Tag Archives: street fighter

The Elegant Design of Suntory’s Virtual Youtuber

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There’s a 50/50 chance that saying “the Japanese beverage company Suntory has their own official Virtual Youtuber” would come as a surprise. But the blue-haired “Suntory Nomu” is real (in a sense), and I actually like her design quite a bit. What really stands out about Nomu’s appearance, relative to other VTubers, is how simple and subdued it is. A white dress with blue highlights stands in sharp contrast to the vast majority of Hololive and Nijisanji, who seem to be created with a maximalist philosophy. This latter approach brings to mind broader discussions about character design in media.

(Side note: I’m not sure I need to mention this, but in case it matters, I am not endorsing Suntory products in any way. I generally like their drinks well enough, but that’s about it.)

When looking at Nomu relative to the Hololive members she’s streamed with, the difference is clear. While both have attractive designs, Takane Lui and Aki Rosenthal have all these details, adornments, and colors, resulting in rather complex/complicated appearances. There are practical reasons to make them this way, of course: They need to be immediately distinct and visually appealing to prospective viewers. Rigging/modeling them for animation is a one-time thing, as opposed to needing to be draw them anew every time in the vein of anime or manga. And the expectation is that people will stare at them for extended periods. VTubers need to communicate a good portion of who they are immediately, as viewers can’t be expected to dive into an extensive backstory—and often VTuber backstories are helpful suggestions, at best. 

The decision to go maximalist reminds me of fan discussion surrounding fighting game characters. Fighting games, especially ones not based on an existing property, share a number of similarities with VTubing. There’s no prior context for people to get attached to (as they might in an animation or comic), so having them catch the eye right away while also communicating how they play is important. There’s still quite a bit of range—Compare Ryu or Chun-li from Street Fighter to Sol Badguy or Dizzy from Guilty Gear (especially pre-STRIVE)—but criticizing a fighting game character for being “boring” is typically more about looks and presentation of attacks. That’s actually a big difference with Virtual Youtubers: It does ultimately come down to personality.

But it makes me wonder if significantly simplified designs like Suntory Nomu couldn’t thrive despite the general trends against them. Maybe it’s because so many designs take an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach that Nomu’s aesthetics stand out more. Could there be a trend back down to relatively more minimalist designs in VTubing, fighting games, and other similar areas? It’s something I’d like to see, if only because I’m curious how it would all play out among the fans themselves.

What if Luke Is Not the Actual Main Character of Street Fighter 6?

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Street Fighter 6 draws ever closer, and standing at the poster child of this new game is the American MMA fighter Luke. He was even originally introduced in Street Fighter V as the bridge to the anticipated sequel. But as prominent as Luke is, I actually think another new character might be the true protagonist of Street Fighter VI: the black female ninja, Kimberly.

The new Street Fighter leans heavily into an urban street aesthetic, most notably in the use of spray paint/graffiti as reflective of hip hop culture. While this motif been around to certain degrees since the very first Street Fighter (like on the title screen), here it’s a defining part of the look and feel of SF6. And if you look at all the new characters, only Kimberly incorporates spray paint in her moveset. She combines it with her ninjutsu training under Guy from Final Fight, taking the old and giving it a fresh coat.

I’m entertaining this possibility because I see it as a way for the Street Fighter franchise to stealthily push a forward-looking diversity that celebrates its international fandom while simultaneously shielding itself from the pitchforks of overly sensitive cultural conservatives who are afraid of having their games not be represented by a conventionally muscular manly man. Luke almost feels like a Trojan horse: “Look over here at this blond American tough guy! Isn’t he what you want?” Meanwhile, Kimberly thoroughly embodies the spirit of SF6. 

And that’s on top of having Ryu, Ken, and Chun-li still around. I could be completely wrong in the end, but even if I am, I think Kimberly is already a breakout character among a crowded roster of excellent new designs. She’ll at least wind up being the Chun-Li of Street Fighter 6.

