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FGC #557 Street Fighter: The Movie

Let's fight some streetsIf you are concerned about your own struggles with imposter syndrome, please remember that even the big guys aren’t always confident.

Let’s talk about Street Fighter’s identity issues.

A long time ago in an arcade long forgotten, there was Street Fighter 1. The year was 1987, the cabinet was initially based on the concept of pressure-sensitive buttons, and the game… was not that great. Technically everything about Street Fighter was there: Ryu, special moves, boxers marginally based on Mike Tyson; but something was missing. Some particular, undefinable trait was absent from the original Street Fighter formula (it was probably Zangief), so, while Street Fighter was not remembered as a complete bomb, it isn’t remembered as the origin of the genre either. And then someone tried to make a sequel, and we were graced with… Final Fight. What? You were expecting Street Fighter’s nigh-holy descendant? No, much like Devil May Cry accidently being born of Resident Evil’s attempts to iterate, Final Fight was the next mutation of Street Fighter’s gameplay. And, despite the fact that the two franchises should have swapped names right then and there, we would still have to wait a little for Street Fighter 2.

And the secret truth of Street Fighter 2? It is now abundantly clear that no one at Capcom had any idea as to why it was successful.

Ruy GuyStreet Fighter 2 was popular when I was a kid, and I know that time seemed to flow relatively differently when I was a child. I am aware of this issue, but I’m still pretty confident in saying that between the release of Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter 3, approximately 12,000 years passed. But don’t worry, children of tomorrow, we had routine Street Fighter 2 content during that time. There was Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition (play as the bosses, even if some are broken!), Street Fighter 2: Turbo (maybe Dhalsim is teleporting on purpose now!), Super Street Fighter 2 (now with four new butts!), and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (one more angry butt!). The same basic gameplay carried the title forward, though, so if you were a Blanka main (because you were awesome), all you ever got out of these upgrades was like one new move, and the ability to make Fei Long feel bad for existing. Which is great… For Capcom, at least, because they could still earn your quarters through releasing the same game over and over again. There was no risk of Street Fighter 2 accidentally becoming Final Fight: Streetwise if you never even tried to make a new Street Fighter sequel. No need to distill the essential “what works” of Street Fighter 2 if you just keep releasing Street Fighter 2: Now with Super Moves. Capcom is happy to see the quarters, you’re happy to play a game that is familiar, and E. Honda is happy just to have a steady paycheck. Everybody’s happy!

But, in the midst of Street Fighter mania, someone had the bright idea to exploit the most popular videogame in the arcades not for a sequel, but a movie. A movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia, and Royal Trumpeter #3 of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. A movie that, as a result of drawing from a game that had the barest of bones of a plot to begin with, could be anything. Or it could just be Van Damme flip kicking for two hours. Who cares!? Street Fighter: The Movie was not constrained by its source material like some franchises, so it had the potential to be the greatest “videogame movie” of all time.

And that “greatest videogame movie of all time” would inevitably be… Mortal Kombat.

Street Fighter was a bit of a flop.

THE PITApparently the production of Street Fighter was a legendary disaster, so it’s really little surprise that the whole thing turned out a bit off. What’s more, the direction seemed to go well out of its way to include every Street Fighter that had appeared in Street Fighter 2 (give or take the one that was actually supposed to be a movie star), which mean that a lot of characters were adapted in unfortunate ways. Vega is a cage fighter, and Sagat is an arms dealer? Okay, it’s a little GI Joe, but it could work. But Balrog is a camera man in Chun-Li’s employ? That is less defensible. Dhalsim becoming a scientist is a vague stereotype upgrade (at least he isn’t wearing skulls like a necklace anymore), but Zangief as a mindless minion works dramatically less so. And Ryu and Ken go from franchise heroes to… karate hobos. Granted, that’s always been kind of Ryu’s thing (dude probably has an awful credit score), but he’s more of a grifter than the world’s greatest fighter in Street Fighter: The Movie. And, given one of Street Fighter 2’s paramount attributes was allowing the player to choose a “favorite character” out of a very varied (and international!) cast, the fact that the movie reduced most of those luminaries to be sidekicks to one of three “real stars” was a roundhouse to the lil’ Bison.

And then came the videogame tie-in…

Rat fireballs?You may be thinking that, given Street Fighter: The Movie existed only because it was based on one of the most popular videogames of the time, it did not need another, additional videogame exclusively based on the movie itself. But you’d be wrong, apparently, because Capcom commissioned Street Fighter: The Movie for arcades. And please note that this Street Fighter game was not actually developed by Capcom, but Incredible Technologies, the maniacs behind Time Killers, BloodStorm, and Peggle: The Game Inexplicably Not about Pegging. Why do such a thing? Well, at the time, Mortal Kombat was starting to eat Street Fighter’s lunch, so why not make a Street Fighter title with digitized actors, extra violence, and have it all thrown together by some nerds in Chicago? It worked for Midway and Mortal Kombat, so why not the game that popularized the genre in the first place, too?

