I’m a huge fan of KOF and love everything about the series, ever since it’s first incarnations my brother and I played extensively. KOF has a huge following and always manages to fly under the radar to the SF masses and casual gamers. But now I have noticed with KOF 12 there has been no official announcement for fan favorite Mai, just some Nona artwork and speculation for DLC. I can’t help but wonder if this exclusion is pre-meditated? There is no doubt with the rating system being applied to each new title that SNK/Playmore may be attempting to dodge an adult rating bullet.
Much of the female roster in KOF XII seems to have a much more conservative look this time around. Characters like Elizabeth Blanctorche, now has her bosom covered up by a jacket and Matures long sleek stockings have been replaced with dress pants etc.
Was this change in character design intentional so they could achieve a teen rating or was it simply a change in mindset of how SNK would portray their females?
What ever the case may be I welcome the change, but do you think the rumours of Mai being a DLC could do with the fact that her character design might be a tad to Racy for the teen demographic? Does this mean SNK’s solution to avoid a more adult rating is to have this character as a DLC?
Or perhaps they simply just did not have enough time to add Mai & K’ to their full potential to meet a console release date?
Fan boy service or not, I could care less what Mai is wearing it would just be awesome to see her in this game.
It wouldn’t become an Adult rating based on Mai’s costume. At worst, it would become a Mature rating, which is 17+. Still teen and still ignored by retailers. And I can assure you, it wouldn’t be because of her costume. It’s the not the 30’s, my man. We’re too desensitized to give half a shit about what she’s wearing. Look at Cammy and Chun-Li’s alternate costume. It’s literally what Mai would have been wearing. There’s no nudity, there’s nothing higher than Teen unless there’s copious amounts of blood.
I don’t have any input on Mature or Elizabeth.
*Edit: And no one cares about Mai. She’s not that great.
Thanks for the input Bmckay, it’s hard to tell how they regulate these types of things. Desensitization is abundant with today’s youth, but along with that there seems to be all these sticklers and protesters who feel the need to apply boundaries. No matter what we seem to adapt to there seems to always be some type of blind regulation.
*Edit: I know! But she was always one of my favs!!!
As I have said before, Mai’s signature more then weapons being fans is “The Bounce” which was one of the earlier “Jiggle” effects in fighting games, inspiring the like of DOA and other games. More then likely, they are having trouble putting it into KOF12 due size constraints or it looking bad in HD.
That or they just didn’t work on her character but given the fact that Andy is in the game, I can’t see how that is even possible for them not to have started work on Mai.
SNKP has made a conscious effort to avoid anything even remotely provocative and they’ve even go as far as to replace the heavy rock music with albeit rather bad music this time around. The most vulgar thing to me was seeing like 400lb women in the food court stage jumping up and down, but some people like it and it doesn’t really seem to offend anyone.
Nowadays the only way to achieve a Mature rating in a game is for Blood, Gore, Harsh Language and Sexual Content. Sexual Content is more like the Mass Effect phenomena rather than seeing cleavage. Every other KOF has gotten a Teen rating and they have bouncing bosoms everywhere.
The thing you have to remember is that even though they are making this conscious effort, some of the changes were just because the characters weren’t popular so they decided to bring them back and redesign them. Nobody cares about Kensou or Mature, but they’ve been sort of redesigned and the dice has been re-rolled for them so we’ll see if they become more popular now. As for Mai, you do know she wasn’t in the original release of XI right? She was added as a hidden unlockable for PS2 so clearly SNKP does actually try and shift around it’s cast to see who people care about and who doesn’t. People who actually play the game hardcore for a long time don’t really seem to care about Mai being missing, but rather she’s just a character that’s known publicly in the mainstream for one reason and one reason only.
If anything though, we can only hope that the DLC that has been mentioned of by SNKP might actually be characters because there’s not really any other additions that need to be added via DLC in a 2D Fighter anyways. They don’t seem to mind re-arranging their Character Select screen so it’s a possibility. If their plan is honestly to just put up new characters by DLC, I think they have just realized the proper way to make a killing via DLC. Who wouldn’t drop $5 on Mai? That’s rather cheap for an entire new character you might or might not use, especially if you have friends. People would just buy it and be done with it.
Edit:
There are no special intros and the inclusion of Andy doesn’t merit the inclusion of Mai or likewise. Andy wasn’t in XI, but Mai was. It’s like asking why Rock isn’t in this version, he’s undoubtedly extremely popular and Terry is there. Oh wait, that means you should probably have Geese too then right? Ties don’t matter really, too bad, but they don’t.
It’s true Mai was in KOF XI but that was because SNKP ripped her sprite straight from NGBC, she had no story relations in the game what so ever (she have a cameo appearance in Terry, Kim, and Duck’s ending along with Andy and Joe appearing as well, but besides that it’s like she wasn’t even their)
Why can’t people get mad over about a actual KOF character missing (that’s still alive) than bitch about a character from a series that’s long gone and done with (Fatal Fury) :bluu:
Wait what? You’re actually giving a reason for a character not being in a fighting game because of story reasons? Hello, Mature is dead, but maybe her white eye patch is magical and that brought her back to life. From what I remember as well, most of the sprites were ripped straight from other games with new animations added, tweaks and a load of other shit like lots of new characters. All people care to know is whether or not the character has a Portrait, Sprite and is fully playable.
No I was only saying it in Mai’s case in KOF XI, and Mature most likely has that eye-patch because of what happend in KOF 96 (or at least it is for now until SNK gives us some coverage on it) for all we know she could come back with Vice in KOF XIII, but whether she’s alive or dead that doesn’t matter because this game is a (supposed to be) dream-match
to clarify:SNKP has redesigned and put these characters in XII for future use. So in the case of Mature, it seems like she’s survived Iori’s attack and looks to be out for revenge.
This guy is right though, why where so many fan favorites and popular characters deliberatly excluded…did SNK learn anything with Capcom’s mistaken in SF3. Mai is a very important figure in the gaming world, she is SNK’s Chun-li so why exclude her…what wonky logic was there behind this.
But she was always one of my favs!!!