If you are enjoying the slow trickle of Capcom scrolling beat-em-ups from the Retro prefect then you will probably find this comprehensive review of one on one Capcom beat-em-ups adequate. Enjoy children.
- R.Lafemme
The Capcom meetings
Annual Meeting - 01/12/1999
Captain Christopher Om (Chairman in charge of going for broke): Well men, so far our plan of releasing a good game every five years and then killing it with spin offs is going very well. In fact we are so rich that we can afford to erase the Street Fighter film from everyone’s memory and by that I mean kill everyone that has seen it. Can anyone think of any other way to make lots of money, or as I like to call it “woman bait”.
Terrence Bonne: (Chief of triumph or die): Well sir there is a new console coming out called the Dreamcast. I’m sure it’s going to be a big hit because it’s made by the same people as the Sega Saturn AND it has a memory card with a screen. Perhaps we should release thousands of 2d fighting games and hope that they suddenly come back into favour.
Captain Christopher Om: Good idea Terrence, get on it right away. I’m off to stop the art department wasting pencils on drawing new sprites for Morrigan. If it was good enough for Darkstalkers it’s good enough for Marvel Vs Capcom!
Annual Meeting - 01/12/2002
Captain Christopher Om: Well our strategy of releasing thousands of fighting games for the Dreamcast has left us floundering. Why is this?
Megan Mann (Officer for facing it straight.): Well Sir it wasn’t a total failure as testing indicates that nobody noticed the Dreamcast pad was totally unsuited to fighting games. The trouble is that nobody noticed because only three people actually bought a Dreamcast and they just used them to go on the Dreamarena chat rooms.*
Captain Christopher Om: Well, can anyone get us out of this mess?
Ross O’ Vulcano (1,2,THE END administrator): Well sir we could release a very average game called Devil May Cry that for some reason people will pretend is amazing. Also we can release loads of other games that are a little bit like it but that people wont pretend are amazing. That’s sure to put us back on track.
Captain Christopher Om: Well that sounds good but what about our rich fighting game heritage?
Ross O’Vulcano: Fuck it
Sue Dario 51 ( Visiting advisor in charge of “Ahh Garcien”): Also we should make a game called Killer 7 that no one will buy.
Captain Christopher Om: Good plan, lets get started.
*As an exciting aside, our very own Uncle Pete was thrown out of the Dreamarena chat room for repeatedly typing “Edit the Fantasy”
Annual Meeting - 01/12/2005
Captain Christopher Om: Un Forastero!
Megan Mann: Where’s everybody going, bingo!?
Annual Meeting – 01/12/2009
Captain Christopher Om: Well I think we’ve finally released a version of Street Fighter 2 for everything powered by electricity. What should we do now?
Ross O’Vulcano: Why don’t we bring out Street Fighter 3 for everything powered by electricity?
Captain Christopher Om: No, Ross. I think releasing it for the Dreamcast and the X-box is good enough.
Ross O’Vulcano: But Sir, the controllers….
Captain Christopher Om: NO! People must never be able to easily perform Tyrant Slaughter!
Dr Ian Dark (Manager of feeling it coming over me and feeling it all around me.): Sir why don’t we bring out a NEW version of Street Fighter?
Captain Christopher Om: But we haven’t made a fighting game for ages, what if we’ve lost our Capcom magic?
Dr Ian Dark: It’s fine sir it’s been so long since we released a fighting game that no one will realise if its rubbish, even if we put less characters in it than previous games!
Geese Thompson (SNK spy pretending to be chief of can anyone stop this fighting machine?)
: Oh also instead of putting in lots of characters that people like we could make up some really bland new ones.
Captain Christopher Om: That’s a great idea but I think we should make one look incredibly fat and grotesque so no one will ever want to pick them.
Geese Thompson: Hah! Predictable!
Annual Meeting - 01/12/2010
Captain Christopher Om: Well Street Fighter IV is currently selling better than ‘loaf’, despite being inferior to nearly every fighting game we have ever made.
Ron Lento (Head of in Japan Mike Tyson is called Bega): It turns out that people will buy anything so long as it has fancy graphics! I think now is the time to make a new version of Marvel Vs Capcom…but with far less characters than previous editions.
