Anyone discuss the death of Rival Schools yet?
Haha. Street Fighter is strongly anime influenced. Stop deluding yourselves.
^ ^ ^
I certainly would agree with that comment in general but, specifically in the context of your argument, I want to call that out as very very false.
Street Fighter II was hardly-if at all–anime-influenced, and it was by far and above the peak of the series’ popularity.
Not that I agree or disagree with any of your points, but there are obviously distinctions deeper than “anime” and “not-anime”. Melty Blood is based off a porn game and filled with a (superficially) homogenous cast of flat-chests. Arcana Heart’s designs obviously pander to moe fetishists; stuff like that doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.
It’s tough to call TYPE-MOON’s visual novel’s “porn games.” They are for the most part just stories with a couple of NSFW pictures. It’s not like it’s full-blown and it’s not even what the game is about.
Some characters are heavily influenced by manga / anime characters (Guile, the already mentioned Bison, etc), the energy ball powers, chanting the name of the attacks while doing them, fanservice (Chun), etc. Street Fighter has been very influenced by anime from the very start, and that influence would continue through the whole series.
What the hell does anime fighter or anime influenced means anyway?
Cell style colouring of sprites/models or promo/ingame illustrations? Style of said characters? Japanese artist, illustrator, mangaka, anime character designer doing design? Designs not being adult enough, too flashy? Eyes too damn big? Loli characters? Games coming from Japan that isn’t SF?
I’m serious about that question, it seems to be an arbitrary name used just to hate on them while SF is being immune to that denotation.
I’ve only heard the term anime fighters refering to GG, KOF, BB, AH from american players or on SRK. (maybe due to familiarity to american comics and anime becoming mainstream recently with shitty series)
I’m pretty damn sure most japanese dev/designer/illusatrator have at some point in their lives read/watched manga/anime so there is no way they’re unbiased. Most sprites are done without gradients (or anime/cartoon style) because it’s easier, faster, enable you to use more colours if the palette is limited, and the contast make them looks better and less confusing.
Games using them are either:
- old, SF pre ST and almost all the (fighting) games or ripoffs during that time (ST new sprites already use another colouring)
- using them to make the game look dark/gritty/real : Daraku Tenshi, Akatsuki and maybe others, I dunno where to put KOF though.
All those criteria are irelevant if you consider that sprites and ingame/promo illustations don’t always match in style. The style itself is not important since it’s not exclusive to japanese art and can be chosen for efficiency/looks. And the people working on those games are gasp japanese.
PS: Not talking about Dragonball, Naruto, Bleach fighters of course and even there the term is not necessary. Since all those are manga too and the games obviously can’t be in black and white.
You’re right, I apologize for oversimplifying, but a lot of people are not going to ever make that distinction.
These are the most entertaining matches I’ve seen of some of the games mentioned.
VF5R
Part of the appeal of a VF match for me is the animation. It may not be quite as fast or colourful as some other fighters but it animates better than any of them 2d or 3d. As for the characters there’s a HUGE amount of customization in VF5R now with 5 outfits each, so you can make them look completely different.
Garou
NGBC
A lot of the fighters listed in this thread are either old/niche games/poor marketing, thats why they never took off.
What do you expect? For a niche fighting game (in a niche genre to begin with) to flourish? There arent enough players in America for that, unfortunately. Plus most people arent that open minded, and the companies suck ass at marking so yeah.
at last, people talking with intelligence about this subject, its incredible how delusional is the people to actual thing that sf it doesnt have anime influence specially with all the animes, mangas, and other anime merchadency that it has 
agreed, a lot of games could be a major hit, or at least have more audience if the companies would make a better strategy of marketing
The thing is, I myself don’t give a damn if a game is anime-based at all. But what I’m referring to is an overall aesthetic style that often turns Westerners off. Melty & Arcana are some of the most obvious examples of that, and GG & SNK games to a lesser but still large extent.
Compare that to MK, which has the look and feel of an American martial-arts movie. Or SF2, which feels like a cartoon but a straightforward action cartoon rather than a girly/weird cartoon. Or Tekken, which kinda has that Japanese look but isn’t cartoony and has a cast of mostly cool-looking characters.
I think a big problem is the usage of sprites, honestly. Most gamers nowadays associate them with old, cheaply-made, and/or anime games. Though I’m not a fan of the end result myself, I have to admit that SF4 has the right idea as far as that goes.
I mean the reasoning behind why games don’t catch on really isn’t hard to figure out.
It’s usually one of or a combination of the following.
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Unorthodox feel or gameplay. If a game is weird to look at or play it turn you off from it, since you aren’t used to it.
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Boring gameplay. There is no motivation to want to learn the game, since it’s boring to look at.
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Unbalanced gameplay/tiers. It’s not fun to master a character and get wrecked by a top tier player who didn’t even train half as hard as you did.
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Broken Glitches. This crap just plain sucks. NO ONE likes this shit right here. I don’t even need to get into it.
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The game doesn’t have a solid audience/appeals to a different culture/ has cultural influences that might be off putting. Games that appeal to Japanese may not appeal to other cultures in other countries. The inverse is also true. Games that were too animeish for example were overlooked in America for quite some time.
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Hard to get into. If a game is easy to get into it means more people will play it and can discover the depth of the game together and from a community. When a game is too hard to get into less people will want to take the time needed to become good at the game. Games must have a certain level of accessibility to be successful.
There might be some others, but those are the mains ones.
Looking at this it’s no shock to me that one of my favorite fighters of all time, Psychic Force 2012 never took off in America.
It was very unorthodox and has a strong anime influence. And it’s not pick up and play at all. The game takes alot of time to master.
It’s no wonder the game flopped in the states.
I can’t think of any fighting game that doesn’t have at least one of those
and I think melty blood and arcana’s popularity isn’t as high because the games aren’t as easily obtained in the states
To play melty blood you have to be able to run imports(believe it or not, more people don’t know how to do this than you’d think) and arcana heart 2(the better game by a huge margin imo) is only available in a few locations across the country.
So it’s a bit unfair to compare them to games that have been played for over 10 years and have had multiple US distributions, and say their popularity is a reflection of their quality
Hey, you know what really helps fighting games? even(sometimes ESPECIALLY) the unorthodox ones?
PRESS.
Oh snaps.
How could I forget.
You NEED good marketing. Otherwise your game might as well not exist.
For all its shittiness, Shaq Fu sold pretty damn well back in the day. Why? PRESS.
Well, I mean…it’s Shaq.
What kid at that time wouldn’t want a game that had Shaq starring in it and whooping ass?
While that’s true for AH2, the first had honest US PS2 release that was technically BETTER than the Japanese one (slightly less load times, fixed glitches).
Yet it still sold horribly (even by 2-D fighting game standards) because they didn’t market it at all. I played Arcana at my last tournament around a bunch of Smash heads and quite of few of them actually took notice and asked “What game is THAT?”.
Not in a condescending way either…I mean with a genuine spark of INTEREST.
It is that spark of interest which is absolutely vital for a game to catch on.
I heard the game cartridge for Shaq Fu is so big you have to mod your Nintendo just to fit it in.