 

Great news! KoF12&13 were hugely ambitious visual overhauls for the franchise that were unfairly maligned by consoomer brains, and Japanese developers not recognizing the need for functional online play. It only took a global pandemic to finally get that message across. Absolutely gorgeous game and happy to see it getting some polish to give it the respect it deserves.

Speaking of games that were poorly handled / negatively impacted by Covid-19 pandemic. . . Happy to see GranBlue Fantasy Versus: Rising is happening.

Absolutely stunning game. I'm so glad Arc System Works is keeping the spirit of the 90's alive rather than engage in the vascularity arms race of more Western friendly developers like Capcom and Namco. I don't want my fighting games to look like Rich Piana / GigaChad meme images.

Didn't realize EVO Japan was happening, so catching up on news...

Also missed the return of Bedman?

Now if only SNK would do right by history and either announce another DLC season for Samurai Shodown and include Gen-an, or announce Samurai Shodown 2 and bring back my clawed goblin ninja.