Geese Thompson: Oh and you should character spaces with characters from games that people don’t really care about like Viewtiful Joe, Onimusha 4, Megaman Legends , Lost Planet or Dead rising. That makes far more sense than putting in characters like Strider or Salazar.
Captain Christopher Om: Good idea Geese, we certainly wouldn’t want to appeal to our fans.
Megan Mann: Well as long as Shuma Gorath is in it I don’t mind.
Ron Lento: Yes, Shuma Gorath is the most important character in the Marvel universe and definitely a fan favourite.
Ross O’Vulcano: I love Shuma Gorath
Everyone except Geese Thompson: MYSTIC STARE
Geese Thompson: Raging Sto…
Captain Christopher Om: GET OUT
Despite my extensive ramblings on the subject of SNK I must confess that my true Fighting love is and always will be the might Capcom. They might have left nearly a ten year gap between Street fighters three and four but as the chicken said in Robin Hood “Absence makes the heart grow fonder”. In any case that was punishment for buying Guilty Gear XX. In order to prove my devotion to Capcom I will now recount every Capcom fighting franchise I can remember playing i.e. a lot. As a fun game why not try to count how many of them reuse the Morrigan sprite? (All of them)
Street Fighter II (Turbo/NewChallengers/EX Revival/HD remix)
The original and best? Probably not as the selection of character is poor and Sagat is ludicrously difficult to beat. Street Fighter II was definitely brilliant, but that was in the olden days if you tried to play it now you would just spend all your time trying to work out how to assign a groove to your character (you can’t) or how to do your supermove (you don’t have a super move) or waiting for the announcer to say “Face it straight, triumph…or die!” (he doesn’t say “Face it straight, triumph or …die”). In spite of its problems Street Fighter 2 has been released for anything that can play games, except for the DS because a ‘A hadouken with stylus is about as good as listening to the wireless’. The versions are all pretty similar but I have a particular fondness for the SNES version and it’s huge black bars across the top and bottom of the screen. Still at least I wasn’t like Uncle Benjy playing the knacked Megadrive version, it might well have had the new challengers but you also had to press start to alternate between punch and kick on the standard Megadrive pad. In the end it’s hard to dislike a game that features a bonus stage where you kick barrels and detailed images of your characters mangled face on the continue screen.
I must also give special mention to the fact that Cousin Lone Soldier (almost ten years my senior) insisted repeatedly that I would never beat him at Street Fighter II and then I did. This left him shamefaced saying “Well you won’t beat my brother’s girlfriend”. Because his brother didn’t exist we will never know if this was true. What we do know is that when I was faced with a similar challenge from young cousin Grocery Storer we defeated him soundly by constantly using M.Bison’s psycho crusher. It may seem petty to reduce a child to tears by constantly ramming into him while surrounded by psycho power, but it’s the only way he will ever learn! I later utilised this technique to destroy a small child in a branch of Gamestation.
For this reason I will award Street Fighter II a well deserved “I am the strongest women in the world” out of a “Go home and be a family man”.
Street Fighter III (Massive Attack, Double Impact, Third Strike)
“Make your first move, so what’s it gonna be? Welcome to the new world of Street Fighter III”
The apparent black sheep of the Street Fighter family, if you ever ask a Capcom employee about Street Fighter III they say “What Street Fighter III?” and then run away. For reasons best known to themselves Capcom restricted access to Street Fighter III to the following platforms 1. Dreamcast. 2. All four copies of the X-box version of Street Fighter anniversary collection BUT NOT the Playstation 2 version. 3. An arcade cabinet in the Barnsley Odeon.