“Every Game Has to Be Entertaining”

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I’m happy to live in a time where large numbers of people can watch competitive video game competitions. I love that fans can appreciate the skill, effort, and thought that is present in both the games themselves and the players who are vying to be #1. I’ve even grown fond of Twitch chat as the English equivalent of Nico Nico Douga’s scrolling text, for the way that it can provide a shared experience for esports enthusiasts. However, there inevitably comes a time when whatever is on streams is deemed “boring” by its viewers, and the chat starts to turn against the game. If done often enough, it can drag down the spirits of others, including those invested and excited in what’s going on who might start to be convinced by the Twitch chat that what they’re watching is indeed better suited for chronic insomniacs. What I find is that it creates this culture of expectation that demands that all competitive matches be super entertaining or else.

To be clear, some games are less exciting than others, or at least do not require as much investment into a game to get hooked on or appreciate its adrenaline-pumping qualities. Some games are more prone to slower paced matches. Almost all games will at some point have bad players fighting against other bad players, and when two players clam up and don’t do anything, then it becomes boring. However, I find the need for constant excitement to be rather unfair to esports as an entity. If we look at traditional sports, even big, exciting things like basketball or soccer, not all games are going to be nail biters, or have people jumping out of their seats.

In some cases, I think the demand for immediate gratification in terms of excitement also causes viewers to actively prevent themselves from enjoying what might be an interesting and engaging match that’s not as overtly electrifying. The Simpsons once even made a joke about this:

Compared to high-pace, high-scoring games common in the US, soccer might seem slow and full of people doing “nothing,” when in fact the strategy, as well as the ebb and flow of moving the ball back and forth across the field is something that can appeal to soccer fans who understand the game. Of course, some soccer games will also be more or less exciting than others, especially if you factor in the personal investment or national pride of something like the World Cup, but I still don’t believe that people expect every single game to be action-packed.

I think good commentary can play a significant role in helping people to appreciate both those games that are actually just boring, and those that are exciting provided you understand what’s going on. For the lower-level matches where the players aren’t quite skilled enough to show a game at its best, commentators can (and the best often do) highlight the depths of these games that these inexperienced competitors could be accessing if they brought up their skills. For higher-level matches where two titans (or groups of titans in some cases) are coming up against each other, conveying the fast-paced, involved decision-making and physicality of a match can only do good things.

Fighting game commentators should be praised in this respect, because I find that the best have been able to accurately convey tense situations that might not appear to be exciting on the surface. The best example I can think of is Grand Finals of Ultra Street Fighter IV at Canada Cup 2015. Commentators UltraChen work to emphasize that the simple act of walking back and forth in Street Fighter at the highest levels is filled with intensity:

That said, people will think what they want to think, and trying to convince them that a game is actually exciting might not necessarily mesh with how they view the very idea of “excitement.” At the end of the day, this isn’t inherently a bad thing—people should be able to hold opinions of their own on what they enjoy and don’t enjoy. This also isn’t to say that commentators should just fake hype all the time in the hopes of deceiving someone into believing that a game is exciting all the time, and in fact I believe that potentially adds to the culture of demand for excitement. Rather, what I simply want to see is everyone who loves a game, from fans to commentators, strive to grow appreciation for a game in various forms while resisting the ravenous need for action and excitement (without necessarily abandoning those factors).

Pre-Evo Thoughts: Video Games vs. Chess Analogies

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Introduction: “It’s like Chess, but…”

One of the most common ways to try and explain the appeal of competitive video games is to make a comparison to chess. Starcraft is “real-time chess.” Smash Bros. Brawl players used to explain the importance of decision-making by saying the game was more “chess-like” compared to Melee. While I haven’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone called Dota 2 “chess where each piece is controlled by a different player.” Making the connection is essentially shorthand for highlighting a game a “thinking man’s endeavor.”

The accuracy of the comparison is often limited to the most basic similarities, and tends to fall apart under greater scrutiny. Despite that being the case, however, I find that there is another kind of chess comparison that can open up greater understanding of how we view competition through games. Namely, if we think about not just the western version of chess, but also the many variations of chess and chess-like games that exist in the world, then it can help us understand and appreciate the unique qualities of video games that are from the same series but have differing gameplay.

As a note, I am not an expert on chess or any chess-like game. There will not be any high level examples, and most of the comparisons will be based on descriptions I’ve found from others. I’m also knowledgeable but not amazing at any competitive games I mention, so keep that in mind as well.

Chess vs. Shogi: Similar Games, Different Dynamics

Chess and shogi (“Japanese chess”) have a lot in common. Both are turn-based games played on large, tile-based boards where the goal is trap the enemy king in an inescapable situation. Both have different types of pieces, each of which have different rules for moving, with the most common pieces (the pawns) having the fewest choices and the strongest pieces being much rarer. However, there are differences of opinion as to which game is better, and they hinge on a few key elements.