Well, it might not work because it sucked, for one thing.

Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game: The Arcade Experience is not the Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat title that was so clearly intended here. This is Street Fighter x Pit Fighter. It’s sloppy. It features (almost) all the familiar Street Fighters and their familiar moves, but in a world that juggles just a little too easy. It feels weightless. It feels… wrong. And the many ways it deliberately apes Mortal Kombat feel particularly slapdash as well. There is an original character that seems to be born of a teenager’s notebook doodles (Blade! He has blades! He’s secretly Guile’s brother!), and he’s got three different color swapped buddies that really stretch the definition of “different”. There’s a stage that is an obvious cross between MK’s The Pit and Shao Kahn’s arena of Mortal Kombat 2. Sometimes digitized human spectators explode. Why? Don’t worry about it. And, while this game does seem to put more of an emphasis on uppercuts, it doesn’t feel enough like Mortal Kombat to warrant the many ways it feels like a lesser Street Fighter 2.

So, naturally, when Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game was ported to the home consoles, Capcom tossed the arcade version in the garbage.

CHOOSE YOUR DESTINYAt a time when home consoles were finally reaching that coveted echelon of “arcade perfect”, the concept of anything about Street Fighter: The Movie being arcade perfect was wholly dropped. Now appropriate for a movie game, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Home Game featured a dedicated “story mode” that would not be seen again in the franchise until Street Fighter 5. You can guide Guile through different locations and scenarios, and fight your way up to beating Bison. It’s… not very good, but it feels more like a justified videogame of a movie than its arcade counterpoint. And speaking of being a videogame, this version drops the physics of the arcade version, and returns to gameplay that is virtually indistinguishable from Street Fighter 2 Turbo. Give or take the impact of real digitized actors and actresses versus the stretching and shrinking of animated sprites (yes, Virginia, Ryu’s fist is normally an object of variable size), this is Street Fighter 2, the game you all know and love.

Well… I mean… mostly…

Dhalsim didn’t make the cut. It was probably too hard to figure out a way to make his stretching appear real (short of strapping Roshan Seth to a rack). In his place, there is Sawada, an original character from the movie that also appeared in the arcade game (though with different moves). Blade and his arcade buddies are missing, so sorry if you enjoyed their edgy (ha!) presence. And if you’re playing on the Playstation 1 version (a game that was literally a launch title for the system), well… you’re going to have a bad time. The Playstation wasn’t built for 2-D fighters, and you really need to migrate over to the Saturn to get the true Street Fighter: The Movie: Not A Gift Basket experience. And, oh yeah, if you can play it on the Saturn, there are real Capcom games that are a lot of fun on the system, so maybe just go ahead and ignore the whole thing. Darkstalkers is pretty fun…

My boy!So we’ve got two different versions of Street Fighter 2: both based on the original smash hit in one way or another, and both are totally skippable. Why? Well, that’s likely something someone at Capcom circa 1995 would like to know. Hell, maybe they still would like to know. Why is Street Fighter 2 successful? It’s not just the characters, because they’re all (mostly) here, and that didn’t do the trick. The lack of super violence? No. The special moves? Probably not. Whatever made Street Fighter 2 into the juggernaut it became could not be replicated for two different movie games, and two duds were dropped out into the world, never to be seen again (save by bored bloggers bossed around by bots).

Though there is a bright side here. Another movie, this time the animated Street Fighter feature, inspired its own tie-in title. Street Fighter Alpha/Zero started as little more than an excuse for a new, beefier Bison, but it quickly graduated through its own revisions into a worthy successor to the Street Fighter throne. This eventually led to not only the inevitable Street Fighter 3, but also the entire Versus franchise. What separated the Alpha series from its The Movie brethren? More issues than anyone could ever count. But could Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game(s) have been as good and memorable as the Alpha series? Sure! If only someone at Capcom had been able to figure out what made Street Fighter 2 so dang good.

The Street Fighter franchise: it has defined the genre to this very day, yet no one in charge of it had any damn idea why. Bunch of imposters…

