To the OP, I think Rival Schools/Project Justice might be what you’re talking about. I mean it isn’t exactly a 2D game (2.5D I think?) but it plays like a typical 2D game and has no walls. It looks pretty interesting at high-level play too.
Found some footage, skimmed through. Looks like there’s more than one level that works this way.
It seems to be a whole lot what i think it is the jumping equivalent of crouching light
Its not a fighter but Odin Sphere had circular stages. They would just loop around infinitly.
Dunno how this would benefit a traditional 2d fighter but maybe something with a really high focus on mobilty might work? Your characters would have to be able to chase down really quickly in order for the game to not devolve into one big game of life lead>run away.
Your advancing options should deffinitly be stronger the your retreating options in this kind of a set up i think.
When I first played vsav, I was mindfucked that anakaris went through one side of the stage and appeared on the other. Granted that option really doesn’t fare well compared to being able to pushblock or even have a non shitty guard cancel, but I imagine a more off kilter game could try to benefit from expanding that concept. Like if the stage was about looping portals on both sides, imagine chucking fireballs have it it come around or playing a game of lethal league where the ball sometimes came from the other side after going through the wall. Wouldn’t work in a traditional fighter but if the game was built around it, I would guess a lot of shenanigans would come into play like fullscreen cross up setups, from the back fireballs like Raiden used to have, or everyone basically having the option of doing scorpions teleport when cornered. Though you would definitely need to build around more mobile characters and/or the ability to eliminate fireballs, because having rampant fireballs running around a whole match could make astral vision + hidden missiles look tame.
there is an inherent flaw in not having corners, and that is the ability to run away infinitely. the classic downside to giving up ground/backing up is just that; giving up position and getting closer to an unfavorable position.
the only option to deal with this is to allow for forward motion faster than backwards motion. in many cases this would make the main function of the game weaker, since backing up is still important.
You say that and I’m not agreeing or disagreeing, but most if not all fighting games have faster forward walk/dash/run/air-dash speed than backwards.
they actually aren’t that big of a difference or aren’t completely effective. SF4 has jump back which is very similar speeds to jump forward, dash forward, and faster than walk forward. could be caught with special moves that move forward but those are usually unsafe.
marvel has back plinkdash. character specific, and yes forward movement can be faster [because teleports] but it is emphatically possible to retreat
most anime games have a decently fast IAD. yes you can dash/run to advance.
so yes, forward movement is faster than backwards movement in probably every game, so i should revise.
a lot of retreating usually comes with less risk; the main risk being cornering yourself. remove corners and you have to make the risk/reward of retreating swing back in the advancer’s favor to balance out the loss of the corner.
the other option is to make it impossible to retreat.
A game like this could work it would just need stuff like Arcana or Daemon Bride movement. Would be interesting to see how a dev would handle something like this and figure out the problem of infinite runaway.
Thinking more about the “looped wall portal” idea, I actually want to see how a developer would make a game around it. If you are run away and run to the opposite side of the screen, you are technically right next to each other if you go the opposite direction and if someone was chasing someone with fireballs, it would follow them if they backdash through the wall. In fact, the max distance you can actually be from an opponent is half screen on both sides, which in a lot of games is footsie range, unless they were using relatively small scaled characters. Just out of curiosity, I want to see how it plays out.
Reimu in Hopeless Masquerade has the ability to corner teleport, but that game has some pretty unique mechanics overall.
But on that same kind of note, Acceleration of Suguri is a more shmup-style fighter that doesn’t have any corners.
Galaxy Fight
Yosuke (great VF player) was at my house one weekend and infinite side-step trolled people on XBLA a bunch. Even within the current game sets the virtual loop provided by stage side-stepping can be soul-crushing. Non-interactive gaming is usually pretty horrible for all concerned. Nothing wrong with forcing the fight by putting in walls/limits.
Yeah agreed, it would be a neat experiment to have a fighting game that features unlimited stages coupled with movement options that strongly favour catch-up over runaway. Of course, to make this worthwhile, you’d have to add at least one prominent element that makes this “chasing down” aspect of gameplay particularly engaging, something that gives it a depth to replace what was lost for not having any corners.
GENIUS
Imagine playing MvC2 Storm with any combination of Sent, Cable, CapCom assists on an infinite stage.
We’re obviously not talking about that sort of thing.
There were a couple of games that had infinitely scrolling stages. One of the Ruronin Kenshin games had it and you could just run away foreeeeeeeeeeeeever; same with one of the DBZ games.
It is pretty fucking terrible since its basically what Preppy described.
That’s mainly because the games weren’t really designed with that in mind.