Check out some of the new Ultras for Super Street Fighter IV. Uploaded by Paulietheboss
It seems like for some people SSF4 will be toeing The Line of Acceptable Absurdity.
- It’s acceptable for Cody to swing a club at someone like a baseball bat and launch him into the air, but not for that guy to stick against an invisible wall like a dart on a pub board.
- It’s acceptable for Balrog to scream “My Fight Money!” when he loses, but not do a heel-ish shrug after he does a dirty move consistent with his character.
Back when Condor Joe and Zero were announced Capcom said that they were the last two characters in Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom. Apparently they were just kidding as they introduce Yatterman No. 1’s partner – Yatterman No. 2. The seventies were a simpler time.
It’s nice to see that the Yattermen aren’t clones of each other, and the female Yatterman is so cute with her hearts and killer robot and electric nightstick. So the long-ago leaked character roster was right. This looks like the time for a victory pose for security breakdowns.
In other correct leaks there will be selectable Ultras in Super Street Fighter IV. Game Trailers released a new video showing the outfits and Ultras.
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You know what? I’m not going to ponder about how much money these outfits will cost or how they’re going to balance the new Ultras or even how annoyed I’ll be when every online Zangief will be the Colossus skin trying to land that Muscle Driver from Kinnikuman. That thing is pure hype. The leak has been out there for months but every two seconds there was something awesome on screen that made me more excited for a video game than I have been for a long while. You can say something is going to be in the game, but seeing it in action still has a lot of excitement to it that a spoiler can’t squash. Good job Capcom.
Since this blog has only been around for a few months there isn’t enough clout here to say which of this decade’s fighting games stood the test of time. However, all bloggers are granted the ability to criticize the hard work of others, thus this group of most disappointing fighting games of the decade. Please keep in mind that a disappointing fighting game isn’t necessarily a bad game: These are titles that either botched innovative mechanics or failed to live up to expectations.
If you were wishing for BlazBlue to appear on a Nintendo console, then your dream came true! Sort of.
BlazBlue Battle X Battle is a new four-player game that will be coming to Nintendo DSiWare in January, according to the series’s Buru Raji podcast and reported by andriasang.
For 500 points players can control super-deformed versions of Ragna, Jin, Noel, Rachel and Taokaka and pummel friends in 3D arenas. Battle X Battle’s simple controls and Power Stone-style items are a marked contrast from the convoluted set-up of Guilty Gear Isuka, Arc System Works’s previous attempt at a party game that was basically Guilty Gear X2 with four players and a turn button. It didn’t work out.
Meanwhile the Mighty Mugg versions of the vampires and crazies of BlazBlue have been used for everything from BlazBlue’s “Teach Me, Miss Litchi” shorts to the podcast the game was announced in.
Yeah we do half-life combos with the best graphics around, but when we relax we're just like you guys.
BlazBlue Battle X Battle probably won’t be the next bastion of competitive play, but at five dollars it could be a fun diversion. Well, five dollars for a single player but much more for Arksys Games since everyone would likely have to get their own copy for multiplayer. One person at $5 dollars soon becomes four people for $20 total.
Right now it’s unknown whether this game will be coming to the U.S. As for the series proper BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is now playing at an arcade far away from you.
Recently I found out that Gigabits LAN center in Orlando shut down last October. It’s a sad loss for not only the regulars but also one of Central Florida’s gaming communities.
The store was nestled in the shopping plaza adjacent to my alma matter of the University of Central Florida. While the plaza itself was shabby the inside of the center was awash in neon backlight and the glimmer of computer screens. Most of the center was dedicated to PC gaming, but there were also consoles available in the back.
Gigabits was best known for its Super Smash Brothers tournaments. Some tournaments had over 100 competitors from all over Florida and lasted until the morning hours. Not bad for a store that’s barely larger than a GameStop.
I wasn’t a regular, but Gigabits was the subject of my first published news story when I covered a Brawl tournament there. One person did tell me that I worked for a “jobber paper” but for the most part the players and owners were friendly and open to questions. And when the LAN center in my native Port St. Lucie started to host tournaments they took advice from Gigabits on rules and management.