FGC #557 Street Fighter: The Movie

  • System: A wholly unique experience for the arcades, and then the more traditional version for Sega Saturn and Playstation (1).
  • Go Sawada!Number of players: The arcade version has a hidden tag team mode (once again aping Mortal Kombat’s endurance matches), but all versions are still just two players.
  • Favorite Fighter: Blanka for the home versions (“Charlie” looks so ridiculous!), Ken for the arcade versions. Honestly, in aping Mortal Kombat, none of the fighters feel all that distinct in the arcade, so I might as well be playing as Blade anyway…
  • The Specialest Moves: The home version also introduced “EX” versions of regular special moves for the first time in the franchise. If you want super armor, you have a lousy Playstation game to thank.
  • What’s in a name: Like in the movies, the jumbled Vega/M. Bison/Balrog triangle is stuck in American mode, even for Japanese audiences. Though, oddly enough, Akuma retains his original Gouki name in his native land. Maybe that’s because he didn’t actually appear in the movie due to Jean-Claude’s inability to win without losing a round?
  • Did you know? Street Fighter 5 included a data entry for Blade, aka Gunloc of Saturday Night Slam Masters. This means Street Fighter: The Movie: The Arcade Experience is somehow a canon game in some way.
  • Would I play again: I’m not even going to watch the movie again, left alone play the tie-in titles. Making this game may have been the most important part of someone’s life, but for me, it was an unpleasant Tuesday.

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Mappy Land for the Nintendo Entertainment System! Let’s visit the house of mouse for some trampoline times! Please look forward to it!

Slice n dice

World of Final Fantasy Part 05

Chapter 15: Mako Reacting
Initial Stream: 10/14/20



BEAT is missing, so guest commentator Abby Denton has joined us for the night as we raid a Mako Reactor.

2:30 – Spoilers: This game may or may not eventually tie into the one and only Xenogears in the exact same way that Xenosaga tied into the one and only Xenogears. Or maybe it won’t. It is a mystery.

12:00 – Apparently there is a Lupin III Sega Saturn game. It’s not Fighter’s Megamix, though, so that is a point against it.

21:00 – This dungeon is mostly a throwback to Final Fantasy 7’s initial “bombing run” level. That said, if you were expecting it to end with a FF7 cameo, or something from its extended universe (Shelke is apparently still here), you’d be disappointed, as the finale features the Black Mages. Er… to be clear, that is the black mages of Final Fantasy 9, not the musical group.

26:00 – More anime that is weirdly CG-based, while we discuss Plumed Knight during one of the few chapters where she doesn’t appear.

29:00 – BEAT steps in to point out Funko Pop sex is terrible (and so is this game)

What actually happened in the plot: After regaining their powers thanks to irrelevant Dirge of Cerberus Guest Character Shelke, the twins venture through a Mako Reactor (which, incidentally, is later named by Edgar as a discovered, unknown technological area called “Midgar”). Apparently the reactor is being protected by a group of black mages led by Vivi. After attempting to capture Vivi in a pokéball, Vivi “awakens”, and then leads his black mage buddies to destroy the reactor. This frees Figaro, which leads to King Edgar offering his thanks and an apology for the whole “tossing everyone in a dungeon” thing. Vivi was also apparently holding onto the Earth Key, so now we’ve got half the necessary elemental macguffins in this world. We’re told the next key should be past the Big Bridge, so we head off there after Bahamut makes an ominous, split-second appearance.

Chapter 16: A Bridge Too Boring
Initial Stream: 10/14/20


1:46 – Eiko appears, and she introduces a bridge that is fairly big. It’s apparently this world’s Alexander summon all bridge-ified, so I guess we should be thankful we get a summoner that is at least marginally related to Alexander’s big Final Fantasy 9 moment.

5:40 – Some great animation here right before the second summoner in this game gets kidnapped while the heroes aren’t paying attention.

15:30 – GIG-AN-TAUR!… is at least something to brighten up this boring dungeon. It’s a straight line from toe to tip.

26:00 – Let’s talk about the Super Mario Bros movie while nothing happens and I get lost. Apparently I was supposed to trigger a cutscene somewhere up at the top of the bridge, but I missed that, and now I’m stuck wandering around like an idiot. This happens a lot this night.

34:00 – fanboymaster provides a detailed explanation of How Final Fantasy 7 hidden characters could have worked. I for one welcome a Yuffie that is impossible in every way.

38:36 – Finally back to plot. It’s Buttz and Boko!

45:00 – Abby explains that she was the person who originally named all the Pokemon. This story may or may not be accurate.

55:00 – Talking about voting opposite Gilgamesh showing up. Will we be streaming on election night? I have no earthly idea. (Spoilers from the future: nope!)

What actually happened in the plot: The Big Bridge was apparently summoned by a jiant some time ago, so that’s probably another oblique reference to the mysterious and missing mother of the twins. Eiko is keeping track of the bridge, but Plumed Knight (who has some enigmatic connection to mirages) fights and kidnaps the tiny summoner. As a result, the twins have to cross the bridge on foot, and they meet Bartz, who is searching for someone who is posing as him. Apparently it’s Gilgamesh, and he’s not so much posing as Bartz as just shouting “Bartz!” over and over again while causing mayhem. Did people think he was a Pokémon? Regardless, Gilgamesh is banished from the bridge, Bartz retires to parts unknown, and the team moves onto a dark area that hopefully holds the next key.


