You'll never believe it! Check the link. I'll try and get video of it at the show!

Hello friends, did you hear that EGM is returning to print hopefully later this year? This is awesome news for those that grew up on the magazine. I'm happy to hear that the magazine is back, especially that its going back to one of the founders. I'm hoping that they might be looking for new writers, perhaps a genuine fan of fighting games. Not a "fan" in the popular sense of the word, but somebody that likes to play fighters and take them apart as well. A writer that has a pretty good long-term memory of the genre and more importantly, will try to avoid the mistakes in covering their development.

EGM might be considered infallible when it comes to reporting on Street Fighter but they have allowed their own interpretations to color the development of the series. The things they have written, even as an April Fools joke, ended up influencing the actual game. This never sat squarely with me. I felt as if people that didn't really understand all of the nuances for Street Fighter, especially the Japanese origins and influences, were shaping the American perception of the game. What EGM had done to the history of the franchise was endemic of a larger problem. The timeliness and efficiency of print journalism.

It was the February 1997 issue of EGM that got a multi-page preview of SF III. The observations they made were based on a both a work-in-progress and their assumptions about how the characters played and their origin myth. I wonder if the editors ever called the writers on the assumptions they wrote.

The very first photographs of SF III that EGM published were a few issues prior to their dissection. Back in the November 1996 issue. Interestingly enough it was the only time I had ever been published in EGM, as a letter of the month, questioning whether SF III would be good or not. Even back then I was passionate about the franchise. I had followed the SF III developments in American magazines and had noticed that the gap between what was being published in Japan and the US were still a few months apart. In November of 96 my other favorite US magazine, Next Generation also published a news blurb in their "Arcadia" section. The information seemed mistranslated and incomplete. Worse, it lacked a screenshot.

These gripes might seem inconsequential as most Americans got their first glimpse of SF III in November's EGM. However for those lucky types that visited Japanese bookstores had actually gotten a glimpse and solid information of SF III in September 1996's issue of Famitsu. I was one of those lucky types. I brought the magazine and poured over the solitary screenshot and info on the CPS-3 and Warzard day and night. I took it with me to school to share with the other die-hard SF fans. This single page spread allowed me to question whether Capcom was doing the right thing by staying with 2D before EGM had even published a screenshot.

So why am I mentioning all of this now? Why should what was published 13 years ago matter to someone looking to write for EGM today?

Perhaps because I grew up with a firm appreciation for both American and Japanese magazines. I saw how much hard work it took to make articles memorable month after month. I also learned how much influence these magazines held with both publishers and audiences. I didn't want to see EGM, or any other magazine, fall into the familiar habits of making friends with the publishers first and then writing light previews to ensure future access. By ignoring hard-hitting questions most magazines were doing a disservice to the audiences. They were also ignoring the things that made titles memorable in the first place.

I'm not one for making friends in the industry. I'm also not much for newsy writing and reviews. I am a fan of longer features and believe that gamers deserve to know every side of the story, even if that means having to call the developers on their inconsistencies as much as praising their greatness. Damned if I wouldn't want a chance to prove that in the new EGM.

I have no published material to show Steve Harris or any of the former editors. No way of showing my ability and insight other than a mountain of blogs on 1UP and a smaller list on Capcom-Unity. Would my style even fit within the walls of EGM, where higher-profile writers and editors already have a history with companies like Capcom? Or am I destined for other things?

What do you think?

Howdy fellow Unity members. I hope you are well and are eager to see what Capcom has in store for us at the 2009 E3. Things should be great. I have had the good fortune of attending the show a few times in the past decade. I have to admit that the Capcom of today certainly feels a lot different than the Capcom back then. A decade ago their web presence was a little cold and sterile. It doesn't compare at all to the Unity site we know and love. The staffers are really going out of their way to make the community feel welcome and giving us updates from behind the scenes as much as they are participating within the forums here, abroad or sharing links from outside the community as well. S-kill, Kramez, Sven, Snow, Deezie and the rest of the people behind the scenes are going above and beyond. Be it Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Flock or Bionic Commando... every game in the Capcom stable gets some shine. Plus each and every member gets to vote on titles and participate in special events. 

10 years ago was my first E3 experience. It was surreal. According to many insiders the 1999 E3 was the biggest and best show ever held in the LA Convention Center. However Capcom's showings there used to be anything but welcoming, kiosks set up for demo games and a video running on loop. Unless you were media with an appointment then you couldn't get any info from the staffers. Sort of how every other publisher treated (and still treat!) many of the attendees at conventions. The fan participation used to be rather demeaning at the Capcom booth. A DJ/emcee would show up and stir the crowd into a frenzy making them yell and act like fools for a tee shirt or a sticker, sometimes being very condescending to the fans. My friends and I wondered what type of message Capcom was sending to its customers as we passed by, listening to the host heckle the crowd. A few other developers would create spectacles like this at the event but most were rather low key and friendly. For a while that's how Capcom's presence used to be at the E3. Thankfully times changed and we have a new approach and new people running things.

