Fighting Edge

Fighting Games

December 23, 2009 10:42 PM

Arcade Mania!: The Turbo-charged World of Japan’s Game Centers
Brian Ashcraft, 2008

That is the genre's bone-crushing, face-smashing core. Of course, there are taunting and finishing moves, but it's really about two characters beating the tar out of each other. As far as arcade games go, they don't get more confrontational than fighting games. Players spar off with the computer, but at any moment, any random arcade player can hijack that game by inserting a coin and challenging an opponent to a 2-D or 3-D brawl. It's totally anonymous though, as the cabinets in Japan's game centres are placed back-to-back so that players can't see the competition. (Japanese arcade manners dictate that it's rude to even look over the cabinet to check out whom you are playing.) Only the pounding of buttons or fists on the other side of the cabinet provides any indication of a human opponent. After winning or losing, the challenger can slip away, unnoticed by his or her foe, into the smoky game-center crowds.

It wasn't always that way. The earliest Street Fighter II cabinets that came out in 1991 were like the machines found in Europe and North America: the one-player and two-player controls were side by side. There was something peacefully tranquil—Zen, even—about those original cabinets. The machines featured two coin slots: one for hundred-yen coins and the other for fifty-yen coins. A hundred yen would buy two players one head-to-head match, meaning that two friends could sit down and have one game of Street Fighter II. After the match, the game was over for both players, leaving neither with hard feelings. It was possible to challenge other players, but it was less of a challenge and more of an intrusion. There was the matter of walking up to the machine while another player was playing, putting in a coin that altered the game from single-player to two-player, and then standing next to this unknown opponent while duking it out with him or her. Incredibly intimidating if the player was great!

Yet Street Fighter II wasn't hitting its full coin-box potential. It was a two-player game, but was typically played by just one player. The game needed something to maximise its two-player possibilities--and encourage Japanese players to beat up random strangers. An unnamed arcade owner hit upon a clever solution: modify two cabinets so that they were connected to the same motherboard and then put those cabinets back-to-back. That way, expert players could continue playing on one coin, while lousy players kept feeding the machines in hopes of victory and were given a degree of privacy should they lose. This loser-pays model proved so successful that it was adapted not just by Street Fighter II developer Capcom, but by the entire Japanese gaming industry. The peaceful two-player one-off-match mode was dropped in Japan altogether.

No one steps up to challenge superplayer Daigo Umehara. He's breezing through 2-D fighter Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge in Shinjuku game center Mikado. Street Fighter character Ryu socks a shoryuken "rising dragon fist" into a green savage called Blanka, sending him flat on his back. Ryu unleashes a hurricane kick, but Blanka's up on his feet, charging. Umehara moves the joystick in quarter circle towards Blanka and presses the punch button, which plants a hadoken "wave-motion fist" in Blanka's face. Umehara throttles opponent after opponent, not even breaking a sweat as he plays on the game's fastest setting. It's less like he's engaged in virtual combat and more like he's flipping through a magazine. Umehara is one of the top 2-D fighting players not only in Japan, but in the world. Rather, he was. "I stopped playing a few years ago," Umehara says, brushing a shock of hair under his knit cap. "I never go to game centers anymore, and I don't remember the last time I was in one before today." Umehara has quit, cold turkey. The game was sucking up too much of his time, energy, and money. At twenty-six years old, he's already retired.

Street Fighter II wasn't the first fighter (heck, it wasn't the first Street Fighter), but it had the biggest impact of any fighting game. Sega introduced the first arcade fisticuffs in Japan way back in 1976. Called Heavyweight Champ, it was a black-and-white punch 'em up where the controls were inside a pair of plastic boxing gloves attached to the cabinet, for real-time in-game punching. A couple more fighting game appeared in the mid-1980s: Karate Champ (1984), form Technos, with dual joysticks for two-player battles and Yie Ar Kung-Fu (1985), from Konami, which added weapons such as ninja stars to the mix of punching and kicking. The genre never quite took off though, as Japanese game centers were still dominated by shooting games. "The first fighting game I played was Karate Champ," recalls Sega's Virtua Fighter 5 game director Daichi Katagiri. "I was only a little kid then, and I didn't have that much money to play it." The 8-bit Karate Champ didn't feature health bars that showed the player's energy level, but put emphasis on who could land the most blows within the alloted time. In the late 1980s, Capcom released the first Street Fighter, which originally put more emphasis on beating up the arcade cabinet than opponents. The cabinet was outfitted with three pressure-sensitive pads that measured how hard players hit them to dish out attacks that varied between light, medium, and hard. These were eventually abandoned after continual damage to the cabinets (and player injuries) in favor of the current six-button layout. "When I was in junior high school, I remember seeing Street Fighter in the arcades, but I didn't play it because I was more into shooting games," says Hideaki Itsuno, one of Capcom's game developers. Ironic, as Itsuno would later go on to head up Capcom's reworking of the original Street Fighter with Street Fighter Zero (1995).