Chapter 17: THE TRAIN GRAVEYAR- WAIT A SECOND! YOU CAN’T BE HERE! YOU WEREN’T EVEN IN THIS VIDEO!!!!
Initial Stream: 10/14/20
As relayed by BEAT



You know, when I yelled at Gogglebob to let me do this one, I hadn’t realized that the video was an HOUR AND A HALF LONG WHAT THE FUCK GOGGLEBOB WE TALKED ABOUT THIS OH MY GOD.

00:00 – So I haven’t watched the prior two videos and only caught enough of the stream to get SUPER PISSED OFF at the idea of Funko Pops Fucking, so I’m not 100% sure on how the anime teens found a train to Halloweentown. I’m just gonna roll with it.

01:00 – Up till this point, both Anime Teens have been completely devoid of anything resembling personality, so it’s kind of equal parts refreshing and shocking when the girl completely loses her shit and swears one thousand times revenge on the Halloween train’s Cactuar Conductor.



And like, it comes out of literally fucking nowhere, and has actual effort and CRAFT put into the animation, while adding literally nothing to the plot? When was it established that her personality is ANGRY GIRL? What the fuck just happened?

06:00 – The murder attempt aborted, The anime teens and their horrible mascot ride the train to some Parthenon looking building called… TOMETOWN OF THE ANCIENTS. Anyways some vampires threaten them, but then some dork who uses too much hairspray (Editor’s Note: it Cloud) shows up and saves them I guess whatever.

10:30 – Cloud takes the kids to Celes, who’s wearing what APPEARS to be the Funko pop version of Cammy’s outfit from street fighter. Also a CID, but it’s not the Cid who likes rockets and swear words, so it’s the WRONG CID. Anime boy is racist against robots. Anime girl has interesting ideas about English syntax.

19:50 – So I seriously thought it was gonna be a LIBRARY DUNGEON, but instead the official dungeon for this area is some kinda train graveyard. I genuinely like the visual design, with the misty blue backdrop of rusted, decaying train cars in stacks hundreds of feet into the sky. as far as places to wander around and accumulate XP go.

21:00 – Fanboy takes the very reasonable stance that the Train Graveyard in FF7 isn’t in his top 10 locations from the game. Abby calls his bluff, which was a mistake because Fanboy never bluffs.

34:20 – I zoned out for awhile during my listening session, so I’m honestly not sure why the commentary crew is suddenly talking about public urination. I’m willing to concede that the commentary crew is probably right on the basic point that you could learn a lot about someone by how they react to uh.. that. But also, what the fuck no stop.

45:00 – I’m learning a lot about a Magical Gay Vampire Queen? And her cotton candy girlfriend? Good for them.

1:04:20 – The following exchange has been preserved with only minimal editing.
PAST GOGGLEBOB, IN THE VIDEO: I could make a political Joke right now…
PRESENT BEAT, LISTENING TO THE VIDEO: Don’t you fucking dare.
PAST GOGGLEBOB: …but it would be way too obvious.
PRESENT BEAT SIGHS AND THEATRICALLY WIPES HIS BROW IN RELIEF.
PAST FANBOYMASTER:
So let’s not.
PRESENT BEAT: Thank you Fanboy I knew you were my realest friend for a reason.
PAST ABBY: We’re all gonna die, go for it.
PRESENT BEAT: What the fuck Abby, I trusted you!
PAST GOGGLEBOB: "The democratic party…"
PRESENT BEAT: NO! NOOOOO!!!!!
PAST GOGGLEBOB: "…is hoarding its Elixirs"
PRESENT BEAT ASCENDS TO HIGHER LEVEL OF RAGE, SCREAMING FIE AND DAMNATION, SWEARING VENGENCE.

1:04:54 – Gimmie Gimmie!

1:07:45 – This game’s cutscenes keep getting ALMOST good and its FRUSTRATING.


Like I keep going "WAIT SHIT IS THIS GAME… GOOD?" and the answer is always "NO" and it’s starting to get on my nerves.

1:10:00 – Time to kill a vampire I guess.

1:13:20 – For like a good 3 minutes I really thought they were just gonna say "Hahah good thing we killed the vampire before you had a chance to turn since we established that killing him would restore everyone he turned 3 cutscenes ago." That would have almost been clever. Instead they had her turn in the post fight cutscene, and then the vampire is stabbed immediately afterwards, and she turns back. I have NO IDEA why that whole runaround was in the game at all.

1:19:00 – Tometown is much more visually appealing when its not full of vampires.

1:26:10 – "LOVE YOURSELF, BITCH!"

What actually happened in the plot: The anime Teens ride the Halloween train to Library Land, meet the MOST POPULAR FINAL FANTASY CHARACTER EVER (And Celes (And a fake Cid)) and conclude that it’s time to hunt a vampire. After like an hour or so of dungeon wandering, the sister gets kidnapped, and turned into a vampire for exactly 30 seconds. Then they kill the vampire and she’s fine. Then they go back to library land and get the exposition. Editor’s Addition: And they also obtain the Key of Darkness, bringing the total magical key count up to three out of four.

