Affectionate Diary

Or, to be technically correct, rebalancing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Capcom is re-releasing Super Street Fighter II on XBLA, it’s redrawing the sprites (!!!) and it’s taking years of tournament play experience and using it to make the game even better. To be specific, David Sirlin is doing that. His blog starts here -

http://blog.capcom.com/archives/542

I’m not even sure why they’re doing it. They could just have taken the original game and put it out on XBLA and everyone would have bought it anyway. They must be doing it because they care about their games.

It’s not often you get to say that about a games company.

HOW EXCITING IS THIS?!! I remember when I first played SNK’s Garou: Mark of the Wolves. I was astounded to find out that all the characters used the same commands to activate their special moves - quarter circles, pretty much. That’s not right, though! That means that pretty much anyone could play the game and appreciate a level of tactical play. Anyone could “be” any character, not just the character whose moveset they could do. I remember thinking that that was a step in the right direction. Nobody really took any more steps like that, though, and 2D fighting games fell into their hardcore niche and thus obscurity. Well, they maybe already had, it’s hard to call.

So it’s looking quite exciting. And with sticks on the Xbox becoming more and more common, it’s looking like XBLA might be the start of a fighting games rebirth. The irony being, of course, that over the internet is the worst possible way to play a fighting game.

If only there was a fighting game where all the characters’ moves were triggered by a button press and a direction, or maybe two directions at most. Then everyone could play on an even footing, physically. Skill would be determined by tactical play, not wrist dexterity. You could even include one obscenely complex character to satisfy those that need to practise for hours each day. And what if it was in 3D, and you could dress your character up? Oh wait, there is a game like that.

VIRTUA FIGHTER.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 6:04 am and is filed under Gaming Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.