I always figured that the “Dark Ages” were just about Capcom. Their only fighting game output were collections in that time. It's too bad that so many other games get kind of forgotten or misremembered because of the term “dark age”.
The “dark ages” also encapsulates the death of SNK (not that multiple implosions slowed down their fighting game output, necessarily, but it's not like all of their post-bankruptcy fighting games were great, either) and the contraction of arcades, both generally and with specific ramifications for fighting games, which suffered from a death of new games and old/new games rapidly ceding floor space to music games and so on. Even on consoles, fighting game output decreased quite significantly, and most of the games that did come out were character games of limited ambition.
It's not like Namco perfectly weathered the storm during that time, either: both Tekken 4 and Soulcalibur III killed the momentum for their respective series, and I'd argue that SC never really recovered.
I‘m one of those weirdos who LOVE SoulCalibur III and Tekken 4. Imported a Japanese PS2 because I couldn’t tolerate waiting 6 months for the English release. IDC about the balance issues, I wasn't competing at the time, they have great aesthetics lol
hell yeah heres my thread.
fighting games have been my thing for just about a decade now. i started actually learning with mk9, ssf4ae and skullgirls, but even before that I was more than happy to button mash on everything I had growing up. Soul Calibur 2, CVS2 EO, Melee, the xbox era MK games.
Now I run a small lgbt fighting game server. It‘s a tight little group and I’m glad i've managed to keep it going for a few years.
I finally got my ISP issues fixed so it‘s quite overdue. Paging various fighters (and specifically a shout out to @Karnovski and @notthetoilet who are cool and fun opponents)! Let’s do another Insert Credit Guilty Gear -STRIVE- Fight Night!
Pacific Standard time (GMT-8) 8-ish PM (20:00) Friday November 25th. Can anyone else that time?
@“antillese”#p94034 I should be on!
Practicing a lot for a local coming up, so bring the heat!
@“Karnovski”#p94058 Consider it scheduled. Let's burn off those calories!
Meanwhile, I‘ve been spending some time with BlazBlue: Central Fiction, specifically the Abyss/RPG-y mode. It’s simultaneously both grindy and also … pretty fun! I don't feel like playing CPU fighters in an Arcade mode is a good simulation of playing another human, so this just rips the bandaid off. You level up your character and you get “grimoires” that that can be customized with stats (damage/defense buffs) along with skills (lifesteal, poison, meter gain, etc.) The difficulty seems a bit uneven. I needed to level up a character quite a bit before I could get through the first level, and after that, it seems to be muuuuch easier. The main goal is to make your character so incredibly OP that you can take on crazy super-bosses that have the same kind of skills you do.
I usually focus on the competitive modes of fighting games, so this has been an neat way to jump back into a series that I liked but fell off of once _Xrd_ came out.
The game is on sale right now on Steam and has rollback support too if you want to play it online.
I‘ve played only a little bit of the BlazBlue series, it never quite clicked for me, but I wonder if it would now, since I have so much Strive experience. That mode sounds like a lot of fun though. Reminds me of the challenge tower in Soul Calibur 4. You’d get different outfits for your custom characters and they all had buffs attached to them. I loved that mode.
I really really liked the first two BlazBlues and played them quite a bit both in-person with some friends and online. It was probably the first game where I started to bother actually learning some specific combos thanks to the games‘ internal challenge and combo training mode. It was for me the first game that felt like a Guilty Gear since GGXX and was playable online and had modern features etc. I didn’t pick up Chrono Phantasma a bit out of huffiness on my part since they stopped localizing the voice cast and that was one of the reasons I loved the first two games so much.
If you're trying to get into the game today it suffers from a number of problems that any 15-year-old series suffers from without having had a reset. It's got roster bloat and it's been difficult in my experience to find any kind of pickup matches that are vs. players that are likely close to any given player's skill level.