Next time in World of Final Fantasy: You gonna get wet.

FGC #520 X-Men: Children of the Atom

Let’s start at the end to find the beginning.

Let's get infiniteIn 2017, Capcom released Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, possibly the most embarrassing flop in the history of videogames. This should have been a slam dunk! It was a fighting game released after the resurgence of fighting game popularity, so there was a built-in audience ready and willing to fight online and at tournaments. The cast was also at the absolute peak of their popularity, as the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, and The Guardians of the Galaxy were dominating the box office with hit after hit. The latest Avengers movie had just produced more profit than the entirety of South Americacitation needed. And the Capcom side of things? Sure, some of the cast was a little esoteric, but seeing the likes of Jedah or Dante is exciting for people that actually play videogames (and, hey, this is a videogame!). And next gen graphics! I have been led to believe that people love those crazy framerates! Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite should have been a generation-defining fighting game for all sorts of reasons.

But Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was a dud. Why? Well, it seems like the big issue was that, in trying to court the Marvel movie audience, the direction of MvC:I left its fans in the dust. A bright, cartoony style was dropped for something that was trying for realistic, but wound up settling in the uncanny valley. The gameplay was weirdly stiff, and, even though the Story Mode was a hoot, the minute-to-minute of the experience simply felt… off. And perhaps worst of all, some of the most remarkable fighters from the previous title were dropped (sorry, Phoenixes), and the new arrivals were uninteresting, limited, and mostly DLC. When a franchise introduces a playable trash panda, you can’t follow that up with “Storm, but white”. And speaking of which, likely thanks to that movie-mandate, the entire X-Men cast was dropped from the franchise. Gone were the likes of Wolverine and Sentinel, and the best we could hope for was the (paid) return of Venom.

Let's go crazyAll in all, MvC: Infinite seemed like a lesser version of a game that had been released six years prior, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds brought the Versus Franchise roaring back, and Ultimate MvC3, its seemingly inevitable update, is noted by many to be the best in the franchise. This is clearly a title that was created by fans, for the fans (how else could you explain the presence of MODOK and Trish?), but also maintained a balance between the very disparate characters. You could equally have fun choosing a wee little red power ranger or a hulking… uh… Hulk. Hell, this is a game that managed to balance fights between multi-tentacled monstrosities and god-dogs. But, balanced or not, there was no lack of spectacle, and every last fight felt appropriately marvelous. Give or take Jill Valentine becoming some kind of angry cyborg cat (sorry, I have no idea what Resident Evil was doing that week), UMvC3 was received well for being a flawless entry in the Versus Franchise.

Just what I expectedAnd it’s not like that would be a cakewalk from UMvC3’s inception; it was forced to bring back the franchise after 2000’s Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, which is noted by many to be the best in the franchise. MvC2 is not a balanced game like its descendant, but it’s not like anyone wanted balance anyway. This is mahvel, baby. This is a game that decided to cap off the (at the time) end of the Versus Franchise (mostly due to licensing issues), and include literally every fighter that had ever appeared. After years of Versus games that liberally dropped and added fighters as it moved along, MvC2 decided to just throw everything against the wall to see what stuck (and maybe include a talking cactus, too). This led to one of the wildest fighting games in history, as suddenly a gigantic stand-in for Satan could get his tailed-ass beat by an army of miniscule Servbots. There were 56 total characters, and, while there were a number of Ryu wannabes and the occasional Iron Man recolor on the roster (and two Wolverines, for some reason), this roster remains to this day one of the most eclectic in all of gaming. Where else are you going to find a metal tyrant battling a mummy? And, while some nuance amongst the characters was lost, there is no greater feeling than unleashing three hyper moves’ worth of beam attacks against a walking suit of armor. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was just the right kind of absurd foolishness we all needed after weathering the Y2K bug (which, miraculously, was not a playable character).

Let's go crazyBut that wouldn’t have even been possible were it not for the release of Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes two years earlier. The “original” MvC is noted by many to be the best in the franchise, as it wrung every bit of action and distinction out of its (compared to its descendants) limited roster. This was the initial game to introduce familiar videogame faces that were new to the world of fighting games, so now, like Athena ascending to King of Fighters, you saw Captain Commando and Strider executing fierce punches for the first time. It also included a bevy of cameo characters that guested for singular attacks, which, finally, allowed Jubilee to join in the melee. And if the balanced tag team action of the Versus Franchise wasn’t enough for you, there was also the Variable Cross, which allowed a whole team to attack simultaneously, so War Machine could set Morrigan up for the spike. This was the perfect mix of old and new, so, like a playable Mega Man, it was the familiar seen in an all-new light that was somehow instantly and effortlessly refined.