Shooters were still king of the game centers in the late 1980s. They had become heavily based on memory, however. Players spent more time watching other players play (and die) in hopes of memorizing elaborate levels and not wasting their own coins. But in 1991, Street Fighter II brought back and enjoyable game experience. It was fresh! As with early shooting games, it inspired the if-I’m-good-I-can-keep-playing feeling. “I remember all my friends started playing Street Fighter II,” says Umehara. “It was really fun to play against each other, and to see who was best.” Osaka-based Capcom had a megahit on its hands. The game captured the public’s imagination, and the sequel spawned an anime, a Hollywood movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue, and a Hong Kong action-movie spoof in which Jackie Chan dressed up as slit-skirted Chun-Li, a character that was arguably one of gaming’s first strong female action heroines. According to Donkey Kong and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo designed the Super Famicom home console controller with six buttons just so the company could release Street Fighter II in homes. As for most of the players of Umehara’s generation, Street Fighter II was the game to play. And for Japanese game developers, it was the game to beat.

The early 1990s saw another fighter from another Osaka-based developer: SNK (now known as SNK Playmore) released Fatal Fury: The King of Fighters, a game that immediately gave SNK its own niche in the genre with its stylish characters and its exceedingly powerful arcade hardware. SNK even created a home version of its arcade hardware with the astronomically priced Neo-Geo Advanced Entertainment system, which retailed at US $599. Most balked at the insanely high price tag, but according to SNK, the home console was popular among Middle Eastern princes. The SNK arcade cabinets even had a memory-card slot that could save play data for later use on the home console! Fighting games were a logical choice for a company whose founder, Eikichi Kawasaki was a former prize-fighter. He was also an avid fan of combat sport K-1, the inspiration for SNK’s in-game tournament “The King of Fighters”. That tourney started in SNK game Fatal Fury and was later spun off into its own series, The King of Fighters. Company boss Kawasaki was known to interrupt programmers to physically demonstrate exactly how a punch was thrown or how characters should take blows. Staffers hit the nearby game centers to soak up the vibe and check out what players were into. The bruisers that SNK churned out were steeped in Kawasaki’s street smarts and the grime of Osaka. The games were hits.

SNK brought new twists to the 2-D fighting game. Its four-button layout economically used the Start button in-game for taunting and insulting opponents. In Art of Fighting (1992), SNK introduced a rechargeable “spirit meter” that was separate from a character’s health bar and allowed fighters to perform special moves. What’s more, a “camera zoom” was introduced that zoomed in when the opponents were close together but pulled back when they were far apart. Its King of Fighters ’94 would create a fresh three-on-three fighting system that had trios go one-on-one with each other. These teams of three fighters would face off until the last fighter had lost. This fighting system would show up as an optional mode in fighting games Tekken (1994) from Namco (now known as NBGI) and Dead or Alive (1996) from Tecmo. SNK’s 1993 title, Samurai Shodown (known as Samurai Spirits in Japan), was the first to introduce weapon-based fighting, a subgenre that would lead to popular titles like Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear (1998) and Namco’s Soulcalibur (1998). But with SNK titles, it was all about fist to face. “Punching is important,” says SNK producer Shinya Kimoto. “When you hit a button, a direct response is important. That, and the sound effects of smacking someone.”

