Oh yeah Enja and Suija, because Sogetsu and Kazuki weren’t ridiculous enough.
Basically SS5 and 6 just feel like they were complete hack jobs to exploit our nostalgia. Probably because they were. Nostalgia don’t work that way though: Even if somehow, some way they made the sequel I would want to see, it would never replace being ten years old and playing the original in that giant arcade screen the next town over. Part of the fondness is just how much bigger and better the sounds and visuals were, looking forward to actually getting to go 30 miles away and play a game I couldn’t find at home, and playing against others or just watching people have a good time in VS. Loser pays, winner stays.
we seem to pretty much agree on this, well except that I like the silliness 4 had a little more.
That probably honestly had a lot to do with nostalgia factor. Getting a guy down to one pixel and then suiciding I will still always claim was just classic.
for a few weeks there was a Last Blade 2 cab in my area as well. Only difference?
Instead of a monitor they had a projector, so you played on an 80" screen, like watching a samurai movie in colour. Amazing really, though practically unplayable.
For what it’s worth, the storyline in the SS games is chronologically challenged, in that the games happen in some goofy order like 3,4,1,2 or something. This worked better in Japan where none of them had NUMBERS in the title.
Not saying they didn’t completely lose track of the direction to take the gameplay, but from a storyline perspective it’s not as big of a wreck as it seems at first glance.
That’s kind of weird but the point is that they shouldn’t take steps back. Amakusa really isn’t that cool of a boss, especially compared to Mizuki or Zankuro, who are both more evil and badass in so many ways. It would be like Sagat being the boss of the next Street Fighter for some reason.
I need to go back and really look at 3, I think. We really didn’t know what we were doing back then, so my main memory aside from it looking damn good was that I thought the characters with special throws were way stronger than the others.
I have a fond memory of playing 3, having a whole crowd behind me as at one point Kokuro jumped into the foreground and challenged me to a fight. He murdered me brutally, but I finally beat him and made it all the way to the last boss who was Zankuro not Amakusa. Then of course in 4 Amakusa is just the sub boss and IIRC in 2 Mizuki was the final boss.
@xes from what I remember the characters with special throws were stronger. The combination of running and command grab is pretty brutal to be honest because you can get in easily and now have free damage. I never played SS competitively though.
I remember Bust Ukyo being pretty beastly when I’d play VS, but Galford and Hanzo have always been really dangerous if they get the command throw on you. After SS2 they also got rid of some of their silly/worthless moves or redid them properly. They’ve always been kind of broken though.
I’ll have to take issue with this. In the 90s, only SF2 was a big success. MK and KOF and all the others were games people used to play on while they were waiting for the SF2 line to go down. None of them came anywhere near as popular as SF2. I used to go in all the London/Paris arcades and I think I only ever saw a handful of machines being used by 2 players, and even less for SS and the others.
I think it’s safer to say that in the 90’s, fighting game and general were popular and a lot of them were successful due to SF2’s big success. For real though, when I rented SS1 for Genesis, everybody thought it was great. Some arcades marketed the shit out of it. I think people who didn’t play it just got frustrated with some of the oddball moves coming against them.
MK was definitely huge though, at least in America. SF and MK both got movies, cartoons, action figures, and more. MK1, with the blood, probably added two years onto the life of the Genesis alone.
If we go off of anecdotal evidence though, KoF (especially 97 and 98) got more games and more competition than anything else I ever saw.
It was a different time, there wasn’t much opportunity to play most of 'em competitively.
You’re right though, it was totally run-special throw that was mean.
It was weird though, they took out everyones throws… except somebody really liked Nakoruru’s kick throw, so they gave it to her as a special.
That's something I'd like to see though, I understand why they decided that push/pull throws were a little strong. That being said, they should have gone back to actual throw animations instead of the janky SS5 'push and then medium slash' throws.
~xes