Fighting games (Part 2)

Re-published in reverse order so part 2 appears under part 1.

In part one I covered how SC2 got me interested in fighting games again after having spent a number of years spending all my arcade tokens on driving games and shooters. Afterwards I discovered Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. It showed me what a fighting game is like when you can search for all the information you want, and you'll never learn about anything that'll ruin the fun of the game if you don't ignore it. It showed me what a fighter is like when it ALWAYS gets better, the more you learn about it.

Unfortunately, the only arcade in town that had a VF4:Evo machine went bankrupt, and I had a lot of difficulty pushing this game onto my friends (well, the new friends who had never played a VF game before), so I was stuck in a bind. I wasn't gonna play SC2 regularly anymore, so I had to come up with some other fighting game we could play. That's when I remembered this really obscure game I used to play with my best friend called Marvel vs Capcom 2.



Now me and my buddy had spent LOTS of time playing that game back when his Dreamcast worked. Of course, he had never stopped playing fighters, so I'd have my damage bar set at maximum with his at minimum. The matches were pretty close and fun for everyone. I decided to buy a used PS2 version and actually learn how the game worked. The experiment was a complete success. I caught onto the combo system and FINALLY ended up learning that special moves are something you have to setup, rather than throwing them out all the time and hoping it works.

I worked on afew nice teams and was getting pretty good with certain characters. Then I read an article on David Sirlin's website on game balance where he featured Guilty Gear XX as an example. I was immediately fascinated and bought myself a copy on eBay (The PS2 version is discontinued, and I'm not buying an Xbox for one game).



Now that I'm proficient enough with the game to get afew wins, I can definitely say that GGXX is the Cadillac of 2D fighting games. It has a ton of nifty gameplay features that make MvC2 feel a little annoying. I've been spoiled by knowing that my character can always double-jump, almost always air-dash, and can block chipping damage if I have a bit of energy in the super-meter.

The makers of this game obviously put ALOT of imagination into the character design. You have your standard fireball-spitting cool-guy fighters, and if you feel like adding a little extra spice, you can play as a rocker-witch, a grim-reaper wannabe, or a possessed man who literally fights bent-over backwards.

Of course, now that Tekken 5 is out, I'm spending most of my fighting-game-time in the arcades checking out the new system (which isn't a lot of time since I don't really like arcades as much as I used to, and I don't have any competition for my console fighters), but I now have a much better understanding of 2D fighters. I can also appreciate them much more and I understand how a 2D fighter can be released in this day and age and sell well.