Gigabits also branched out and hosted other tournaments. Most of them were for PC games or First Person Shooters, but it did host a Soul Calibur IV tournament back when it came out. That was my first fighting game tournament, where I just had a standard Xbox 360 pad and a Hilde with no knowledge of her broken ring-out combo. I finished 1-2, which was what I expected from my first outing.
With arcades dead everywhere except a few cities, LAN centers have the ability to connect players beyond Internet connections and ping settings. While most fighting game tournaments are held in hotels and convention centers, LAN centers can be a way for new players to play others without the intimidation of large events, or even just meet other players in the area. Operating a LAN center is a risky business since the owner is asking people to pay for something they could do in their own home, but the idea of a social outlet for people who are usually treated as shut-ins shouldn’t be ignored.
I’m not as interested in Smash as before but Gigabits was clearly a staple for Orlando players and will be missed. As of this post the management is trying to relocate to another center in the UCF/Full Sail area, though without the Gigabits name. Good luck to them in the future.
Check out some of the excellent 8-bit remixes of BlazBlue’s music that were uploaded to YouTube several months ago. In the early years of video games musicians used computer sounds because they had to, but it’s amazing how the game music of yesteryear has become an artform in itself. It’s a challenge to make an original track sound like it’s coming from and SNES or under, so hats off to the fan artists who took the time to create these.
I won’t comment on what these characters may have for this game since in my previous SSF4 post I was wrong thinking Up Kicks to Ultra was going to be Dee Jay’s go-to Ultra set-up, and predicting new Ultras long before multiple Ultras were even announced is not that smart. I’m not the one making the game here.
It will be interesting to see how players treat Guy and Cody once the game is released: Both Final Fight characters are fan favorites and have fighting styles that sound great on paper, but neither are as beginner-friendly as those already in Super Street Fighter IV.
As for Adon he may look a little bland at first but his Starscream complex makes the character. He’s the character in a sci-fi anime that fights the heroes repeatedly and gets trashed every time. When he is winning he’s the cockiest person in the world, making his inevitable defeat even sweeter. People root for these types of characters, those who would rule the world if it wasn’t for the Sagats and Ryus that are just better than him. The SF4 art style also does a great job keeping his ugly gnome face.
Adon is somewhat of an anti-fireball character, and with him and Guy in the game it seems like Capcom is both pleasing fans and adding some speed into the game to counter the complaint that SF4 favors defensive play too much. Whether this succeeds or not depends on how good both characters end up.
Meanwhile once again the leaked list of additions for Super Street Fighter IV was correct. So shall it be written, so shall it be done. It has to frustrate Capcom that the new stuff for both SSF4 and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom were compromised, but it’s still exciting when these rumors come to life. Also, not every person scours Web sites for information, or treats rumors like the Mayan calander.
UPDATE: IGN Video Added
-Adon wins the most-painful Ultra contest. KNEE TO THE THROAT!
-T. Hawk’s English voice is awkward to hear coming from a large character, but T. Hawk is an awkward character anyway. There are certainly worse directions the VA crew could have gone with the character. The voice during the Raging Typhoon sounds a lot like Ichigo from Bleach or Lelouch from Code Geass, so maybe Johnny Yong Bosch is doing vocal duties. The other voices are all right.
Thanks to the multiple versions of Street Fighter II the BGM for each of the World Warriors’ stages have become synonymous with the characters themselves. While repetition helps to make a song memorable, later characters like Akuma, Sakura, Alex and Dudley have also had great themes, and while some games like Street Fighter Alpha 3 created all-new stage BGMs the old tracks just keep coming back.
And now there’s Street Fighter IV. In a game without character-specific stages each of the new characters received their own theme music. Which theme is memorable, which theme is generic but fits the character, and which theme needs to go back to the sound stage? Read this list to find out.
All music and characters belong to Capcom. The YouTube vids belong to their respective owners.
