Did anyone really think I was asking for characters that were Bruce Lee clones? Seriously?
Thanks to the posters who knew what the Hell I was talking about (for a second there I figured I worded my post wrong), but that just goes to show the trolls are often the initial posters.
Anyway…
3rd Strike did have a very open system where you had to stay on your toes attacking or defending. It trivialized blocking in a way that upheld one of the stables of JKD. And someone mentioned Jacky Bryant? I remember in earlier VFs he just didn’t seem like a JKD practitioner to me because I had a flawed sense of what it actually was. I’m eager to see if I can translate those ideals with if he really can flow like water.
I think any game/character that allows a defensive technique to fluidly translate directly into an offensive one should qualify.
Jacky does have that punch parry in later VF games, probably in an attempt to embrace his Bruce Lee JKD roots.
DOA is based on counters and a lot of fluid attack combinations (maybe a little too fluid, for my tastes sometimes…but, I’ll always have a soft spot for DOA, so whatever)
Also, Urban Reign for PS2 had a dodge button instead of a block button, and it allowed you to deflect attacks or reposition your opponent in an advantageous way without disturbing the flow of the fight. I can’t say enough good things about that game…
I think that’s an important requirement…a counter that doesn’t disrut the flow of the fight too much.
I think the issue here is Bruces Style, is more of a deconstruction of styles.So you would need a game that decompresses styles into their core moves, essentially leaving everyone on a roughly even foundation and then lets the player come in there, where everyone has the same movements. Closest I can think of is Virtua fighter and I hate that game.
Seth (SFIV), Unknown (Tekken Tag), and the Cycloids (SFEX Plus) all use a bunch of moves taken from other characters, Twelve (3rd Strike) can transform into his opponent, and Sakura’s fighting style is based on emulation-although it ends up being almost entirely of Ryu and Ken-and improvisation, if that counts. Eh. Some of Sagat’s stuff is supposedly derived from his losses to Ryu as well, where he messes around with the Tiger Blow then Tiger Uppercut to try to match the Shoryuken.
Meh, Bruce Lee’s philosophies already apply to competitive fighting games - it’s called playing to win! In other words, it means not falling back on a specific style of play (turtle, rushdown, etc.) but knowing instead what tools work best in a certain situation and then using those tools accordingly. To apply Bruce Lee’s philosophy to fighting games then would mean first, choosing a character (or characters) who both comes naturally to you and maximizes your chances of winning then secondly, upping your game so that you can with with that character (or characters) from just about any situation since your able to react to that situation and turn it into your favor.
But, Bruce Lee was also all about using martial arts as self-expression. And, so I think the desire to win would also have to be balanced by using a character whose design, fighting style, and appearance reflect your personality.
So, if I’m naturally good at [insert boring, overused top tier character here], but I love playing [insert mid/lower tier character here] then I might go with the latter.
Like most people in the thread, I’m not sure how productive of an exercise this can really be, what with any videogame character having such a relatively limited amount of options…Play to win, be able to adapt your playing style as necessary. Guile’s traditional gameplan is to throw sonic booms and attempt to punish people who impatiently jump, but Guile can also be played more offensively when the situation calls for it. Letting tradition or form hold you back from doing something that makes practical sense is an important hurdle to jump over, metaphorically speaking, this could be applied to any obstacle, be peoples anxiety over their character’s tier, etc.
On the other hand though, I’m also pretty sure that since studying Bruce Lee is hardly a vital or even important part of getting good at fighting games, that attempting to apply his philosophy to them will simply burden the average player with more useless ideas than he has enough room in his head for. I remember reading an FAQ once for Capcom VS Snk2. The guy was writing a tutorial for how to use Haomaru [sic] and kept insisting that any losses could be remedied with thorough study of Musashi’s book of five rings. Self indulgent, weeaboo, horse shit imo.