It’s unknown why Capcom didn’t whore out Street Fighter III like they did with every other game they ever produced. (Even Megaman got a re-release on the virtual console.) Maybe they were ashamed of how they tried to look all cool on third strike by hiring a rapper to do the music. “Let’s get it on yeah. Select and make your first pick. Let’s get it on yeah. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6” More likely is that people complained at the absence of Zangief, Hugo is just as craggily and useless just give him a chance! In fact Street Fighter III featured only four Street Fighter regulars (Ryu, Ken, Akuma and Chun Li) causing people to become confused and frightened. If they had only looked deeper they would have seen that the newcomers were all brilliant (except Q, Twelve and Necro who were awful). Special mentions have to go to Makoto who I am surprisingly adept at using, Alex the worlds first none rubbish wresting character, Dudley the worlds first none rubbish boxing character who as a bonus is incredibly posh and Urien who looks like Kramer from Seinfeld. (He is constantly Tyrant slaughtering the door down and saying “These pretzels are making me Aeigs Reflector”)
As the game that first introduced the concept of scarring DNA with the mark of your dignity I am proud to offer Street Fighter III a solid “Lets fight like Gentleman” out of a parrying system that sounds good but is in reality too difficult to use.
Street Fighter Alpha (1,2,3, Max, Upper, Saiko Edition)
I used to love Street Fighter Alpha 3, I really did. It had a character roster that grew with each release (my pet hate is fighting games where certain characters are removed so there is never an ‘ultimate’ version. I’m looking at you Super Smash Brothers.) Had a load of different modes including a decent single player world tour mode, characters had proper endings, there were characters to unlock and above everything else there was no online multiplayer.
I played it so much that my thumb got a dent in it. Unfortunately Capcom decided to try and beat the record set by Street Fighter II for game with highest amount of pointless re-releases. Granted I didn’t HAVE to buy them all but if I didn’t I might have missed out on being able to play as Eagle in the Game Boy advance version! To add insult to injury Capcom then reused the Alpha sprites so many times that the original drawings eventually went on fire. My verdict must thus be that while Street Fighter Alpha is great I cannot even bring myself to think about it anymore. It is therefore awarded an honourable “It’s all about your skills” out of a “Can anybody stop this fighting machine?”
Darkstalkers (1, 2, 3, Chaos Tower)
Imagine Street Fighter but instead of Street Fighters it was monsters i.e. Vampire, Werewolf, Bee Woman. That game would be called “Monster Fighting – on the street” and it would be a blatant rip off of Darkstalkers.
Darkstalkers has never been Capcom’s most popular series, but in my mind it certainly has a lot of things going for it. Most of those things are related to the abundant lesbian erotic imagery provided by Morrigan and Lillith, but we can also recommend Darkstalkers in the basis of Demitri having a special attack where he forces opponents to change sex and then rapes them (if they are already female he changes them into a schoolgirl) and Vampire lord Jedah who’s main form of attack is laughing at opponents and then molesting them with pink tentacles. I’m elaborating slightly and most of this business goes on behind closed doors but there is definitely something slightly seedy about playing Darkstalkers, which is why I keep my copy well hidden. (Inside the case for Battle Raper 2)
So is Darkstalkers any good as a fighting game? Well it’s probably average at best but to young men like I used to be such concerns are irrelevant. What’s really important is that you get a story mode where you can level up your chosen fighter indefinitely. I don’t think there is anything more satisfying than levelling up J.Talbain to the point where he can just constantly use his giant dragon firing attack. Constant performing of the half circle towards and punch certainly creates some interesting looking finger craters and it is for this reason I award Darkstalkers a Bishamon out of a Raptor also has a mouth in his stomach.
Plasma Sword (Star Gladiator)
Here is a joke the Retro Prefect told us “You can Bill stein but you can’t Hayato” I don’t understand this joke because I only played Plasma Sword on two occasions before realising it was utter rubbish and also because it makes no sense. For some reason he decided to play Plasma Sword quite a lot and as a result we can only assume his brain became slightly mangled. Plasma Sword is the sequel to Star Gladiator which I haven’t played at all but I can make this joke about “Did you hear about Bill Stein he was (Star) Glad he ate her!” The moral of the story is that Plasma Sword was an attempt to make Soul Calibur in space but it ended up more like masters of Teras Kasi. i.e. rubbish and forgotten. I cant award it anymore than a solitary Arden Lynn out of Jodo Kast but what I can do is make some more jokes.