The queen: chess’s mightiest warrior

Chess pieces have more freedom of movement compared to ones in shogi. Chess has two rooks and two bishops on each side, who can move as far as the board (and any interfering pieces) can take them. It has two knights who can jump in that characteristic “L” shape. And it has the queen, which can move across the board in eight directions. In contrast, shogi pieces can cover much less ground. Not only is shogi board bigger (10 x 10 as opposed to chess’s 8 x 8), but players get only one rook and one bishop, and there’s no such thing as a queen. Shogi has pieces that chess doesn’t, but all of them are much more restricted in terms of their mobility.

The gold general in shogi is extremely powerful, but no chess queen

The result of this difference is that chess emphasizes the center of the board as a major point of contention because the pieces simply have more movement options. Shogi pieces take more turns to get from one place to another, but this also means skirmishes can happen all over the board. Also, whereas the king in chess is seen as a relatively weak piece because it can “only” move one space at a time, in shogi the king is a fearsome fighter because of its relative versatility.

Example in Esports

In spite of their similarities, chess is a game where greater range and possibility of movement produces one range of play, while shogi’s shorter range per piece produces another. They’re actually different enough that a person can love one but hate the other. One can find a similar relationships in other games in the same “families,” of which I’ll be listing a couple below.

Take the Street Fighter series and the Marvel vs. series, for example. Movement in Street Fighter games are traditionally very restricted. One walks back and forth and maybe has the ability to do a small dash, but jumping is a risky commitment and the game stays very grounded. In Marvel Vs. games, however, characters can make massive leaps, fire large beams that cover most of the screen, and dismantle each other quickly. Even though they’re both fighting games, tweaking certain elements means one could be great in the former type but awful at the latter.

Even games within the same series can be as dissimilar as chess and shogi. When discussing what makes Smash Bros. Melee such a beloved game among its fans, one common reason given is “movement options.” Not only do platforms allow for vertical movement, but a plethora of advanced inputs exist for players to practice—wavedashing, dash dancing, ledge dashing, etc. Other games in the Smash Bros. franchise, such as the more recent Super Smash Bros. for 3DS & Wii U (aka Smash 4) have nowhere near as much range of movement, but small steps matter more. Melee top player Mang0 has mentioned in the past that walking (as opposed to dashing or wavedashing) is under-utilized in Melee. When looking at Smash 4, walking is incredibly common.

Is larger range of movement and prerequisite to a better game? The answer is that it’s largely a matter of personal preference, as opposed to any sort of objective standard. Take this 2007 post from the chess blog The Only Winning Move:

I do think [shogi] is probably more complex than chess …

Naturally, “more complex” doesn’t necessarily translate into “more fun” …. I much prefer Chess…. My favorite Chess game, in fact, is one of Bobby Fischer’s, which he describes as a “lightningbolt,” in which he absolutely castrates a fussy opponent who spends so much time setting up the perfect defense net that Fischer is able to just zap him with an unexpected sacrifice. That kind of thing happens a lot less often in Shogi, and this makes it less thrilling … Chess seems more integrated and elegant to me. It’s a beautiful thing in the hands of skilled player. I never get the same feeling of being in the presence of beauty watching Shogi players at work….

All the same, at the end of the day I would rather play Shogi – and that’s simply because it’s mindfood….

Chess is more fun to watch, and more fun to play for amusement. It’s a truly beautiful thing when done right – and thus better appreciated as a spectator sport. But I ultimately like Shogi better.

And Still More

If the chess vs. shogi comparison seems too simplistic in terms of how games of a similar genre can differ, keep in mind that there are many variations of chess-type games out there as well. Xiangqi (“Chinese chess”), for example, is famous for having a very explosive mid-game, as well as obstacles to get around in the form of rivers. Perhaps your preferred game resembles xiangqi more than chess or shogi.
Let’s Appreciate the Differences

Games can be “chess-like,” but it’s potentially better to bring that up relative to other forms of chess so that discussion can be more fruitful. The examples I’ve given do not map perfectly to chess and shogi, but the point is less to find a perfect analogy and more to show how games that can look the same on the surface can produce very different games that can carry different appeals to their respective player bases.

