Bay Ninja Turtles Obligatory Bitch Thread

[Gomess]

Heh, I was actually once working on a doujin fighter with some other people (it ultimately went nowhere, hohum) but one of the concepts for a boss was based around the idea of "striking hell," as opposed to "bullet hell"; the player would be forced to go on the defensive at various points in the fight, focusing on nothing more than dodging and blocking a HUGE amount of blows EXTREMELY quickly until an opening presented itself. I've always been a fan of the idea of quick, intuitive dodging and blocking. Hardly any fighters really have that. Would being able to block in the middle of an opponent's combo break the game? Maybe. But it'd make it unique too!

[BWprowl]

I've always been a fan of the idea of quick, intuitive dodging and blocking. Hardly any fighters really have that. Would being able to block in the middle of an opponent's combo break the game? Maybe. But it'd make it unique too!

DEAD OR ALIVE!

That is all.

[Gomess]

Oh ok well see there it was just annoying

But that's probably just because I only played DoA with people who were really good at it and refused to tell me how it works or lend it to me. No wonder I don't play it now!

[Onslaught Six]

I actually did some reading into all that once, and the weird thing was that the dip in design quality coincided with John Tobias' departure from the company. But what did Tobias go on to design? Tao Feng. So. Pretty sure he wasn't the secret to the old games' quality. Or maybe it just needed him and Ed Boon working together, that's often the way.

Look at id software, and the resulting messes. Quake II was their last great game, and even by then it was obvious that the end was in sight--Quake 1 is, narratively and conceptually, a fucking mess. Everything came together perfectly for Doom, with the programming skill of Carmack, the level design and know-how of Romero, and the art design of Other Carmack. (Plus, Tom Hall, who departed early into the game's development, but surely left some kind of mark on it.) Then everything started falling apart during Quake's development, and after Q2 it's all downhill.

No individual in that cabal was better than all of them together.

[JediTricks]

It's amazing MK was as popular as it was considering how terribly programmed it was, but I think it got a lot of points for its aesthetic; starting off with recognisable kungfusploitation and slowly morphing into a more 90s xtreme cyberpunk style must have drawn in a LOT of kids, myself included of course. And, y'know, being able to kill your opponent. Who'd play MK without Fatalities, seriously?

MK was the first fighting game to use realistic character images instead of traditionally animated sprites, it was the first arcade game to celebrate gore. It basically was there to unthrone Street Fighter 2 as the arcade fighter of choice, which led to the fighting game wars of the '90s. That was a very big deal back then. Fatalities actually weren't a big part of the appeal back then, they really ran second to the fighting experience which was both more grounded than SF2 and more insane at the same time. It was the '90s, everything had to be "real! EXTREME!" (see GI Joe for more).

[Shockwave]

It's amazing MK was as popular as it was considering how terribly programmed it was, but I think it got a lot of points for its aesthetic; starting off with recognisable kungfusploitation and slowly morphing into a more 90s xtreme cyberpunk style must have drawn in a LOT of kids, myself included of course. And, y'know, being able to kill your opponent. Who'd play MK without Fatalities, seriously?

MK was the first fighting game to use realistic character images instead of traditionally animated sprites, it was the first arcade game to celebrate gore. It basically was there to unthrone Street Fighter 2 as the arcade fighter of choice, which led to the fighting game wars of the '90s. That was a very big deal back then. Fatalities actually weren't a big part of the appeal back then, they really ran second to the fighting experience which was both more grounded than SF2 and more insane at the same time. It was the '90s, everything had to be "real! EXTREME!" (see GI Joe for more).

Exactly, one of the things that had attracted me to MK in the first place was the fact that they were using actual martial arts moves. I was taking Tae Kwon Do at the time and it was cool to see video game characters pulling off moves that I was learning and doing myself.

[Gomess]

I'll accept that the realism of the characters made the martial arts *appear* more realistic, but most of the Street Fighter characters' moves were based on real styles too, and each had an equal amount of magical special fireballs.

But I was there too, and once we'd seen all the Fatalities we all went back to playing Street Fighter!

[Shockwave]

Except that Street Fighter was so cartoony that any sense of realism was thrown out. Guys like E. Honda floating slow motion across the screen or yeah, I guess that was a side kick that Dahlsim just did... except that he just Mr. Fantastic'ed it from across the screen. Where as in MK the most cartoony aspects there were the projectiles and even then some of them still get a pass. Like Scorpion with his spear and Kano with his knife. Cause you know, people can actually throw spears and knives. Other than that, it was basic stuff, the punches, blocks, kicks and sweeps were all stuff I was learning in Tae Kwon Do. I know they sure as hell didn't teach us how to float towards opponents nor how to make our limbs stretch unnaturally.

[Gomess]

Uh... Raiden's human torpedo move where he racistly yells DADDYGOTACAR? Liu Kang's absurd 'bicycle kick'? The copious amounts of teleports? Sub-Zero's slide kick? Kung Lao's amazing somersault throw? Selective memory, my friend. =p MK drew straight from the kungfusploitation its developers grew up on, and that's what made it great; ridiculous moves within a realistic-looking context.

I appreciate your point about SF looking 'more cartoony' though, simply by virtue of it being hand-drawn, but even then I thought it just looked better. Something about the characters not being played by real people, existing solely in the creative realm. And hey, I did love the original MK aesthetic (especially the backgrounds and music), before the Great Betrayal. It was a nice complement to SF's style, almost like a more postmodern, almost cynical western equivalent of that very balls-out BURNING HEART Japanese cartoon ethic.

And I'm pretty sure there wasn't a fighter-playing kid alive who didn't wanna see SF vs. MK. As if that's gonna happen now... (Finds it quite funny that they went off to have versus games with the Big Two comic book companies, almost as a parting shot to one another)

[Shockwave]

Well I was talking about the basic moves, not the special moves. But yeah, they didn't teach us fire/ice/lightning nor teleportation in TKD either.