Capcom-Unity is a grassroots marketing campaign. Let's not try and sugar coat the purpose of most community sites. They exist to corral consumers and get them to identify with the brand or message. It's not the product as much as the people that brought me to Unity and places like 1UP. We all share common experiences and common games, its our stories that are extraordinary. For the first time in a long time a publisher was willing to invest some resources and build a place for like-minded fans to assemble and share their art, recordings or thoughts on forums and blogs. When the conventions began they invited fans to attend, participate and ask questions of staff and guests, the velvet rope that used to separate press and consumers had been taken down. That little bit of recognition did far for more the name of Capcom than any E3 or Tokyo Game Showing in the early 2000's. Can you name any other publisher that has been as welcoming to the fans? For this I am grateful to be a member on Unity. 

The site might not be around forever so we should appreciate it while we have it. Let's also take a moment to congratulate everyone at Capcom for the outstanding job they have done on Unity and with the games themselves. A whole lot has changed in a couple of years. The future is looking very good indeed and for a change I look forward to seeing what Capcom has to show at the E3. 

There are many things I take for granted. I should be more thankful for my family and friends, they are my foundation and should hear it from me more often. Even though I live in Southern California, the hub of gaming, when a gaming show passes through I don't expect to get in. If not for small miracles then I'd never get into the E3. My friend was able to secure a pass for me so that I could attend. Rather than take the ticket of another Unity member I asked if I could crash the party. Capcom said yes.  

I feel like the luckiest guy on Earth and don't take any of this for granted. I promise to take pics and video for the Unity members that couldn't make it and hope you'd do the same for me some day soon.

Today I'll be talking a little bit about age and gender in fighting games. There are parallels between Capcom and SNK that might be a cause for concern. There are changes made to content, design and continuity to both Street Fighter and the King of Fighters that might end up painting fighting games into a corner. These changes are subtle and might be passed off as a shift in aesthetics. But what if they were being made to appease critics and lock the respective series' into a needless cycle of fan service?

It all started when the characters were announced for the King of the Fighters XII. Many of the popular characters would be returning as expected. The graphics and designs had been updated. The revision to Athena seemed the most striking. Her physical characteristics seemed dramatically changed, breaking the overall theme of redesigns. Her face had become round, here eyes large and pronounced like a chibi character, her thighs even became a little thicker and softer. As if she had somehow gotten younger while the rest of the cast stayed consistent. This in and of itself might not be cause for concern but what if you consider that a fellow young lady in the game, Leona, was also supposed to be 18-years-old. As Gamers Inn pointed out both characters are supposed to be 18 but why do their appearances vastly differ?

Why would the designers at SNK go with such a young representation of Athena? None of the other females, so far, introduced in the game have the same animé features. This shift in design for one character seems a bit much. It breaks the consistency of the more mature features placed on other characters.

A fan of the series would point out two things in defense of the revised character. The first being that the characters in KOF get a makeover in every title. Their wardrobe, features and even stance vary from game to game. Athena was no exception to this rule.

The second thing a fan would point out is that the school girl outfit and large eyes are a nod to the game that Athena was pulled from, SNK's 1986 title Psycho Soldier. Many of the characters in KOF were pulled from various, non-fighting, SNK games like Ikari Warriors, King of the Monsters, Metal Slug and Psycho Soldier. Her redesign and anime proportions were meant for long-time fans of SNK and we should recognize the efforts and be happy that the studio was returning to its roots.

But what if there was something inherently flawed with the logic of returning a character to her roots? What if there was such a thing as catering too much to fans and by doing so have painted the series into a corner? Certainly this blog might be making too much out of some big eyes and lots of leg action. But consider the trend of young female fighters in recent years and ask if designers are pandering to the (mostly) male audience.

Athena's cosmetic change was a bit extreme. Regressing her appearance in the game might have been an aesthetic decision or one to cater to the fans. Not unlike the addition of Sakura in SF IV.

Sakura made her debut in the SF Alpha / Zero series, she wasn't pulled from an outside game but had been invented for the canon. She was a girl that complimented the young Ryu. When the fans were polled as to whom they would like to see in SF IV Sakura was at the top of the list. But why was it that everyone in SF IV had shown some signs of aging while Sakura herself was kept as a schoolgirl?

Let's take the observation a step further and question why the live-actor Sakura used in a commercial was even younger than canon Sakura? What purpose did a 12-year-old pretending to be a 15-year-old serve? Had fans become so enamored with the character that they wanted to preserve her exactly as they remembered her; nubile, pretty and full of fighting spirit? It all seemed a little creepy.

Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono had mentioned that fans had a certain memory of SF II that made it seem bigger and better than it actually was. He wanted to preserve those feelings by not changing the characters too much. By having the team go back and try to recreate the elements that made SF II so successful. This also meant that he would be incorporating characters from Alpha even though that time line had happened years prior and according to canon some of the characters had passed on by the time of SF II. The mix of two different continuities and their respective characters seemed strained. He then went a step further and revived a character that had been assumed dead for some 17 years and added new characters that lacked the creative spark and connection to the martial arts that made the originals so memorable. But I digress...

Had SF fans come to expect a certain level of service and concession? How many titles have been allowed to explore different themes with their characters? Is this a failing of the fighting game genre? One that demands returning characters so as not to create a learning curve on new characters? Would this by why Ono and the team did not bother to advance the canon and characters, for fear of disappointing fans? Strong female leads have always been embraced by gamers, be they Chinese ICPO or British Special Services. These girls and women were allowed to grow up, even if it was a little, in the game series. Should we have expected any less of Sakura and the SF IV cast?

When word got out that there was a possibility of a SF IV update, including a new and old character added to the lineup. One of the suggestions was "Little Miss" aka Hitomi, the daughter of Gouken. In case you are not familiar with her then please read the Street Fighter Magazine to see a close representation of the character. However if the Q&A with Capcom were to be taken verbatim then Hitomi would be introduced very young and very powerful. Some 12-years-old and as powerful as the much older Ken and Ryu. She would be even younger than Sakura even though she was written as much closer in age to Ken and Ryu according to the rare manga.

Am I the only one that finds a problem with female characters added to the titles appearing much younger than before, especially when the other characters are allowed to age?

The artistic medium allows authors and directors to keep a character perpetually young forever. The KOF and SF cast might end up locked at a certain age just for guaranteed sales. Like our popular comic book heroes, where Superman remains perpetually young even though his adventures span 75 years. Capcom and SNK only have to keep going through the motions and they will keep selling games. By including fan-favorites and locking them at a certain age then the sequels can keep coming. However at what point is this too much of the same. At what point does this repetition and saturation of sameness end up hurting the franchise?

The most profound stories, the ones that are truly remembered, have allowed fan-favorite characters to age, mature or even pass on. Fighting game fans, and the majority game players, are getting old. Most high school graduates today never played SF II, they barely have any recollection of Alpha and are lucky to have played SF III considering the arcade scene just about died in the USA by 1999. The kids and teens of the early 90's (those born in the 70's and early 80's) were the ones that grew up on Street Fighter. They held the series in high regards and followed everything with the name SF on it. Including magazines, movies, cartoon shows to anime and manga titles. These gamers are now the 30-somethings with kids of their own. If any concession should be made to the generation raised on SF it should be the acknowledgment that the cast was getting older as well. I am not saying that I expected to see what Ken and Ryu looked like as ancient masters in SF IV, however I was interested in seeing changes made to these characters for the sake of progress.

Yoshinori Ono pulled influences from SF II and SF Alpha for his game. Did he consider that the canon he pulled from were snapshots of different moments in the lives of the SF icons? Within the span of 5 to 10 years, going forwards or backwards through time, a lot had happened to these fighters. The team at Capcom can explore what happened, or could have happened at any point in the lives of the cast. They do not have to keep making them older, but should consider doing so in numbered games. Anything other than that really should be labeled an Alpha title. The only way to ensure that things remain consistent is by making sure that the entire cast matures or moves on at the same pace.

What good are girls in the game if they are not allowed to become women? What is the purpose of Ken and Ryu growing older and stronger if not for revenge and redemption?

Street Fighter was special for many reasons, especially when compared to other fighting games. Unlike rival titles, where character evolution and age is treated cursory (or sometimes regressed!), it actually means something in SF. Or rather, it used to mean something in SF. Mr. Ono showed us and Capcom that fans would be happy with any incarnation of the title. Strict adherence to the canon or logic weren't as important to rolling out a new game. However I am a firm believer that there is a potential for greatness with Street Fighter. Every subsequent title should be improved upon, not solely from a technical and gameplay perspective but from a canonical one as well. There was such a thing as being mindful of the fans while also respecting the tradition that had been established. One way to achieve that was by allowing the characters to grow up. Let's hope that Capcom remembers to do that in future versions of Street Fighter.

Prior to the current generation of fighting games I would have said that 2.5D was the only way to make a modern fighting game that didn't break the bank while preserving the look and feel of traditional sprite-based fighters. The format was in fact the future of fighting games. The groundwork laid out by Taito in Battle Fantasia and Sammy with the Rumble Fish had shown how closely polygons, with the use of textures and filters, could create characters that were almost passable for hand-drawn sprites. They had married the two worlds of traditional artistic vision with the programming ease of 3D models. For years I assumed that it was the only way to do fighting games proper in the current climate of cost-effective design.