 

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Otakon 2016 Interview: LeSean Thomas

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I had the pleasure of interviewing LeSean Thomas at Otakon 2016, where he was debuting his new animated short, Cannon Busters. Though we didn’t talk much about Cannon Busters itself, I was pleased to find out about his life as an artist, his philosophy on art and anime, and even his family.

Ogiue Maniax: So you grew up in the Bronx, and I assume that you had some sort of arts education. Could you describe what it was like to grow up as an artist?

LeSean Thomas: It was fairly okay. I stayed indoors quite a lot. I used to sketch a lot, sketch in school. You know, I grew up when hip-hop was growing up, and so a lot of stuff happened in the 80s in New York City. I thought it was cool. I had a lot of colleagues, a lot of friends in my apartment building, who I’d sketch with from time to time. I had a lot of friends in class who I could sketch with. I was into video games and sketching.

I think I decided to make it a career when I became a teenager. I moved to upstate NY for a period of time, to Middletown, and when I came back to the Bronx I decided to become an illustrator. I enrolled in a school that focused on the arts.

OM: Which high school?

LT: Julia Richmond High School. It was in Midtown Manhattan.

That was sort of my circle, and by the time I got back after I graduated high school I decided I wanted to become a comic book artist. But it was tough because there was a lot of competition in New York City—Marvel and DC. But I was also really influenced by animation, Japanese animation.

I landed a couple of opportunities that led me to work in animation production, and one thing led to another. I got onto a couple of big shows, and I was able to use that to build up momentum to work on more shows and create opportunities for myself.

OM: More and more young kids, teenagers, college students, are embracing anime and manga as part of how they get into art. I also know there’s concern that anime and manga are teaching the wrong lessons.

LT: What kind of wrong lessons?

OM: Like it’s teaching people to draw the wrong way or look at art the wrong way. And I’m sure already from your question to me you probably don’t agree with that thinking.

LT: Yeah, I don’t.

OM: So I’m wondering, what would you think is the best way to use anime and manga in an arts education?

LT: I think you should do whatever you want. I haven’t ever heard anyone say to me that copying Picasso or Michelangelo, or Italian or French artists perfectly, is wrong. We get into this really weird, shaky territory where we start becoming ethnocentric towards specific countries and their art history. I think a lot of that is based off the fact that the US was a European colony, and our history is based off of European history, and our art history is European. What’s wrong with India? What’s wrong with Mumbai? What’s wrong with China. I think that, respectfully, it’s just the way it is, but I don’t think that a lot of thought is given into how we judge children who copy the styles of other countries, as opposed to what our curriculum forces us to teach, which is European art history.

I know a lot of graphic designers who are brilliant who don’t study European stuff, they study Japanese art. When you’re in a school, you’re programmed and taught to be an employee and not an auteur, and I think that plays a big role in how teachers choose to enforce their ideals onto students, who are very impressionable at a young age. I’ve also noticed, in my experience, that a lot of teachers are graduates who couldn’t find jobs themselves. You have this cyclical dynamic happening where teachers who don’t have a lot of experience are telling kids what they should and shouldn’t draw.

How did Murakami learn how to draw? When you’re telling kids how to draw, you’re telling them how to interpret art. It’s not right. When you’re telling them how to respond to art, you’re robbing them of the privilege of interpreting art themselves, and interpreting how they learn. So I respectfully disagree with the logic that a child shouldn’t learn how to draw anime because of the historic implications behind that.

OM: You worked on The Boondocks, and it’s clear from the comic strip that Aaron McGruder is also very influenced by anime and manga. Is your mutual interest in how you came onto the show?

LT: Certainly my drawing style played a big role in choosing me to help him develop the early designs with the crew.

OM: The Boondocks as a comic strip was pretty forward thinking, advanced, and progressive, but the comic strip medium is a pretty conservative place. So when moving the series over to Adult Swim and an animated setting, was it a very conscious decision on your part and the staff’s part to push the envelope much further?

LT: No, that was actually Aaron’s mandate. I may be wrong, but I remember a rumor from around 2004, 2005—from someone in our circle—that Mike Lazzo, the head of Adult Swim, played a role in having Aaron push the envelope. So when I came on board, that was already a demand that came from on high. I was pretty detached from that. I was more focused on the visuals. A lot of that envelope pushing was in the writing. That was the stat quo on the production; we knew what we were getting into.