Q. What’s the difference between Hayato and Black Hayato?
A. Black Hayato makes this look good!
Q. How many toes does Hayato have?
A. Three…a left toe, a right toe and a wild Hayatoe!
Q. What’s the different between Bilstein and a Piano?
A. You can Tuna Stein but you can’t Bil Piano!
Street Fighter EX (+alpha 2, 3)
Street Fighter EX is easily the greatest of the series. It may be slow and ugly as sin but it makes up for it by sheer force of personality. It’s only a shame that the EX characters are never allowed to make their way into the mainstream series because people are missing out on the likes of…
* Allen Snider: What Street Fighter was really missing was a Ryu clone wearing a purple gi and sporting a ginger bowl cut. Although to be fair this one has opted to learn the forward thrusting “Justice Fist” instead of the more traditional Shoryuken uppercut. Never before has an Allen been so fearsome.
* Doctorine Dark: Known as D.Dark by his friends. Doctorine is an insane war veteran who’s special moves involve tying people up with bits of string and then cutting them with knives. In his spare time Doctorine likes to lay down bundles of dynamite while proclaiming “explosive.” Does he have a brother called Nectarine? Only time will tell.
* Vulcano Rosso: Vulcano is obsessed with volcanoes, so much so that all his special moves are named after volcanoes. The only problem is he can’t spell Volcano! (Also he can sort of levitate)
* Darun Mister: Darun comes from an alternate universe where Zangief was born in India and has a wonky moustache. Is that a spinning piledriver? By no means it’s called the Ganges DDT and I INVENTED IT. Darun is so sick of people comparing him to Zangief that the pupils have disappeared from his eyes but it doesn’t mean he can’t tell how fetching he looks in his big gold belt and tiny orange trunks. The real question is “Darun Mister or Mister Darun”
The reasons for these characters not appearing in Street Fighter Iv have never been revealed but needless to say I shall be writing a stern letter to Capcom demanding that Cracker Jack be made the main character of Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Until that happens I will console myself with the presence of a photo of Mr T on M.Bison’s stage and award the EX series a Cycloid Gamma out of a Cycloid Beta.
P.S The EX series features the best stage music, especially the Charlie Brown jazz on Guile’s stage.
Tech Romancer
At the tender age of 16 I was first able to experience ‘romance’. At the time I was living in the area of Europe with the highest rates of teenage pregnancy but I still managed to avoid this romance comprising a bit of clumsy fumbling with a drunken girl. How did I manage to miss the veritable orgy of virulent, underage sex happening right outside my window? Easy, I never left the house. How then did I first enter the world of adult affairs? Through the Capcom window that was Tech Romancer for the Dreamcast!
I should probably point out that when I say “Romance” I actually mean “big robots fighting each other”.
That’s because Tech Romancer was a fighter revolving around parodies of various famous giant robots that no one in England is aware of.
As a lvl 5 geek I was vaguely aware that Pulsion sort of looked like it could be from Evangelion and I was able to deduce that G-Kaiser was a parody of whatever Gekigangar was also a parody of. (Thanks for showing two anime series Sci -fi channel!) however with robots such as Dianna-17 and Rafaga I knew only that I had seen something like them in the ‘adult animation’ section of HMV. That and Blodia who seems to feature in loads of games despite Cyberbots itself being a load of old rubbish.
Was Tech Romancer any good? Well it was impossibly slow but that didn’t matter because giant robots are slow but it also featured some very accurate mecha anime sound effects and explosions which made up for its failings. More important it had a mangleated name which meant every review at the time sported a “No this isn’t a game about sex with ipods..” type joke.
For this reason I give it a Wiseduck out of a Twinzam V.
Rival Schools (Project Justice)
How is it that the ‘Music Industry’ is constantly complaining about copyright infringement and yet is perfectly happy to thieve other people’s intellectual property? The band “Hadouken!” very rarely sing songs about fireballs and I don’t think that Robots in Disguise would be approved of by Galvatron. Worst of all is the band Rival Schools who forced Rival Schools 2 to be called ‘Project Justice’ and to my knowledge released no songs about the bizarre Kyoko’s office minigame. If music would accept its proper place in the entertainment hierarchy i.e. below anything that has images AND sounds then perhaps we would be getting more games in the Rival Schools series. Instead we get Lady Gaga flashing her private zones to distract from her broken face, where is the (project) justice in that?