KISSESBut why was it all familiar? Well, because we had already enjoyed X-Men vs. Street Fighter in 1996 and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter in 1997. Both games were the starting bell for what would be known as the Versus Franchise, but primarily only reused assists from prior games, whether they be Marvel or Street Fighter titles. X-Men vs. Street Fighter at least gave us luminaries like Rogue or Sabertooth, but MSHvSF was wholly recycled from previous titles, and was likely only published because someone wanted to see Shuma Gorath tackle Sakura. Whether sprites and moves were recycled from earlier titles is immaterial, though, as this crossover gameplay was wholly new to the Capcom stable. You can fight as two people at once (kinda)! You can combine super moves (totally)! Wolverine can finally take a chunk out of M. Bison! And MSHvSF may have been light on new character content, but it did introduce the vital ability to summon your partner for an assist. In short, everything that defines the Versus Franchise was right there at its beginning, even if it wasn’t yet a welcoming place for Arthur to hang out.

UPPERCUTBut even before we ever had a single tag battle, the basic gameplay of the Versus Franchise premiered with 1995’s X-Men: Children of the Atom. XM:CotA (and its spiritual sequel a year later, Marvel Super Heroes) was essentially based on the Street Fighter Alpha engine, but with a little… mutation. While the Street Fighter franchise veered more into realistic, restrained fighting in Street Fighter 3 (well, as realistic as a fight can be when one participant is an albino made of electrified jelly), X-Men:CotA adopted all the “based on an anime” indulgences of Alpha, and dialed it up to eleven with super jumping, laser beams, and midair combos. It was still natural to anyone that had played Street Fighter (or, of course, Darkstalkers), but the pomp and bombast of every battle was an experience that was wholly unique. And that made perfect sense! These weren’t mundane “street fighters”, these were Marvel’s mightiest mutants, so you had to have a game that accounted for characters with a non-standard number of arms. X-Men: CotA started what would become a franchise all its own by taking the familiar and marrying it to the fantastic.

But where did X-Men: Children of the Atom come from? From Cyclops battling Silver Samurai to Mega Man blasting Marrow to Thor fighting Sigma on the Rainbow Bridge, where did this all truly begin? With Street Fighter? Final Fight? What is the origin of this decades-old fighting game franchise?

Well, if I told you it all spun out of the opening credits adaption of the Japanese localization of a Fox Kids cartoon from 1992, would you believe me?

So much jumping

No, of course not. That would be silly. Let’s just say this all started with Street Fighter, and call it a day.

Thank you, Ryu, for bringing us the amazing Versus Franchise. Let us never speak of Omega Red’s impact ever again.

FGC #520 X-Men: Children of the Atom

  • System: Arcade for the arcade experience, but the Sega Saturn version will do in a pinch. It kind of has a weird screen aspect thing going on, but it’s otherwise pretty tops. The Playstation 1 version is not discussed in polite company.
  • Number of players: We might not be able to select two X-Men at once yet, but you can certainly have two players.
  • Death SpiralWho Are These Guys: Even assuming the game is based primarily on the X-Men animated series, you have to wonder where half this roster came from. Wolverine? Great! Cyclops? A keeper! Psylocke? Okay, I guess Jim Lee got a vote. Omega Red? A poor man’s Sabertooth at least would have an interesting moveset. But Spiral? Spiral? Mojo’s occasional sidekick? And Silver Samurai? Did someone just have a “sword guy” moveset laying around, and here we are? I would love to see an interview with the team that made those decisions.
  • Favorite Fighter: That said, give me Omega Red any day. He’s got range, the ability to drain the life out of his opponents, and a rad ponytail. What more could you ask for?
  • Say Something Mean: I love this game and everything in it… save the fact that way too many of the fireballs or fireball-type moves are directionally controlled by your chosen attack button. That’s the kind of thing that works well in theory, but I despise keying in a fireball motion, but hitting the wrong button, so now said fireball is going straight up in the air, damned never to hit a soul. Maybe this is why Wolverine and his limited claws are chosen so often.
  • Versus Origins: In case anyone was curious, both of the “original” Versus games were Versus games before they ever officially earned that moniker. X-Men vs. Street Fighter starts in X-Men: CotA via a secret battle with Akuma, and a certain wee Darkstalker snuck into Marvel Super Heroes before Marvel vs. Capcom.
  • Win Quotes: The Versus Franchise eventually dropped win quotes (and then returned to them), but the fact that they discarded gems like Cyclops passively aggressively insulting the X-Men…
    I don't get it

    Or some big Akira Yoshida energy…
    Gaijin?