But as far as the decision from Aaron going from the conservative comic strip to the extreme in the animated form, I’m not privy to that. But there is a rumor that Adult Swim was encouraging that as well.

OM: You worked on Cannon Busters, and you mentioned previously about your friendship with Thomas Romain. You come from different cultural backgrounds, but you seem to have a lot in common. So what’s it like working with him?

LT: Well, Thomas is a westerner, whether we want to admit it or not. He speaks English, and while there are some things he doesn’t get about American culture, he’s still a westerner. That’s part of our common bond, as is our need to collaborate internationally. I think we’re kindred spirits. I told him that that, because of him leaving France to go to Japan and me leaving America to go to Korea for pretty much the same reason.

I like to use Thomas’s phrase, “world animation.” It’s not anime, and it’s not American animation. It’s world animation because of the nature of how it’s put together. I really respect Thomas. I like him a lot. I think he’s one of the most talented guys. He’s an incredible draftsman, and one of the most incredible thinkers. I’m going to see him next month when I go to Tokyo. He’s one of my favorite people.

OM: You worked in Korea, you’ve worked with the Japanese studio Satelight [on Cannon Busters], and you’ve worked with American companies. What’s it like working with different studios in different countries?

LT: In America, it’s pre-production and post-production, and that’s it for most shows. There are a lot of shows that are being animated in Flash in America, but most daytime animated shows are done in Korea.

Korea doesn’t do pre-production or post-production, so they’re just main production, largely. And Japan does all of it. And that’s the difference, at least in my personal experience. I could be wrong, but that’s the gist of what I got.

OM: You spent time in South Korea in the animation business. I know that Korea doesn’t create a lot of animation in pre-production or post-production, but I know there is a desire by South Korea, by the government and the animation business, to be known as an animation powerhouse.

LT: It’s mostly service work.

OM: Do you think there is a strong potential for them to break out and become their own thing?

LT: I think so. I don’t know if the problems that were there when I was in Korea are the same as the ones now, but I know the trick is to find venture capitalists who are interested in and see value in animation production beyond government funding and subsidization. I’m not sure if that’s something they’re risk-averse towards. When I was there back in 2009, 2010, there was a massive aversion towards taking a risk on animation over video games. And I’m not sure if that’s still an issue, but I definitely think they have the potential to stand out. I mean, why not? They animate most of our shows, and I think a lot of it has to do with just finding alternative revenue streams to finance original properties and projects.

It seems like there’s a slow coming back at the feature level, but it seems like everything sort of fizzled out once Wonderful Days aka Sky Blue died. I think that scared the industry in general, made everyone say, “Well, we’re not going to take this risk anymore.” I’m just waiting for a resurgence.

There are a few animated feature films that have come out in the past one or two years, like King of Pigs. It’s like, wow, they’re doing features now. They’re in film festivals.

Overall, do I think they have the potential? Of course. If they can do Sky Blue, they can do anything. I just think they have to figure out internally within the industry, within their government and culture, how to create a platform for creating original content. And they also need to motivate young kids. A lot of kids are going into game design instead of animation because of work labor and pay and all that.

OM: My last question is this: Your little brother is Sanford Kelly, the fighting game pro. Growing up, did you notice that he had a talent for fighting games?

LT: Yeah, he learned all his gaming from me [laughs].

Me, him, my older brother Kelby, and my two sisters Valtvaia and Shavon, we all lived in the same apartment with my mom and my grandmother. So we all came up, and video gaming was one of our major bonding aspects. We gamed hard. We played everything, PlayStation, Dreamcast, Turbo Grafx-16, Super Nintendo. That’s all we did. So by the time Sanford turned 18, we were so hardcore into it, we would go to the local arcade shops—back before there was only Chinatown Fair, in the mid-90s—and hit the sticks.

He just got really good, and he built up a circle in Chinatown Fair, in that area. I kind of moved on to animation and left the city to move to LA. I used to get on him about it. “You need to focus on other stuff.” But then when I started seeing him winning money and awards and stuff like that…

Gaming culture’s still relatively brand new. Talking about the early 2000s, where there were legit funded tournaments, he came up in that circuit where the Justin Wong and Daigo era was pretty much coming up. Now it’s a big thing. It’s on ESPN.

