Dead Or Alive Ultimate 5 Announced For Xbox 360 And PS3

Reading through a lot of this stuff, I thought the whole “but my fighting game has a story” is a pretty BlazBoring view of video games and reused assets. I think story mode is one of the least interesting aspects of a fighting game because the game is why I find many characters interesting, and I find that Capcom’s characters are actually way more interesting than they appear because of what they do thematically, without some hours long trist into fake drama.

Akuma, for instance, is a character that symbolizes a certain type of player. The player who will fight to win regardless of context. “That guy.” The one who destroys a scene under the weight of his skill. The one who trains to use ridiculous techniques like chopping a mountain in half and kicking a boat in half underwater, that he will NEVER USE on actual living soul without killing them/driving them away. It’s pretty powerful, thematic stuff, it speaks to what I do in game: Actually playing it and interacting with people who bring their own reasons to playing to the game. We define how we perceive characters by how we play as them or fight against them.

I don’t care how cute the game presents Chun Li to me, I hate her because she throws me and I take massive, SPD levels of damage based on the games I play. Story has nothing to do with how I perceive her.

I actually think Nash/Charlie from Street Fighter Alpha looks really stupid, but when I see him in action in the Alpha games, he really seems cool, and it ties in with the idea of losing someone, a player, to tragedy. You’re sad that they won’t be there because they were great and could have been even greater.

That’s just my take on it, apparently Capcom games don’t have “stories” or something because there’s no explicit mode or blah blah.

I just don’t see this as anything other than fearful self-loathing. REUSED ASSETS!? NO WAY, I CAN’T LOVE MY GAME IF IT DOESN’T CONFORM TO SOME HORRIBLE NOTION I HAVE ON GAME DESIGN!

If someone told me “Cyberbots” was just a re-release of Armored Warriors, I’d slap them because Cyberbots is a pretty smart use of perfectly good assets. I love that game, I still play it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CyJh82Oe_4#t=37s

The hang up seems pretty harmful. We really do get the games we deserve, after seeing the outright admission of Seth Killian via the Skullgirls development team just going full transparency on where their money has to go… you’d think people could be a little more forgiving of companies that dig trenches into certain styles of releases. Not forgiving to necessarily keep them going, but forgiving in that they don’t waste their energy, and maybe consider other things… well, bleh I’ll squash that before I make more paragraphs.

I don’t even make games, I’m not a designer, I just enjoy playing them… but even I can tell that with fighting games that are designed by Japanese companies, they realize that owning a game is a premium, and the price points that whole games sell at don’t fully refund the development cost. Arcade owners buying cabinets were, yes, at the mercy of some dirty practices like suicide batteries, the other benefit to companies was being able to sell product at a price point that gives them some kind of reasonable return.

After a friend told me what the normal going rate for a video game was in Japan, I really do get that a lot of these sales practices aren’t wholly understood. Meanwhile… some guy telling you how to make video games, lol. I guess we’re all designers now, ugh.

CVS and even MVC and MVC2 had copy and paste characters sprites from different games (you can tell by this because some if not of all the sprites in the games had different depth in the sprites) which pretty much makes half of your post incorrect and like I said Chrono Phantasma had their sprites redrawn so at the end day its not the same sprites you saw in the past game, they just look like them :).

Look I’m not here to start any ill blood its just that IMHO that you can’t really go saying that BB didn’t have sequel just because the sprites didn’t change espically when other companies have done this. You even said that some sprites were reuse and/or unupdate whether you let it slide or not. Thats still the same sprite from previous games. Also I’m ok with the fact that SF series have true sequels but take those away and you still have more updated versions then sequels. Plus animating 2d characters is really time cosuming so I can seeing why they don’t go a different route with the sprites. But thats just how I view it, nothing personal.

