Whatever happened to them? Nowadays either no characters have their own stages or multiple characters share a stage. It gave the characters their own atmosphere and whatnot when each of them had their own stage. Fighting games just don’t have as much depth these days. Take a look at Soul Calibur 3: each character had their own stage (well, Siegfried and Nightmare shared a stage I believe), and almost all of them fit the characters well. Sure, it can’t always work out. It would be a pain in the butt to make stages for every character in UMVC3, but still I miss when they did this.
Stages have nothing to do with depth. While some folks would agree with the sentiment expressed here, they’re reasons would have nothing to do with stages.
As for why we don’t see them anymore, art assets are more expensive to make. Stages are less integral to a fighting game than characters.
Agreed, but I was just making a general statement there
I’d much rather the stages all just be stages. The dev is probably going to get much more creative if they’re not stuck trying to please some character constraints.
?? You mention UMvC3: most of the stages in there are associated to characters within the game.
We got the Asgard stage, right? Rainbow road, we got the big bird in the back, you know what I mean? We gonna give y’all a stage just like that–NIGHT TIME! . . . Y’all got another stage. You wanted it, you asked for it, you got it.
I miss characters having their own stages too.
Or even better, Arthur’s stage, but without the color.
I feel you bro. character specific stages are really cool
Pfft who needs stages? Abstract training stage all day every day.
When training mode became an option, it’s what I always picked. Idk…
Another thing is that characters don’t have their own theme either. This especially disappointed me in the case of Tekken. Tekken 1-3 had both character-specific stages and themes. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. I do understand that it’s hard and time-consuming to make both especially now with the amount of characters we have in FGs recently (TTT2, AE). It would be nice to have these again.
I think VF5FS is the last most recent fighting game to have unique stages for each character? Guilty Gear comes pretty close, that game had a good selection of stages and only a handful were shared when I think back on it. Doesn’t BlazBlue have a good number of character specific stages as well? I didn’t play alot of BB, I know a few of them were shared, but there were some character specific stages in there too, I enjoyed playing on Bang’s stage most. Certain stages and soundtracks get a good rhythm going in me and I feel more compelled to fight harder and it makes me more hype to play.
Whenever I played SF4 (Which is never), I HAVE to play on the Metro City Stage, no exceptions. I just cringe at seeing training stages all day in Capcom fighters though. But I guess it can’t be helped with lag and slowdown issues. Thank god I don’t play those games anymore.
Also I’ll agree on Tekken, I really miss the character specific themes in those games. Lei Wulong’s theme in Tekken 3 is too good.
I swear though, if there is another Samurai Shodown game, Galford needs to have his own stage by the docks again with his classic Tuna theme.
Theme music is awesome. MvC3 has theme music… That Sentinel theme is so godlike. I still hate that game though.
I don’t think he meant depth in a mechanically or playstyle sense, but more of a design/style sense, and in that regard I’d agree. A lot of games visually and design wise aren’t very exciting or interesting, everything feels bland and by the numbers. Stages are pretty boring and predictable in modern games.
[quote=“SirMixahLot, post:13, topic:161507”]
Theme music is awesome. MvC3 has theme music… That Sentinel theme is so godlike. I still hate that game though.
[/quote]IMO, character specific theme music is more important that character specific stages. You can easily hum a character theme and another guy can pick it out and identify it. Can’t do that with stages.
That is why i love when Ishsiwatari Daisuke is behind the OST of a game.
GG & BB with all the character specific themes + versus themes.
Going by the song on GGXrd and the songs on GG2ndO i can’t wait to hear how the old songs would be re imagined, Holy Orders 4, Keep the Flag Flying 2, etc, etc.
Hoping that Heavy Day from the Xrd trailer is pointing to a more thrash/hard rock sound for that game. Less synth, more distortion.
[quote=“d3v, post:15, topic:161507”]
Except there needn’t be lyrics (X-23’s theme is WACK AS FUCK)
In the days of like 8-16 character stages, you could easily identify stages with simple descriptions…
Super Turbo:
Bathtub
China City streets
Japanese rooftop
Cage
Jungle
Aurora Borealas
Mexico
Giant Bell
Giant Statue
Boat
Fighter jets
Peacock and Dragon
Reggae dancing
Casino
Elephants
Russia
Not very hard to know which ones you’re talking about…
As for music… I still occasionally get Ken and Guile’s themes mixed up, and I often forget what some of them sound like too.
[quote=“SirMixahLot, post:18, topic:161507”]
To be fair, those were most everybody’s first fighting game stages and are therefore pretty iconic.
When I say “giant tube under the sea” only a handful of folks are gonna say “Omega Red.” And if I say “Japanese shrine” you’re going to have a fight break out on which SamSho/Last Blade character it belongs to (even though I’m referring to Silver Samurai).
Not Capcom
Riot
London Gardens
Mexican Bar
Submarine
Broken Boxing Ring
Crashed Helicopter