When he was coming up, I was a bit nervous about it, but then when I saw how well he was doing, and how he was creating a name for himself, I embraced it.

I get that quite often. “Oh my god, you’re brothers with Sanford Kelly, that’s so cool.”

OM: It’s kind of unlikely—well maybe not unlikely, but it’s interesting to have two different, talented brothers in two very different fields.

I’ll be honest, I’ve been forced over the years respect the game circuit. Because, like many people, if it’s not sponsored or it’s not on TV, then it’s still a subculture. And now it’s a major thing, so now it’s common for kids that I run into to say that they love Street Fighter and that they know who Sanford Kelly is. It’s still kind of weird, but it’s still really cool.

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[Apartment 507] What’s Up with Anime Characters in Fighting Games?

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This time on Apartment 507, I explore the idea of the “anime fighter” and all of its surrounding meanings and associations. Hope you like air dashing!

Walking, Talking, and Running: How Fighting Games Resemble Language

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On an October episode of IGN Esports Weekly, the Fighting Game Community’s Mike Ross and Smash Bros. Melee statistician Tafokints briefly discussed the differences between Melee and Street Fighter. It’s an interesting comparison that’s worth watching as a whole, but what I want to focus on are the following two statements (emphasis mine):

Tafokints: A Melee player is going to really focus on mechanics, right? Concepts like stage control and footsies become second nature in the game, because you can get away with just playing fast, and getting to mid to high level. I would say you could even get to Top 32 at a national [tournament] just by being technical, and having little understanding of the fundamental concepts of competitive gaming.

Mike Ross: Learning [Street Fighter] made [Bobby Scar] a way better Melee player…. He didn’t realize how smart of a game Street Fighter was…. He had to think about his opponent so much more in Street Fighter, like you do in Melee…. You’re not running around the stage, you’re really up close to your opponent the whole time, so you’re constantly having a dialogue with your opponent…. Once you answer to yourself what can you do, the next best question is, “What does he want?”

Just to be clear, both parties believe that their respective games have technical requirements and require smart play at the highest levels. While Melee has this large mechanical wall to climb, once you’re at the summit matches between top players can be considered intriguing debates featuring the sharpest of wits. For example, take a look at top Melee player C9 Mang0’s review of a Grand Finals match versus another one of the “gods” of Melee, MVG Mew2King. In it, he goes over the intricate dialogue that occurs at super high speeds and involves rapid-fire decisions:

In this respect, I want to posit the following: if fighting games are like a dialogue or a debate, then learning the mechanics of a game is like learning a language in the first place, and in this respect Melee is an enormously difficult language to learn. It’s like reading written Chinese, or learning Icelandic (which I hear is quite the challenge): certainly within the realm of possibility to become fluent, but mastery requires dedicated study and practice. As you improve at a language, it’s like the world opens up to you. You go from recognizing words to being able to read sentences, then novels and poetry. You discover the intricacies of how to piece thoughts together to form more complex ideas. This, I think, is where much of Melee‘s appeal comes from. To fans, wavedashing, dash dancing, L-canceling, DI, shine canceling, Scar Jumping, and more aren’t just Smash Bros. lexicon but the very grammar and vocabulary that lead to infinite possibilities of expression.

fc063347f3c29399fe8bd70ba773cbe5Basically like learning Fox

If that’s the case, however, then many players never truly learn to debate with their opponents. Those who consider the mental aspect of the game from the start will have the opportunity, of course, and that mental interaction is pretty much required at the tip-top level of Melee, but let’s go back to what Tafokints and Mike Ross had to say. Though there’s an upper limit, in Melee you can become a decent competitive threat without ever learning the mind games, but in Street Fighter you are taught to focus on mastering the art of dialogue from the very beginning. In contrast, what Melee will more often amount to is a debate where someone who is fully fluent in its language is overpowering someone who’s still just learning how to string a sentence together.