In any case Rival Schools is a wonderful reminder or my own school days when I would wander around with my friends getting into fights with children from other schools and occasionally performing team up attacks on them. It may sound cliché but your school days really are the best days of your life, especially when the head boy starts waving a sword around and mind controlling students into being well behaved. I also remember the various mini games we used to play such as “Home run”, “Penalty Shoot” and “Volleyball against cardboard targets” they certainly seemed to make the days last longer even if they did appear out of context. In Japan the game featured a “School Life mode” which centred around character creation, minigames, violence and dating simulation. This mode was pulled from the western release because the English speaking world cannot cope with pretending to chat up Japanese schoolgirls; we are however perfectly equipped to smash them in the face with a baseball bat. Again this recalls my own schooldays as I could never pluck up the courage to talk to girls but I could certainly throw knives at them while laughing hysterically.
For these reasons I am awarding Rival Schools a Raizo out of a Fletcher.
Power Stone (1,2, collection)
“A good beginning may lead to a perfect ending…go for it”
Wise words from the people behind Power stone, a game with much to teach. Mainly those things involve shouting “POWERFUL” whenever you collect a Power Stone but also extend to knowing that you can create a bubble gun by fusing together a ray gun and an umbrella.
This wisdom is wrapped up in what is basically a version of Smash Brothers but with coherent art design. Unfortunately the power of Nintendo and their mascots (i.e. Mario, Evil Mario, Mario’s Brother, Dr Mario and Fox McCloud) is such that no one has even heard of Power Stone. That’ll learn Capcom for making games for the Dreamcast and then re-releasing them for the PSP. To be honest Power Stone isn’t really up therewith Sango Fighter, for sure it’s fun in multiplayer but so is sex and you don’t see me giving that good reviews. (Although the ladies always give it 5g’s eh readers!)
For these reasons I’m giving Power Stone a slightly disappointing Galuda out of Mr Game and Watch.
Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness
Rumour has it that Cyberbots was originally slated to feature only ‘partial metal madness’ but top bosses at Capcom felt that nothing less than Full Metal Madness would appeal to the discerning beat‘em up fan. As it was the game was never released outside of Japan due to strict EU regulations on the portrayal of alloy based mental disorders. Luckily I was able to acquire a dubious copy from my local Cash Converter, the shop of choice for thieves and drug addicts alike. My copy of Cyberbots was mysterious in many ways, the badly photocopied inserts made it clear that this was a pirate game but then the actual disc looked genuine. By far the biggest mystery was that it contained a cover insert for Darkstalkers with a phone number on it. We were eventually able to convince an Irishman to call the number in the hopes of getting a copy of Red Earth. Unfortunately the number had been disconnected and so the mysteries of the Cyberbots disc went unsolved.
As for the game itself I’m afraid that my attempts to solve its mystery were far more interesting than the act of playing it. It turned out that Cyberbots was nothing but a poor mans Gundam Battle Assualt and it’s a very poor man indeed that can’t afford Gundam Battle Assault. Therefore I’m giving Cyberbots a Zaku out of a Zeong.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
If you enjoy seeing 80’s pop stars have their imaginary friends attack each other then you’re sure to enjoy Jojo’s Bizarre adventure. Your appreciation might be improved further if you also enjoy highly unbalanced game play and side stories about people trying to hide bombs in oranges.
To explain properly – Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is based on the 3rd volume of the manga of the same name. It revolves around highly effeminate young men who can summon ‘special friends’ called Stands which they use to drop tractors onto each other. Unfortunately the powers of these stands don’t really match up to each other so poor old paedophile Allesi with his ability to turn people into children so that he might better molest them dosent stand up to the likes of Jotaro Kujo who merely punches rapidly while shouting “Ora ora ora ora ora”. The playstation version of the game kept the Retro prefect busy for many hours with its full featured story mode, unfortunately I was cursed with the arcade perfect Dreamcast version which sacrificed the story mode for better animation and a few special attacks that were too violent for the impresionable playstation audience. Personally I would have preferred the mini game where you have to throw iron bars at a monkey captain.
