You say that as if those series stopped when they did out of some kind of artistic decision.
They stopped because they weren’t profitable anymore. If they could have kept making games, they would have.
Also, don’t really think there’s such a thing as “too ridiculous” when it comes to Darkstalkers.
Just look @ MK1 storyline. Simple tournament on an island with not too many characters having over the top special moves. And some of the special moves were explainable and so forth. The. When subsequent MK games came out, the storylines became more science fiction like…
Last Blade got ridiculous in the second game. A character from the first game came back as a zombie. The guy who looks like K’ was a demon.
WTF? Who comes up with these storylines? And why do they include that stuff? Balrog killing Dhalsim’s elephant, Adon stealing a bird from Bison.
This looks like stuff from a TV show with 65 episodes, only that this TV show never existed.
I would say that every ending happened. Except for Poison’s joke ending.
What exactly from the trailer makes you feel that Decapre’s ending didn’t happen?
In fact, originally, Ryu wasn’t supposed to be that guy who always walks around in his gi. They said in an interview that they didn’t design Ryu to be a vagabound. And this artwork confirms it:
http://www.arcade-gear.com/Games/Street_Fighter_II/Street_Fighter_II_Art_Ryu_4.jpg
Masaomi Kanzaki also went this route: When Ryu isn’t fighting, you see him in a t-shirt and jeans.
But again, this is totally contradicted by the game itself: In Ryu’s SF2 ending, you see him walking along a road after he skipped the award ceremony. And he’s wearing his gi instead of normal clothes. Even though it’s not the actual gameplay sprite, but a sprite specifically for that scene.
They gave Guile a sweater and jeans in his ending, but Ryu still wears his gi and no shoes in a non-fighting scene, basically confirming his later version who always wears these clothes.
Sometimes it’s also very strange:
Akuma: "Well, we meet again."
Ryu: "It’s been awhile, Akuma. So, have you gotten any better?"
Akuma: “You tell me.”
So, do they want to imply that Akuma lost against Ryu once?
Also, Gen vs. Akuma totally contradicts Akuma vs. Gen. In one, they know each other. In the other, Gen wonders what exactly Akuma is supposed to be.
I always wondered what that’s supposed to mean.
By the way, he doesn’t do this when he talks with Ryu in Ryu’s boss fight. But he does it when you play as Akuma and he talks with Ryu in the secret rival fight.
Shin Akuma’s “I am power made flesh. Feel how weak you truly are” isn’t written in brackets either.
The UDON comics made a similar thing: Akuma always speaks in black speech bubbles with red text. But only after he used the Satsui no Hado.
This is most apparent in his origins book. But they even paid attention to that in the regular episodes: There is one flashback of Akuma’s only defeat: Gen defeated him in a fight some time before Akuma got consumed by the Satsui no Hado. And in this one scene, Akuma speaks with normal white speech bubbles.
Bison also has special speech bubbles: Black as well. But while Akuma has black with red text, Bison has black with white text.
So, what does this mean?
But with “Mortal Kombat”, it’s not that bad. The supernatural stuff was established in the first game. Outworld already existed, it’s just that the setting didn’t play there yet.
(The number of character is just a gameplay issue. Have a look at the official canon comic book that was released back then: The tournament actually consisted of hundreds of fighters.
And I guess the over the top fatalities aren’t canon to begin with and are just for the player’s amusement. I don’t think Liu Kang can actually transform into a dragon in canon and I don’t think Scorpion carries around a Jack in the box.)
Stories getting bigger in scale is not the issue. That’s something that happens in real life.
And in MK, that’s a natural progression:
In MK1, Shao Kahn was about to win the 10th tournament. So, it was just that storyon the island.
But since he lost, he had to use another plan. So, he used another tournament, this time held in Outworld, which made the scope bigger.
When he lost this one as well, he outright decided to invade Earthrealm, so the third part played in New York City as an all-out war instead of a fighting tournament.
And in part 4, an actual god escaped his prison. Which, unlike with SF, is not out of place since gods have always been present in the storyline from the beginning: Raiden and the elder gods. So, the fact that they have to fight an evil one now is still within the bounds of the universe established in part 1.
This is just the natural story progression.
I’m working on an NES game. (Yes, an actual NES game that will be sold on cartridges and that should come out before June 2016.) It’s about a woman who fights a criminal gang.
If I ever create sequels, the stories will become bigger as well. Her first adventure is against a street gang. But in the sequel, she would have become the city’s heroine, so of course she deals with bigger enemies. There’s no reason why every adventure should be her against some small group of muggers.
So, yeah, that’s just a logical progression. I don’t have a problem with that.