Again, to a Melee player, this is the charm of their chosen game: it is a complex and difficult yet beautiful language. Melee is a subject worthy of aesthetic appreciation, and those who reject it or see it as unnecessarily convoluted are simply not putting in the necessary work. With that being said, where Melee in a sense falls apart is when a player or indeed a game designer wants the central goal of their game and improvement at their game to be not so much the continual mastery of grammar, but a firm focus on the thrill of the debate or dialogue itself. Even if it is a simpler language, even if it takes less to learn overall, if one is able to immediately engage in the act of dialoguing, then that competitive game has achieved something rewarding. Rather than leaving that aspect to only the most skilled and talented players, it now becomes something that more people can experience. This, indeed, is where games such as Divekick, Smash Bros. Brawl, and Smash Bros. for Wii U come into play.

In the YouTube comments of the non-extended version (I don’t recommend you actually take a look), a lot of the debate descends into whether or not Melee is a “real” fighting game or not. The worn-out arguments of it being a party game without anything in common with “true fighters” are brought out, and in turn many of the defenders of Melee fall into these old traps. They will talk about how Melee is actually this enormously difficult game to learn and master because of its technical barriers, and will wear it as a badge of pride, while simultaneously talking down the other Smash games for lacking in this quality. They have essentially cornered themselves into a position where they are playing by their opponent’s rules. Whether by ignorance or by intentional scheming (most likely the former), Melee‘s detractors attack its integrity, but many of its supporters only know how to respond with, “But look at how intricate our language truly is! Can’t you appreciate that?” while failing to take into account that what some see as the true beauty of a language is when it leads to fruitful conversation.

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THE SECRET ORIGIN OF GENSHIKEN? Hi Score Girl

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Hi Score Girl is the story of a beautiful romance where a young gamer who meets a girl who’s even better at Street Fighter II than he is. Though antagonistic at first, they begin to develop a friendship, and eventually something more. If you ever get the chance to read it, I recommend checking it out, as does my good friend Dave of Kawaiikochans fame. It’s a shame that the anime adaptation (and a lot of other things) got cut down at the knees due to SNK arguing copyright shenanigans.

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I noticed a few things about the girl in the story. First, she has long, thick black hair. Second, when she plays Street Fighter II, she picks mainly big, bald, and/or burly characters: Zangief, Dhalsim, E. Honda. In fact, when she plays Final Fight, she selects Haggar. Third, her name is Ohno.

Hmmmmm.

I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence or what, but I’m looking forward to the possibility that one Ohno might cosplay as the other. Also, now that I think about it, the Ohno in Hi Score Girl is more like a cross between Ohno and Sue, given her violent and eccentric temperament.

Smash Bros. vs Traditional Fighters and What Lies at the Core of Fighting Games

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Fighting games at this point are decades-old. While it’s debatable what can be considered the very first fighting game, what is indisputable is which game is responsible for popularizing the genre: Street Fighter II. That game, as well as all of its upgrades, are the standard by which all other fighters are judged, and it’s had a profound effect on how people discuss fighting games in terms of gameplay and strategy. However, if Street Fighter II is the archetype, there are a number of deviations from it, and one that’s become increasingly popular in recent years has been the Super Smash Bros. series.

Whereas in the past these two communities, traditional fighters and Smash, remained fairly separate (and one even unfairly mocked the other for not being a “real” fighting game), over the past year with the release of the latest Smash Bros. games, this has begun to change. One curious outcome of this has been that, when it comes to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, a number of notable traditional fighting game community (FGC) members have taken to it, such as EVO Champion Infiltration and commentators Ultra David and James Chen, but it has also received negative attention from many players of Super Smash Bros. Melee, what is widely considered the most technical and mechanically difficult game in the franchise. The reason I believe this disparity exists is not only because of a difference in terms of the games themselves, but also a difference in how these respective communities have argued for what makes their games great.

The arguments made by many Melee supporters as to why it’s the superior game tend to revolve around the slew of difficult techniques that expand the range of possible moves available, as well as a heavier emphasis on free-form combos. The idea is that, while Melee is simple on the surface, being a game that was intentionally designed to be more accessible than the traditional fighting game, it in fact hides layers and layers of complexity. What might appear to be a game that is competitively limited due to its simplicity is in fact only the first step into a demanding realm of technical depth and discovery. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U lacks many “advanced techniques” and is slower-paced, and is therefore seen as an inferior game.