    Is a loss.
  • Forgotten Worlds: Playing through the whole of the Versus Franchise is interesting, as, while the characters are generally perennial (sorry, Marrow), the backgrounds of the various stages over the years portray storylines and locations that were important once, and are now completely forgotten. Remember when Daredevil was the leader of a ninja cabal? Or when the Celestials were prominent? Or when there was a Mega Man Legends franchise?
  • Did you know? When the Fox Kids X-Men series aired in Japan, each episode suffered some content cuts so they could make room for… promotion for this X-Men videogame. It traditionally involved the (Japanese) voice actors playing the game, and “acting out” their characters’ reactions to parts of the game. So maybe there is a significant connection here…
  • Would I play again: There are some parts of X-Men: Children of the Atom that are wholly unique and not simply absorbed by later sequels, so I occasionally return to this old standby. That said, it doesn’t happen very often, so my thumbs are a lot more likely to see Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3…

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Crash Team Racing: Nitro Refueled! Guess there’s going to be some racing, and we’ll try not to crash. Ha ha ha. Please look forward to it!

This seems apt
Submitted without comment

FGC #480 Three Dirty Dwarves

DWARVES!We judge videogames by many criteria. Graphics? Inevitably important. Sound & Music? That is a must. Story? That has become vital in much of today’s gaming scene (except when it’s a fighting game). Presentation? Sheer volume of glitches? And, of course, gameplay is the king, as, if you can’t enjoy playing the game, why is it even a game at all? Without even checking the latest Gamepro ranking scale (that’s still a thing, right?), you can easily envision a hundred criteria for “what makes a good game”.

So where does “personality” fit in there? How much should we weigh a game’s personality against its other flaws?

Today’s featured title is Three Dirty Dwarves for the Sega Saturn. Never heard of it? It was also ported to Windows PC and… nothing else. Does that help? No? Okay, we’re talking about a beat ‘em up that was released for the Sega Saturn the same year we saw the likes of Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64. Yes, it seems other games stole Three Dirty Dwarves’ spotlight, and, if we’re being honest, people probably only remember a maximum of four unique titles from the Sega Saturn on a good day. Three Dirty Dwarves was not an arcade port, it did not star Sonic the Hedgehog or Sarah Bryant, and it wasn’t a game that saw every other system of the era. This was a game that was (almost) exclusive to the Sega Saturn from the same company that gave us Ecco the Dolphin and Kolibri. Let’s face it: Three Dirty Dwarves was never going to be as remembered as Tiny Tank: Up Your Arsenal.

This sucksAnd the gameplay of Three Dirty Dwarves doesn’t do the title any favors, either. It’s a beat ‘em up, but with a very unusual health/failure system. Venturing through a mutated version of The Bronx, you control one of the titular Three Dirty Dwarves. And, while 3DD firmly belongs to a genre that traditionally requires things like health bars and variations on the concept of “chip damage”, these dwarves all “die” after one hit. It doesn’t matter if it was a bite from a rat, a punch from a random mook, or some manner of meteoric fireball: everything will knock out your dwarf du jour with a single tap. But there’s still hope! As long as one dwarf remains, he can hit an unconscious dwarf with his melee attack, and we’re back in business! This means you simultaneously are constantly vulnerable and have infinite lives (in all modes save hard mode, incidentally). When you’re halfway through a level and have two dwarves down, the raw panic and drive in attempting to save your fellow warriors leaves an impression, and is an interesting spin on typical beat ‘em up formulas (a distinctive health system similar to another Sega hero). Unfortunately, that revive panic is mostly caused because your dwarves fall way too quickly, and a new monster on the screen often has equal odds on being surmountable or instantly vaporizing your entire party with the cheapest deaths possible. Did I mention you barely have any invincibility frames after losing a dwarf? Because that can lead to more than a few game overs.

And the basic beat ‘em up gameplay isn’t all that amazing here, either. You’ve got your dwarves, and they all have a melee attack, or a long-range attack that (depending on the dwarf involved) either has a long windup or cool-down period. There are also screen-clearing attacks that… clear… the screen… yeah… but require found consumables to use. Ultimately, the gameplay winds up being pretty similar to what you’d find in another game featuring at least one dwarf, and, as far as the level-to-level of battling, there isn’t much of an improvement here over a game that was released at the tail end of the 80s.

The pit bossOn a basic, “is this game good” level, an initial review would be very negative. It’s a beat ‘em up with extremely fragile beat ‘em uppers, and the occasional platforming or puzzle-esque segment is rarely welcome. It’s not a very good game, even by the more lenient standards of the late 20th century. This is not a game that should have ever come before Mario Kart 64, Super Mario RPG, or some other 1996 videogame that probably includes Mario.

But, when you get past the gameplay having its share of issues, the sheer volume of personality exuding Three Dirty Dwarves is immeasurable.

