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Post by anayo on May 15, 2019 5:51:57 GMT -5
Oh yeah I almost forgot. Also in the early 2000's when I got into retro gaming, I bought Battle Arena Toshinden at a yard sale. It's terrible, though I can totally understand why gaming magazines lost their minds over it in 1995 (I probably would have if I owned it back then). Also this song burned itself into my brain and I'm cursed to remember it forever now: I used to put Battle Arena Toshinden in my CD player and just listen to the soundtrack.
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Post by Ex on May 15, 2019 10:16:20 GMT -5
Yeah I'm not a big fan of the first BAT. Battle Arena Toshinden 4 is pretty decent:
It's got a strong story mode.
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Post by toei on May 15, 2019 12:45:49 GMT -5
Oh wow, I'd forgotten I remember Eiji's theme, if that makes any sense. Toshinden had some really good music, at least.
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Post by toei on May 15, 2019 16:25:41 GMT -5
Alright, let's get started on the PSX now. I'm thinking I'll break it down in 3 posts instead of a giant one. If Capcom and SNK were the kings of 2D fighters throughout the '90s, then the kings of 3D fighters were Sega and Namco. Namco, of course, aligned itself with the PlayStation from the start, as Sega was their chief rival in the arcades by then, as Capcom and Konami were slower to take to 3D. Sega had Daytona USA ( one of the biggest arcade hits of all time); Namco had Ridge Racer. Sega had Virtua Fighter; Namco poached the Virtua Fighter team's number 2 man, Seiichi Ishii, along with one of the character designers (Kunihito Nakata) and several staffers, and they had them make Tekken. Tekken's core concept was a perfect fit for the PSX's standard controller. Each of the four face buttons would correspond to a limb; the upper row for arms, the lower row for legs. It was a brilliant idea, and it should have resulted in a deeply instinctive control scheme, but it was applied weirdly. Trying to chain up these buttons in logical ways will rarely get you far, because while Yu Suzuki's passion for martial arts and his desire to push towards realism within arcade gaming carried through into Virtua Fighter*, Tekken doesn't care how fighting and the human body actually work. This is why an attack chain might involve 5 jabs in a row from the same hand, or two sommersault kicks in a row, rather than focusing on alternating one-for-one between rights and lefts (which is generally a more natural and efficient way to box), or chaining moves into one another in a way that would make real-world sense. Likewise, the inputs for a specific combo don't always match with the inputs for individual attacks at all; instead, it's as if the team designed a bunch of moves and combos first, then simply assigned inputs to them afterwards in a haphazard manner. The result is that instead of being able to grasp the gameplay on purely instinctual level, as could have been the case with cleaner, more coherent game design, the first step to learning to play Tekken is learning the different pre-set attack chains and combos for your character. While this means that the game essentially cancels out its own concept, it doesn't make it bad. The gameplay is a lot of fun. It's flashier than VF, there are more characters, more moves, more (stupid) story; it's got more of everything that doesn't matter. That is exactly what the Western audience for fighters likes, so it's no wonder that it became the biggest series of its type. All the same, unlike Toshinden, it's not just empty flash; the underlying mechanics are pretty solid, the gameplay is satisfying, and it is a legitimate series. But even that wasn't the case right from the start. In order for an action game of any kind to be legit, its most basic actions have to feel good. It's like what Miyamoto always says in interviews; just moving the character around has to be fun. Within any game that revolves around fighting, whether it's a VS fighter, a beat-'em-up, or a hack-n-slash, it also means that the simple act of hitting someone has to feel satisfying. In order for that to happen, the developers have to get three things right: the length of time it takes for a hit to come out after you press a button (responsiveness), the length of time it takes for it to hit (animations), and the impact of it - the combination of visual and audio cues telling you the hit has landed and damaged the opponent. The first Tekken game did not get that right. The second was a bit better, but it wasn't quite there yet. Namco waited longer to make Tekken 3 - in part because most of the original team had left - and this was its most important refinement: it's the first Tekken game where the feel of the fighting is completely legit (a quality further sequels retained). It's also one of the best PSX fighters. Namco's other big 3D fighter series, of course, is Soul Calibur, and rather impressively, it was excellent right from the start. Soul Blade / Soul Edge is one of the most fluid games of its generation, it's fun, it's responsive, it's easy to get into, and it's got solid mechanics. It's not the first weapon-based 3D fighters, but it's the first good one.
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Post by dukerogers on Jul 13, 2019 2:29:35 GMT -5
All games of Mortal Combat from olf consoles emulatorgames.online/games/mortal-kombat and of course Mortal Combat X. I like this series of games. They are amazing, Scorpion, Sub-Zero - they are the best.
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 13, 2019 15:34:18 GMT -5
Any thoughts on Samurai Shodown here? Played the new one a bit with some friends on the 4th, apparently it harkens back to 2 the most, which also sounds like the most popular one. I might grab that on the Switch someday to check out. I'm not as good at 2D fighters compared to 3D, even if they're more limited in ways, the neutral game makes me sweat more. But SamSho's slower pace seems like something that could help me get better at 2D fighters. I should probably dive more into SNK stuff in general someday. They appeal to me more than some others from a glance, think I mentioned that earlier in the thread.
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