Therefore I must award JoJo’s bizarre adventure an Emerald Splish out of an Emerald Splash.
Marvel Series (X-men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Superheroes, Marvel Superheroes VS Street Fighter, X-men vs. Street fighter, Marvel Vs Capcom, Marvel Vs Capcom 2)
There really isn’t a lot of point in playing any of the games in this series other than Marvel Vs Capcom 2 as it’s was essentially produced by Capcom throwing the sprites from those games at each other and then adding a few more Darkstalkers characters and a cactus man. It certainly made sense for Capcom to waste all that time inventing new cactus based characters rather than including favourites from other Capcom games. Who wants to play as Jedah when you could have a space filled up on the character select screen by Ruby Heart?
The odd choices extend to the soundtrack, with the good people at Capcom deciding that over the top battles between armour clad mad scientists and ninjas from alternate soviet controlled universes should be set to thoroughly laid back lounge jazz. A strange choice indeed but it does mean that you can easily fit Marvel Vs Capcom 2 into a sophisticated dinner party without making a scene. In fact there is nothing that makes an evening more agreeable than some lively conversation over the last of the after eights and a Hyper Viper beam. That is until that dreadful bore Anakaris butts in with his repetitious sarcophagus summoning!
Of course the ultimate problem with this game is that no one will ever be satisfied with the character line-up because everyone want’s their personal favourites to be involved. It does seem strange that obscure Dr Strange villain Shuma Gorath gets a place ahead of favourites such as the Dread Dormamu, Baron Mordo or MODOK but I’m sure all the Shuma Gorath fans were ecstatic to see his mystical staring abilities replicated so faithfully. For this reason I must award these games a Sunday best out of a Proton Cannon.
* Funny bonus joke – In Marvel VS Capcom the last boss is Onslaught the sloppy cousin from keeping up appearances!
Capcom VS SNK (1/2/EO)
A true meeting of fighting game giants, SNK made an utter mess of their version but made up for it with the cardfighter games meanwhile Capcom were charged with redrawing all the SNK characters to try and make them slightly less bland. They eventually managed it but the effort was so great that on the Capcom side they only had time to do a new sprite for M.Bison and they had to recycle the rest from Street Fighter Alpha. This means that the game ends up looking extremely scrappy especially as the poor Morrigan sprite appears to have been thrown in a skip and then rescued at the last minute. Despite this Capcom Vs SNK 2 is easily the best of the Capcom fighters and also one of the most difficult to get to grips with. However this did not stop me from beating the games prefect ten times in a row with a team made up of Blanka, Morrigan and M.Bison. An achievement so great that I was actually awarded a handsome certificate. Rumours abound that I made the certificate myself and that I was later beaten nigh on 20 times with Sagat are completely unfounded. Perhaps you should stop listening to fairy stories and do a bit more practicing!
Again my only other quibble with Capcom VS SNK is the character lineup and by that I mean 1. Who cares about the useless woman from Final Fight 2? And 2. NO DUCK KING
Because of this I’m awarding Capcom VS SNK 2 a well deserved all man team out of Barrensburgh.
Street Fighter IV
Q. How good is the theme to Street Fighter IV?
A. So good that I paid actual money for it on itunes making it the fourth piece of music I have paid for in my life. (1. Star Wars CD, 2. FF8 Soundtrack, 3. Mandy Moore cover of senses working overtime)
So exciting was the release of a new Street Fighter game that I actually bought an X-box 360 to play it on despite the fact that the Xbox is the spiritual home of online gaming and the dreaded first person shooter. I expect buying a PS3 with its lovely d-pad would have been the more sensible decision but then I didn’t have £400 to spare. My impressions of it were that it played more or less the same as every other Street Fighter game, that it looked nice but the characters looked slightly too ‘meaty’, that the anime cut scenes had been drawn by the people that design colouring books and that the main menu was too small to see with human eyes. That isn’t to say that I disliked Street Fighter IV, I thought it was great but I couldn’t help that feel that in many ways it was a step backwards from Street Fighter III. Most of those ways being in just having all the characters from Street Fighter II in it again and having an impossible to beat last boss. Most damaging of all was the revelation that Zangief had gone from laughing stock to the most powerful character in the game – literally a world gone mad.