But if I start to include demons or aliens or ancient prophecies into the story with that woman, please kick my ass.
That’s what I hate: When the plot reveals stuff that you wouldn’t have thought to even exist in that fictitious world in the first place.
Bison building some superweapon is natural story progression: He didn’t succeed with his tournament, so he tries something new. Have a look at his high tech island from SF2 artworks: That sphere in the sky is totally within the bounds of what you would have expected from him even in SF2.
But if a story about some James Bond-style villain and a bunch of martial artists turns into a story about some James Bond-style villain and a bunch of martial artists plus clones, aliens, physical gods etc., then this hurts the continuity.
O.k., technically, it’s possible: If Cthulhu appears in New York today, then the year 2015 would have still been monster-free. Likewise, the story of SF1 can still take place as it is, even if clones and robots exist in the world.
But I think your level of fiction should stay the same. If you want science fiction or magic, establish it right from the beginning.
For example, “Pretty Woman 2” shouldn’t be about people building a time machine.
Alex is based off of Biff Slamkovich, aka Aleksey Zalazof in Japan.
Decapre’s ending very definitely happened. She says the same lines in Cammy’s prologue verbatim. I think they actually copied the USF4 audio.
In Decapre’s ending, both her and Cammy end up side-by-side in tubes at Shadaloo.
We can already tell that Cammy DIDN’T turn herself over to Shadaoo in SF4(unless they reprogrammed her, then released her as a sleeper agent).
PART of Decapre’s ending may have happened, but all of it didn’t.
I think that part in the tubes might have been a flashback.
Ok. Poison is a he dressed like a female.
No the training guide states plainly that Akuma was the one to create that thought. The Sf games series are canon unless stated otherwise [Evil Ryu being a what if character in Alpha], than it’s not pat of story.
Oh, he’s retired alright. Until the minute Shadaloo flies an evil orb over his city! Then it’s time to piledrive evil orbs!
Hawk posted it a few pages before:
Akuma was never mentioned anywhere. The Wiki is wrong.
"M Bison was defeated at the end of the tournament by the fearsome Akuma…"
Page 3…
Good catch. I stand corrected on that.
The Aftermath trailer contradicts it, though.
There was a trend in Japanese fighting games prior to 1995 not to focus that much in story and presentation. Even the main titles.It did not have to do with the lack of hardware. Eg SNK’s early 90s fighters used the same hardware with their latest games.
If you play various beat-em-ups, eg Capcom’s Warriors of Faith or Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, you’ll see the huge contrast in story mode when compared to Capcom fighters. Or Konami beat-em-ups like Bucky o Hare, Asterix, Simpsons, Sunset Riders, TMNT, Moo Mesa. They were far ahead.
But also western fighters of that era (MK1-3, Primal Rage, Killer Instinct) had superior presentation overall.
As if Japanese fighting game developers decided to add more detailed story and characters, hiring voice actors, animators and designers from the anime and manga industry.
I’ve been hoping for her to return for ages. When I first booted up the game, I didn’t immediately realize she was female, I just picked the crazy Spidery fighter and had a ton of fun.
Hope for her return someday (Art by Jiggeh)
Then I guess you have a better explanation?
Slam Masters characters have never featured in any form in any way in any kind of game, artwork or cameo EVER, after their last game. I’d say that’s extremely suspicious, to say the least.
You’ll very occassionaly have a character mentioned, like in a Street Fighter III Black Widow is mentioned, but never seen (she’s supposed to be off-screen)… I guess it has to do with the designs.
The Akuma detail was actually omitted from some versions of the manual for SFIV, more specifically the online versions.
http://i.imgur.com/S6P08RH.jpg
Also if anyone wants to check it out I’ve compiled an album of all the SFEX character bios courtesy of @Sano posted a while ago on the Warriors Fate thread. Just thought they would be useful whenever I get the time to do SFEX profiles (I believe they’re from AA:SFEX).
I vaguely remembered Matt Dhalgren having mentioned something about SlamMasters in an interview with BornFree, but can’t remember where in the video it was and if the limitation was just to Udon or all of Capcom as well. I’d love to see them back, but am not holding my breath, though random thought:
If the artist owns the character concept, then wouldn’t naming be barred as well? It’s not unheard of to have to pay royalties for mentioning a copyrighted character in a work you don’t own, so if the ownership is so tight, I’d think Capcom would have to pay him to even mention the characters.
Anyone with insight into copyright law wanna weigh in?
That’s from the home manual, too. The Training Guide was never released to the public from what I recall.
I sure do.
It’s called “Slam Masters was never popular. So Capcom doesn’t put them in things.”