You also have to factor in the (female) character designs got continually more sexualized and exploitative as time went on. In the first game, there was a running joke about how Litchi is called "Booby Lady!" by Tao. And if you look at the roster today - Litchi is one of the tamer character designs. Just go in with awareness of that.
@“antillese”#p94215
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/PFYEQQQ.jpeg]
This is the only one I ever gave any time. I only played through Arcade mode a number of times though. I enjoyed it, but just didn't fall in love with it.
As for the questionable character designs and or dialogue, I won't mind. I can accept things from the past and try to enjoy them with the time frame of release in mind.
Also, waifus are waifus and almost feel like they're just inherently a part of fighting games
I‘ve a soft spot for Blaz Blue: Continuum Shift. It came at just the right point post-Street Fighter 4’s genre revival whilst also being a new fighting game IP that was succeeding. I do have the newer games but they didn't quite scratch the itch for me at the time and I was a little put off by the new soundtracks. I ended up getting them on Steam for convenience.
Which brings me onto another point. I'm finding that my preference for fighting games is to have the PC versions where they're available. I've bought too many fighting games in the previous two generations that feel like they're being lost that feel like they're being forgotten, or that they outright die by remaining there. Consolidating games on PC feels like they're being kept alive on a platform that supports legacy games, and having (most of) them in one place to hop around in is useful when I've got a buddy visiting and we both have our own non-standard controllers. Between Capcom, Arc and SNK have all been great with rereleasing their back catalogues on PC and I would love to see Bandai Namco and go the extra mile too.
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@“LeFish”#p94252 I was a little put off by the new soundtracks.
Bro. Buddy. Pal. **YES**. CT/CS soundtracks are way better.
@“LeFish”#p94252 I thought about doing that, and especially even already started grabbing those less than $5 deals on Steam, I just have such a hard time remembering to even turn on my pc. I thought hooking it up to my TV would do it, but it still just sits there.
@“antillese”#p94256 Yeah. The new tracks are fine but the remixes are, by and large, horrible. I can't remember any sort of contemporary game where the soundtrack has disappointed me as much as that one.
@"Karnovski"#p94261 I know what you mean though I'm going in with the mindset of it being a long-term initiative for myself. I have a laptop hooked up to my TV and it's good to know that I can jump between most Blaz Blue or Guilty Gear games to any Street Fighter to Darkstalkers, Tekken 7, and SamSho games. Not that I theoretically couldn't do that on PS4, but eventually that will fail whereas Steam isn't going anywhere any time soon.
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@“LeFish”#p94252 I’ve a soft spot for Blaz Blue: Continuum Shift
My fighting game buddies at the time always called this iteration BlazBlue: Continuous Shit, which still makes me laugh every time I see the game referenced.
Meanwhile, in Japanese mortgage advertising…
https://youtu.be/GPR0a1b2BSE
@“Karasu”#p94296
I used to love coming up with dumb names like this. From Cowboy‘s Duty Western Warfare to Tokyo Extreme Racist. Or the inevitable turn the game name into a dumb weed joke, which I can’t remember any good ones right this sec.
@"LeFish"#p94283
Yeah it's good to have the long term in mind. I told myself I'd still be playing my ps3 fighting games when I got my ps4, and I think I've only gone back like 3 or 4 times since 2015. Each time it was when a certain friend was in town that wanted to play some mvc2.
On the plus side though atleast ps5 is backwards compatible. Unfortunately, I feel that the communities will mostly live on pc in the farther future.
Reminder that it‘s an Insert Credit Guilty Gear -STRIVE- fight night online tonight! We’ll be starting at 8 PM Pacific time which is in about 3.5 hours. @“Syzygy”#279 posted the Sin trailer so please apply peer pressure at him to show up and also apply peer pressure to me if you want it streamed on Twitch.
@“antillese”#p94430 I could also stream. My son will be awake and running around, so I've got keep an eye and ear on him, but I could load up the twitch and have voice chat on.