First of all, for a beat ‘em up, there is a seriously bonkers story happening here. Long (very long!) story short: a quartet of kids were grown in a lab for the express purpose of becoming genius military weapons. Or creating military weapons with their genius? Small distinction there, I suppose. Regardless, the kids are not happy with their test tube origins and eternal imprisonment, so they decided to put their amazing brainpower toward escaping. Rather than create some manner of bad key machine, the children looked toward interdimensional/interfictional travel. See, the four children play a D&D-esque game, and the dungeon master (dungeon mistress, in this case) figures out a way to pull the three other children’s roleplay avatars into the real world. Now the three dirty dwarves that were previously imaginary are in the real world and ready to save the moppets that created them. But oh no! The process also sucked all the orcs and dragons that existed in the game to the real world, too, so it’s not like the dwarves are going to have an easy time making it to the evil military’s child prison. And, of course, the military has its own collection of other, generally malevolent science experiments. And this all happens in The Bronx for some reason, so maybe watch out for some of the more malicious New Yorkers of the late 90s. Rudy Giuliani was mayor. It wasn’t a great time.

Ninja!And, while we’re talking about the monsters the dwarves have to face, let’s note that the bestiary of Three Dirty Dwarves is large and in charge. Even the best beat ‘em ups seem to collect three or five archetype characters (fat guy, skinny guy, medium guy, robot), and then repaint them across seven levels. There is variety in how some opponents may block or gain new weapons, but you’re still obviously fighting the same Two P. sprites. Three Dirty Dwarves still has standard mooks, but it offers new and interesting monsters with practically every level. The junkyard stage includes gigantic scrap mechs, while the military industrial complex offers psychic babies. And the general streets of New York may include everything from unruly police officers to naked ninja. Come to think of it, the ninja may be cops, too, it’s just hard to tell without the uniforms…

And the whole thing, from the dwarfs to their opponents to animated cutscenes, is tied together with a very unique art style. It seems like the greatest influence here would have to be Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and his iconic Rat Fink, but the whole affair gives the vibe that tattoo artists decided to make their own videogame. Could you describe the graphics as “good” in the traditional sense? Probably not, as much of what’s on display looks like it originated MS Paint, and not the console that was meant to defeat the Playstation. But it oozes personality, and I can safely say it doesn’t look like a single other game on the Sega Saturn (and not just because there are like six other Saturn games). And while we’re being superficial, the music is also wholly unique. It might not sound like anything else from this era of gaming (it leans surprisingly heavily on hip hop beats), but it slaps. It slaps but good.

Oh, and there’s a level where you fight a dragon with a wrecking ball. That’s rarely seen elsewhere, too.

Let's go!But personality or no, Three Dirty Dwarves comes down to one basic truth: it’s not all that fun to play. You might relish seeing a lady wielding duct tape as a weapon, or an inexplicable minecart level that is equally inexplicably passable, but it all works out to a game that feels more like a chore than a fun time. You’re interested in seeing what crazy thing happens next, but actually getting through a level is a stressful task.

So how should we rank personality when grading a game? It’s hard to say, but it is easy to say that Three Dirty Dwarves needs a better gameplay score to balance its personality score.

And, hey, if it had as much fun gameplay as it did personality, it might actually have been more remembered than Mario.

… Or at least it would be remembered at all.

FGC #480 Three Dirty Dwarves

  • System: Sega Saturn and a Windows version that I’m sure exists somewhere, forgotten, in the back room of a former Electronics Boutique.
  • Number of players: Three! There was apparently a Sega Saturn multitap! It was probably intended for Bomberman!
  • Favorite Dwarf: Of Corthag, Taconic, and Greg, I choose Corthag, as he’s apparently the only dwarf that decided to pick up a firearm. Greg has baseballs! Baseballs! At least Taconic went with a bowling ball. That worked out for The Simpsons.
  • Favorite Boss: Man of a Thousand Swords was “once a mild-mannered salesman from Jersey City” who collected one sword too many. Considering I always feared that would be my fate if I got into weapon collecting, I’m going to sympathetically give him the nod.
  • Tank policeIt’s All a Game: The fact that the dwarves are just the RPG avatars of the kidnapped kids rarely comes up (you can collect dice, at least), save during the ending, when the children have to roll to “control” the dwarves’ inclination toward following the bad guy for wealth and power. Considering that tabletop gaming was still extremely niche back in the late 90’s, saving this bit of nerdity for the ending seems apropos.
  • Did you know? Corthag’s favorite movie is listed as Porky in Wackyland. That’s a seven minute short! That’s not a movie! You stupid dwarf!
  • Would I play again: Maybe if there were some revised version that made everything less… stressful. The way the dwarves die so quickly is terrible on some of the longer levels, and I have no time nowadays to deal with a game where I could lose valuable minutes of my life. Unfortunately, I don’t see a remake anytime soon…

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Mega Man ZX Advent! It’s time for the reign of the Mega Men! Please look forward to it!

This looks familiar
This looks like a 70’s Garfield Special, and I am here for it.