Speaking of Characters there weren’t nearly enough of them and the new ones all looked like SNK cast offs, that is with the exception of Rufus who is so grotesque that the man who designed him should be fired out of a cannon.
For these reasons I can only award Street Fighter IV a Fajita Buster out of a Tostada Smash.
Tatsunoko Vs Capcom
Tatsunoko VS Capcom is a game made by idiots, ACTUAL IDIOTS. Making a fighting game for the Wii is like making a fighting game for the Gamecube or N64 i.e. pointless only it’s more pointless because the Wii dosent even have a pad at all it has a Wii-mote and a nunchuck (which people always call a nunchunk for no good reason). This is why Tatsunoko VS Capcom has a messed up control system where you can’t decide whether you want to punch or kick. There is a lot of difference between hands and feet just ask ‘person with no legs’. Also Tatsunoko are a rubbish and useless company who have only made Battle of the Planets and then lots of things that look slightly like Battle of the Planets. To make up for this Capcom sabotaged their own character side with people such as “man from dead rising”, “man from Onimusha 4” and “Robot from Lost Planet.” SIGH!
Tatsunoko vs Capcom has only two things going for it, one is the inclusion of Batsu which allows you to imagine that one day they might make a new Rival Schools game if you keep picking Batsu over and over again. The other is that it features a huge gold robot called Gold Lightan who likes to shout “Gooollllllddddd Ligghhhhhtttaaaannnnn” and whose main attack is treading on people. The Retro Prefect thinks Tatsunoko Vs Capcom is better than Street Fighter Iv but that just proves that he’s an idiot who spends too much time daydreaming about Tekkaman Blade.
I’m only giving Tatsunoko VS Capcom a Polimar out of Casshan and it’s mainly getting that because it was the last game I played before I was drafted.
Pocket Fighter
The best thing about Pocket Fighter is how I asked for it for Christmas and then whenever Uncle Pete went out I would stealth into the present cupboard and retrieve it for hours of ‘super deformed’ fun. By Christmas morning I was of course bored with it, but then I had also asked for Final Fantasy 8 and that had come in cellophane meaning I could not open it until the designated holiday. The moral of the story is that Pocket Fighter is a bit like playing a game with a “big head” mode cheat only sometimes your character will dress up as a cowboy or hit someone with a plank of wood. The other moral of the story is that the best thing about Pocket Fighter is the personality quiz which allocates you a character based on answers to multiple choice questions about your favourite weapon and whether or not you like sweets. The only question that remains is whether people who were “super deformed” would actually look like that or would just be amorphous freaks reminiscent of the elephant man?
Overall it gets a handsome Gem Fighter out of not so handsome Uncle Jem fighter.
Capcom Fighting Jam
Another brilliant jape from the men at future publishing “You may think this is a game where preserves battle each other?” Imagine the confusion when Capcom Fighting Jam did actually turn out to be about jars of jam fighting each other, except it wasn’t about that at all! It was about JARS OF JAM FIGHTING EACH OTHER. At least that’s what it said on the box but actually it was about Capcom being very lazy and making an unbalanced where the likes of strawberry jam (Ryu from Street Fighter) are smashed into the floor by a large damson jam (dinosaur). The end result can be nothing but a ‘jammy situation’. In the U.S the game was known as Capcom Fighting Evolution because the translators spent all day on the phone trying to explain the difference between jam and jelly. In the end they gave all the jelly jars to the bees and went back to trying to understand why Alex can’t air block but Hydron is a kraken that covers the entire screen.
Fortunately Capcom Fighting Jelly is able to alleviate all its faults by featuring Jedah in a starring role. Personally we never tire of his various laughs and we like to think he is a man who enjoys his work. (His work is throwing rotating scythes at people and then smashing them onto giant contracts) Therefore I risk my professional reputation by awarding Capcom Fighting Jam a Hauzer out of a Krauzer.
So there we have it, a marathon of Capcom fisticuffs critique and what have we learned at the end of it all? Mainly that I don’t actually like fighting games and that instead of buying all this nonsense I should have been increasing my knowledge with Broderbund graphic adventures.
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