New characters trickled out a few at a time with each iteration of Street Fighter, but flooded out of the SNK fighting games. At the time of this book’s publication, SNK had created over eighty characters for its fighters. The genealogy and history of each character gets so complex that SNK’s Osaka headquarters has a chart on the wall so that employees can keep them all straight. “We wanted to make as many new characters as possible,” explains Kimoto. “Sometimes I wonder if we’ve made too many,” he adds, with a sigh. Including boss characters, over one hundred characters appear in The King of Fighters series alone! While other developers judiciously release a few new characters at carefully spaced intervals, SNK often seems like it’s just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. Perhaps, but SNK’s characters are so cool looking and so stylish! They seem taller than characters in other games, with bodies eight or nine heads high. They also ooze personality: from a white-haired female Mexican wrestler to a tornado-spinning Catholic priest out to redeem foes; from a junior high school Russian-Japanese girl with expert sumo abilities to cloned brawlers out to get the fighter they were cloned from. For SNK, as long as the character is badass, the company runs with it. Capcom is more judicious, introducing a few new characters at a time. With fewer characters in Street Fighter, however, each one somehow seems to count more—as if they are chess pieces with certain strengths and abilities unique to that character alone.

It was Street Fighter that captivated Daigo Umehara and catapulted him to fame as one the best fighting players in the world. Now he’s so good, he’s run out of challengers. “I used to wish there was a pro level,” Umehara says, landing a kick into Bruce Lee-like character Fei Long. “But I don’t really care much about that anymore.” He unleashes another combo. “I don’t want to be half-assed,” he says. “I’m either going to play or not play. Right now, I’m not playing at all.” Umehara’s not even looking at the flickering screen. “For those of use involved in creating the Street Fighter game, players like Daigo are truly wonderful,” says Capcom’s Hideaki Itsuno. “This isn’t something like PC gaming in Korea where you can land a pro contract and play professionally, but rather just playing because you want to truly understand a game. Then again, I have no idea where he got his money.” What does Umehara have to show for the thousands of dollars he sunk in Tokyo arcades? Apart from being really good at Street Fighter… nothing.

While 2-D Street Fighter II was ruling the game centers, Sega brought another dimension to fighters. Literally. When it was first released in 1993, Sega’s Virtua Fighter was revolutionary: it was in 3-D. Designed by Sega’s resident genius Yu Suzuki in the company’s Amusement Machine Research and Development Department 2, Virtua Fighter featured fully polygonal characters. The game ran on an arcade system board that Sega codeveloped with the aerospace company that eventually became Lockhead Martin. Compared to Street Fighter II’s six-button layout, the Virtua Fighter three-button Punch-Kick-Guard layout seemed streamlined—simple even. It was anything but. Even though the game was a technological marvel for its time, many were put off by the tournament-style rules whereby players could lose just by getting knocked out of bounds. The following year saw another Virtua Fighter with improved graphics and fighting. Each installment in the series produced more realistic 3-D graphics and inspired other three-dimensional fighters like Tekken and Dead or Alive. It was akin to the change from black-and-white to color TV. Two-dimensional pixelized fighting games were suddenly “dated” and “old fashioned”. 3-D fighting games became so popular that 2-D stalwart SNK released a 3-D spin-off brawler called The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact in 2004. The game lacked that classic SNK feel. But The King of Fighters XII (2008) is a return to form. During development, the characters were rendered in 3-D but then converted to 2-D. The game is 2.5D! SNK is porting it from arcades to the Playstation 3, the Xbox 360, and the PC. This is SNK’s new business model: create arcade games and then port them to every platform. “We have to release our fighting games in arcades,” says SNK exec Soichiro Hosoya. “If we didn’t, nobody would buy the console games.”

The Virtua Fighter games put strong emphasis on a series of very calculated moves heavily based on timing. All of the characters are balanced such that no one particular character is “better” than another. Since timing is vital, the meticulous Virtua Fighter team didn’t add online to the Playstation 3 port of Virtua Fighter 5 because it was worried that possible online delays might mean a millisecond advantage or disadvantage for players. In an age where online is de rigueur for console games, VF5 on the PS3 was still a hit in Japan. “There are customers who bought the console version just to practice,” says Sega’s Virtua Fighter 5 game director Daichi Katagiri, who’s been with the series since the start. After getting good in the privacy of their own homes, players then show up in arcades to publicly pummel other players. That’s not to say the Virtua Fighter arcade team are game-center purists who thumb their collective nose at connected console gaming. “Both online play and arcade play have their merits,” says Katagiri. “With online play, you can enjoy taking on others in the comfort of your own home. But, for arcade play, there’s something about squaring off against someone in the same space and time.” When the game was originally released, Sega rolled out forty-three Virtua Fighter 5 cabinets at its Akihabara Club Sega in Tokyo. Only one of those was dedicated to single play.