Perhaps this reasoning is a product of the way in which the FGC would dismiss Smash Bros. as a whole as “kiddie games,” but, whatever the case, this is the rhetoric that has been built up from Melee, that simplicity makes way for complexity, and that complexity equals depth. In the documentary The Smash Brothers, Melee commentator Prog likens the difficulty of Melee to Starcraft, a game that is also known for its mechanical difficulty that leads to a wider range of options for a player, with the idea that this leads to a kind of expressive freedom (though it should also be noted that the documentary’s director, Samox, chose to include that in the first place).

EG|PPMD—recent champion of Apex 2015, the largest Melee tournament ever—shares this sentiment:

EG|PPMD: Melee allows me to express myself on a very profound level. I am not just playing the character, I am my character. I am not just playing against my opponent, I am communicating with that person deeply and getting to know them on a very personal level and conversing on that level with the game as a medium.

Said differently, the depth and speed of the game allow me to really bring myself out. Competition is also incredibly fun! I would be really surprised if another game gave me this feeling, but that would be awesome if it did happen.

In contrast, the most prominent arguments as to why traditional fighting games are great take the opposite angle. Traditional fighting games are known for being difficult to learn on the surface, due to specialized inputs (quarter-circle forward + punch makes Ryu throw a hadouken, while just hitting the “special move” button for Mario makes him throw a fireball) and complex combos, but the prevailing philosophies are of the mind that the ideal core of fighting games, what makes them really worthwhile and competitive, is a foundation of simplicity and elegance, and that this is what leads to depth.

While the above video is super corny, it reflects the lessons taught by great players such as Tomo Ohira, who is featured in that video and is often argued to be the first king of Street Fighter II in its earliest days. For another example, take the fighting game player turned game designer David Sirlin, who argues that what makes fighting games games truly interesting is the level of mental interactions that come from “yomi,” or reading the mind of the opponent. Others such as Ultra David have argued that yomi isn’t as important as developing and executing a strategy, but the emphasis is still on the idea that technical complexity should ideally make way for something more basic and fundamental. This is what drives Divekick, a stripped-down fighting game that attempts to get to the core of fighters by limiting players to two buttons and emphasizing spacing and reads.

Although what I’ve shown above are not universally held beliefs by either community, I wanted more to show that they exist and are prominent parts of each community’s identity when it comes to their games. I also don’t want to give the impression that the communities believe that complexity vs. simplicity and their relationship with depth is black and white in either direction, nor that the games necessarily reflect the philosophies described above 100%. Rather, it’s more about how people visualize depth, and why the idea of depth becomes so subjective.

As for why all of this matters, there are two points to consider as to why traditional FGC members might praise Super Smash Bros. for Wii U whereas Melee enthusiasts might look down upon it. First, much like Divekick, the Super Smash Bros. games with their simplified commands have already removed a surface layer of complexity, and to many experienced fighting game players this is seen as a positive. Complexity hides an elegance of simplicity and what makes fighting games truly beautiful. These players want to introduce this beauty to as many people as possible, and Smash Bros. allows this.

Second, while previous games in the Super Smash Bros. franchise were developed by its director Sakurai Masahiro with a team that was more experienced in other genres, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U was developed with the help of Namco, which is known for fighting games such as Tekken and Soul Calibur. Although there haven’t been any specific statements made on this matter, I believe that the development team, rather than viewing Melee as their template, looked more to conventional fighting games for ways to add competitive depth to Super Smash Bros. and that the mechanics of the new game reflect this. In discussions with Dave Cabrera, a friend and someone much more knowledgeable about fighting games than I am, he had a similar impression. Ultra David and James Chen also state how they find Melee to be a more momentum-based game similar to the also-unconventional Marvel vs. Capcom series while Smash Wii U is more positional, similar to Street Fighter games.

The result is a clash of perspectives. On the one hand, the Melee community, which has developed its conception for what makes a good competitive game based on Melee and the idea of hidden complexity, sees Super Smash Bros. for Wii U as lacking many of the elements that made Melee great, and that it is therefore a lesser experience. On the other hand, the fighting game community, which bases its standards for fighting games on Street Fighter II and the idea of hidden simplicity, has in this new Super Smash Bros. something that exemplifies that concept while also catering more to their tastes. Whatever the reasoning, it’s clear that there are two different philosophies at work driving discussion.

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A Problem-Free Philosophy

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If someone asks me who I prefer to use in Street Fighter, at first I tell them, “Don’t worry about it. Really.”

But if they insist, I just say to them, “Akuma, Makoto.”