I guess I’m a little late to this party, but I really hope they don’t just recycle the old win quotes. I think their simplistic setup wasn’t up to the standard of excellence found elsewhere in the game. People’s eyes glaze over when they come to the win screen, and there are plenty of people who’ve played thousands of games but can’t name a win quote they’ve seen hundreds of times, because they’re not memorable or interesting enough.
I think a lot of the original quotes suffer from being:
[list][]Repetitive. The same line gets used after every single game.
[]Out-of-character. Blanka’s “Seeing you in action is a joke” just doesn’t sound bestial to me. Dhalsim’s “I will meditate and then destroy you” makes him sound evil and isn’t consistent with the good-guy themes of his ending and storyline.
[]Inappropriately-timed. What sense does it make for Dictator to be bragging, “You can’t compare with my powers,” when he eked out a tiny victory in the 3rd round? Why does Blanka say seeing me is a joke when it took everything he had to luck out a victory in the 3rd with a sliver of vitality left?
[]Uninspired. Lines like E.Honda’s "Can’t you do better than that?’ just aren’t… exciting to me.[/list]
How much better would it be to have a much, much bigger list of interesting win quotes that get used at appropriate times? It’d be cool, add a little bit of fun to the game conclusion, and the variety could be so good that even veteran players would occasionally see a line that was new to them.
I’ll give you an example for how things could be set up. Each character could have a selection of quotes that get used depending on how difficult their victory was to achieve. So “narrow victory” quotes are when, say, the game went 3 rounds and the winner had < 30% vitality left in the 3rd. “Big victory” is when it took 2 rounds and the winner never went < 45% vitality in either. There are also character-specific quotes that sometimes get picked instead.
Here’s some examples for one character, Boxer.
Note: A few the following quotes come from a mish-mash of sources.
Boxer (Themes = urbanity, brutality, detachment. A thug.)
(narrow win) “Nobody can keep me down! Nobody!”
(narrow win) “I’m tougher and nastier’n you ever thought possible!”
(narrow win) “My fists have your blood on them!”
(medium win) “It’s just a job, ya know? Some people dig ditches, sweep floors. I beat people up.”
(medium win) “Hey, everyone has a plan until they get hit, right?”
(medium win) “Yeah, honor this, sportsmanship that. They all get knocked out the same.”
(medium win) “All in a day’s work.”
(big win) “Get up! I didn’t hear no bell!”
(big win) “Stick to a desk job, clown!”
(big win) “I’ve worked heavy bags that gave me more fight than that.”
(big win) “That’s it, man? That’s all you got?”
(vs. Ryu) “That wasn’t nothin’, karate man. I ain’t impressed.”
(vs. Ryu) “See, I know fighting, real fighting, on the streets. Not some fake martial arts crap with rules and all that.”
(vs. Ken) “I had you figured as a skinny, little punk, and looks like I was right.”
(vs. Ken) “Big talker ain’t talking so big now! Whatcha got to say 'bout that?”
(vs. E.Honda) “What a stupid sport. Stop slappin’, start punchin’ already. Works for me.”
(vs. E.Honda) “You won’t ever push me outta no ring. I’m too much for ya.”
(vs. Chun Li) “Hey, pretty lady, you wanna work for me? I got money!”
(vs. Chun Li) “That was cute, but there ain’t no room for cute in a fight.”
(vs. Blanka) “Biting’s supposed ta be illegal. Supposed ta…”
(vs. Blanka) “You wanna see a real beast, I’m wilder’n anything you ever saw.”
(vs. Zangief) “You got size, but you don’t got the fightin’ smarts to back it up.”
(vs. Zangief) “Size don’t mean nothin’. It ain’t like they hand over the championship belt to the biggest guy.”
(vs. Guile) “Hey, military man, sign me up for the army – I’m an army of one!”
(vs. Guile) “Yeah, I always got problems wit’ authority figures.”
(vs. Dhalsim) “I told ya don’t buy into that ‘mind powers’ garbage. Didn’t help him none.”
(vs. Dhalsim) “This skinny freak needs to sign up with the lightweights and stop wastin’ people’s time.”
(vs. T.Hawk) “That’s the problem with these fighting events. They’re always makin’ you fight freaks like this guy.”
(vs. T.Hawk) “Bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
(vs. FeiLong) “This ain’t no movie, you ain’t no stuntman, and I ain’t no fall guy.”
(vs. FeiLong) “That was embarrassin’ just to be around, you hollerin’ like a girl.”
(vs. Cammy) “What a joke. Go home and play with your dolls.”
(vs. Cammy) “Ain’t no place for little girls where fists are flying.”
(vs. DeeJay) “Music? I sure thumped out a good beat upside your head! Ha ha!”
(vs. DeeJay) “Hey, I can dance too – all over your fallen body!”
(vs. Boxer) “I’ll take you on anytime, anywhere. Ring or no ring.”
(vs. Boxer) “You ain’t a contender. You a pretender!”
(vs. Claw) “Don’t ever mess with me again, pretty-boy.”
(vs. Claw) “I got my nose broken six times, you don’t see me hidin’ behind no mask.”
(vs. Sagat) “I thought you was a has-been, but now I see you’re a never-was.”
(vs. Sagat) “You need to make way for the new blood. You’re all washed up.”
(vs. Dictator) “Maybe you oughta be workin’ for me instead of the other way around, huh?”
(vs. Dictator) “You just stick to makin’ us money. Let me handle the rough stuff.”
Those are just a few quick samples. Some of them are better than others, and I’d actually go for even more variety per character than this, but that’s roughly in the ballpark of what I’d like to see.
They can just do the old-style quotes and people will go right on ignoring them, but I hope it’s not like that. This is one of the little things that could make this game better than the original, and attention to detail is the mark of excellence. It’s not like it would even take large amounts of time to think them up or require difficult coding to implement.
Got my fingers crossed!