This will be my last post regarding this (seeing how this had lead everyone off topic). For starters I will disregard everything that I have posted in previous comments and will stick to this one. That being said I went though some of your points on the matter and found that you believe that a game is not a true sequel only because a game sticks with one sprite design. Not only is that untrue but its pretty much bias. A game is not a updated and/or re-release of the same game if it share the same sprite design but if the game has the same core game mechanics as the previous titles. SFA, SF3, SF4 are not sequel because they had different sprites, they are sequels because they each have a different game mechanic from one another i.e ism to parries to focus attacks and so on. If SF3 had the same sprite design as SFA but everything else was SF3 in terms of mechanics, balancing, and the parry system. It would still be a sequel to the SFA solely based on that it plays nothing like SFA. It just shares a similar look that has little to no affect on the main game. Same can be said that a game can be a updated/ re-release even if it has new sprites (this is evident with SF2 Turbo HD Remix which has new sprites but is still a remake/re-release of SF2 Turbo and not a sequel). I also found that you contradict yourself on numberous times. You mention that BB use same/updated sprites (BBCP has completely redrawn sprites that have been work from the ground up so none of the old sprites exist in it, you can search Chrono Phantasma Material Collection for the new sketch designs if you want proof) Yet you still consider CvS a true sequel when not only does the game has several recycle sprites but it also recycle two of its main (large scale) game mechanics, the grooves and the three man team (grooves just being the isms from SFA under a different name and the three man team being presented in about every KOF game). All and all I have to say that if you don’t like BB sprites then thats it, but to say that its a update just because of something mininal as sprite design and that its not a sequel while major factors prove that it is. Is pretty much on par with believe that the earth is flat. Well thats my rant I’m pretty much done with this.

Look I’m not trying to start any ill blood its just that in my IMHO that you can’t really bash blazblue for sprites (espically when 2d sprites are really time cosuming to make) and other things you noted when some of the games you mention have done this too. You even said that some of the sprites where reused and/or unupdated whether you let it slide or not its the same sprites from previous games (thats like if I attacked STxT for being a release of SF4 because the use the same character models for the SF characters and use the SF4 engine). Also I’m ok with SF having true sequels but there is aslo the fact that SF has a longer run the BB so of course they’ll have more sequels that different from one another coupled with the fact that some of the games in the series have little to none of the same production teams, but take all those away and you still have more updates the sequels. But that just how I view it, nothing personal.

Don’t know why my early post didn’t show up so this is kind of pointless. Also to comment to your new post So just because they still using the same design (Even though I just mention all the changes that CP through that makes it different then CS in my previous post) Its still not a true sequel… Well thats your call. Just like how its my call to say CVS was on a large scale for reusing assets because they still borrowed sprites from past games instead of drawing completely new sprites. But what ever thats your opinion not mine.

Thing you are missing is that the sprites are redrawn which means any sprites that existed in the older games have been replace by the newer ones and not just an update were as with CvS even though Capcom did draw the SNK character’s sprites several of characters from the Capcom side are still 100% the same sprites from others games that most likely went though a filter to look new and just because a game doesn’t change its sprite design still doesn’t make it a update, the are many factors to game that can make it different from another game things like mechanics and redesigns.

I don’t? Shit I guess my titel as engineer and BA in gamedesign and development have ill trained me.

I’m sure we can all keep it civil ;].

Also SF4 had a arcade that later had several characters added to the console (cammy, fei long, playable gouken etc) Also SSF4 3DS is different from SSF4 console seeing how it had that whole battling statues thing that wasn’t present in the console. Also changes to charcaters offense and defense is an update soley for the fact that it is a “change” (and a large scale one at that) so SSF4AE 2012 also count.

yup the very first SF4 game started off in arcades with only 17 playable characters (seth and gouken being unplayable bosses at the time.) Then when then game was release on console they add 6 more characters and made seth and gouken playable which made a total of 26 playable characters. the time release was probably for the arcade version.

It’s just amazing that you feel the need to cherry pick what you call re-releases

Console still use wifi though so there is still away to implement that to other console it doesn’t have to be a roam around thing for it to work. Plus there were combos you preform in 3DS that weren’t possible to perform in the console version (explain being that you could create combos using the guile’s sonic boom in the 3DS version that were physically impossible to do on the console version because of his charge time). As for AE, that game still had a disc release for people who didn’t buy SF4 or SSF4 that wanted to get the game with out the hassle of DLC so even if AE2012 doesn’t count that still leaves the SF4 series with five releases (arcade version, console version, SSF4, 3D edition, and AE).

You forgot SFIV for iOS.