Virtua Fighter 5 runs on a powerful state-of-the-art arcade system board called the Sega Lindbergh. But power isn’t everything for fighters. Take Melty Blood: Act Cadenza, made in 2005 by French-Bread, a doujin (fan-created) developer. It runs on the Sega NAOMI computer board, the arcade version of the system that powered the Sega Dreamcast console—in 1999. Even though Melty Blood: Act Cadenza plays like a Standard fighter, it is anything but typical. The doujin 2-D fighter is based on another doujin game called Tsukihime (2000) from amateur developer Type-Moon and was originally designed and programmed for home PCs back in 2002. Tsukihime follows a young, pocket-knife wielding boy who is able to see “death lines” on people. “The story and the characters are really interesting,” says Nobuya Narita of French-Bread (a name that came about because one of its developers really likes French bread). “We thought that the story had many combat elements and was suitable for a fighting game.” In short: Melty Blood is an amateur game based on another amateur game.

Narita and a friend first started making PC games for fun back in the late nineties, whenever they hung out. They specialize in amateur punch ‘em ups. “Fighting games are easy to make,” Narita points out. “Other genres, like shooting or action, are a pain in the ass. Lazy, I know…” The original Melty Blood for PC was an indie hit. The game has a certain appeal that sets it apart, and is charming even to those unfamiliar with the Tsukihime source material. Characters such as a robotic maid or a maid with a special spatula attack are less “cool” and more otaku-flavored than other fighting games with muscle-bound brawlers. Type-Moon gave its blessing, and Melty Blood ended up in arcades in spring 2005 and on the PS2 the following year. French-Bread officially went pro.

“Turning prop isn’t so rare these days,” explains Narita. He’s right: more and more doujin software groups (called “doujin circles” in Japan) are becoming professional developers. Doujin software is not a new phenomenon in Japan and has existed in varying degrees as long as there’s been personal computers. The doujin game scene really exploded with the advent of Windows, however, which streamlined and simplified the game development process for amateurs. “Doujin is really hard to define,” says Narita. “It’s about people making games they want to make in their free time.” These amateur developers do hope to sell their work, typically at events like Japan’s twice-annual doujin convention Comiket. “If doujin circles sell their games, all the better,” he says. “That way they can make more games.” But there are growing pains in going from doujin hobbyist to doujin corporate. “It’s changed for us,” says Narita. “We used to do whatever we wanted, but now we have to take into account what the players want.”

Porting doujin computer game Melty Blood to arcades was atypical. Running on dated hardware, it was still an arcade smash, securing a coveted slot in the Tougeki-Super Battle Opera fighting tournament, producing a Playstation 2 port, a serialized manga, and a sequel called Melty Blood: Actress Again (2008).The arcade port of the home-console version also got a PC port. “When we were making Melty Blood, we thought that it might be popular because Tsukihime was so popular,” says Narita. “But we had no idea it would be this popular for this long.” Not bad for a 2-D fighter running on old hardware! With heavy pixels, so-so music and sparse backgrounds, the game lacks the polish of fighters made by SNK and Capcom. The game’s low-tech elements didn’t push away arcade players, however. It endeared them. The success of this amateur game actually forced big companies like Capcom to reassess their arcade business. “Because an inexpensive fighter like Melty Blood has become a hit,” says Capcom’s Itsuno, “I’ve been telling my bosses that perhaps we should take another look at how we do arcade fighters.”

In less than fifteen minutes, Daigo Umehara clears Street fighter II, and he did it on one coin. Umehara isn’t impressed, saying, “Anyone can do that these days” and, “It’s no big deal.” He gets up from the green velvet seat and pushes it in under the cabinet. How was it playing Street Fighter II again? He chuckles. “If I do return,” Umehara says, “you can bet I’ll be playing a full seven hours a day.” With the advent of Street Fighter IV, smart money says Umehara will come back fighting.

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