If Street Fighter IV had tried to go down the road of traditional sprites, in high definition, then gamers would be waiting years for the release rather than months. The shareholders at Capcom would not have been happy, nor would the public, if the game did not top everything they had done in SF III. The relatively short development cycle and runaway success of SF IV drew a number of mixed emotions from me. I was glad that Capcom had decided to resurrect the franchise and happy that it was a hit at home and abroad. It showed that audiences still loved the genre and that Capcom could compete with other studios without breaking the bank. I wasn't happy that the development cycle seemed so short, that their new characters seemed pulled from rival games nor that they revised the classic SF II characters and canon in order to appeal to a broader audience. Seeing the game presented in 3D, with graphics that did not try to recreate the look of sprites through some sort of cel-shading or other filter effect, left me a little cold. As if they had just tried to abandon everything that made the previous titles great while rushing a new game to the market. This was pandering and I always thought that Capcom was better than that.

I was uncertain that it would ever be possible to return to the roots of the franchise, to make an HD sprite based fighter with more detail than previous titles without breaking the bank. It was 2.5D or nothing... or so I thought. SNK announced that their next King of Fighters title would be sprite-based. Not only that but they would be presented with more colors, details, frames and effects than any other game in franchise history. This was not solely an HD-upscaling project but a complete rebuild of the franchise. I was impressed with the concept and wondered how they were going to accomplish this within an acceptable timeframe and on budget.

How would their iconic characters get a facelift without making too many concessions to a 3D fans? Would Falcoon and the art staff at SNK try to make their new characters appeal to western audiences or would they stay true to their animé-influenced roots? Would these characters still be relevant despite the influence of mixed martial artists on pop culture? That is, would these sprites remain relevant to gamers?

SNK played it very close to tradition. They preserved the artistic influence and ended up creating some amazing sprites that were bold enough for modern fighting fans, yet retained respect for the classic titles. I began wondering how SNK would be able to create near 20 characters for the game at this size and with this amount of detail given the unusually high time associated with sprite creation. There was something that SNK was not letting other developers or audiences on to.

In the previous blog I mentioned that sprites require lots of work and pre-planning. The designer not only has to create the general look of the character but also draw them from multiple angles so that animators have enough reference material to recreate the figure performing a number of moves. If they wanted to change the scale of an arm or a leg, or move a fist the slightest bit, then they would have to redraw and repaint dozens of frames. How was SNK going to handle the pressure of making sure each character was in the right scale, and each frame near-perfect, in order to ensure no redraws?

More importantly how would they preserve the artistic intent so that each character was presented with a consistent look?

One way to accomplish this was to have the featured artist not only design the characters, but also create the frames of animation and paint them in. This is a tremendous workload with a lot of potential problems that have to be addressed before the first sprite is even rendered. If and when the sprites are ready they end up nothing short of breathtaking, well, breathtaking by late 90's standards. Such was the case for manga legend Range Murata for the characters he created in Psikyo's Dark Tenshi: the Fallen Angels and Atlus' Groove On Fight. The sprites were amazing and showed a level of detail and style that no studio had matched, or probably will ever match. Can you imagine the visual impact SF IV would have had if Ikeno and Akiman had hand painted every sprite?

Every designer places their own fingerprint on the universe. If you study the various representations of Ryu you'd begin to see differences of his appearance. Wether is was Capcom, SNK or Udon doing the sprites, each designer left their respective style. Akiman did not draw Ryu like Bengus, Kinu Nishimura or Alvin Lee. This influence, this aesthetic was very difficult to recreate in 3D. Which was why titles like Battle Fantasia and the Rumble Fish had so much visual impact when compared to other 3D games. They preserved the artist's original vision for the characters and universe. Would future Street Fighter games return to these roots, especially to help them stand apart from other 3D titles? Or would Capcom stick with what worked in SF IV and abandon their sprite-based legacy?

I'm certain that Capcom would not have abandoned the sprite if only they could have found a way to speed up the process and maintain a high standard.

There were ways to do this but most of them made the games looked sloppy and awkward. I'm referring to motion capture technology. The technology has sped up the process of animation but it ends up making stylized characters move weird, at least weird when compared to traditional animation. The second way of speeding up the animation process was actually a precursor to motion capture. It was called rotoscope and it involved a process by which artists pretty much traced over film of scenes, objects or characters they wanted to recreate in 2D. Rotoscoping was an important part of animation history it helped create the original Lord of the Rings animated feature. When used by an artist, rotoscoping could take concert footage and at only 7 or so frames a second and make that footage truly memorable. However it seemed to share many of the same problems with motion capture. Characters moved like people, rather than cartoons. The art of animation lay in the word art itself. Tracing a live actor seemed cheap, or rather to cheapened the artistic medium. Several studios went overboard on the use of canned animation, like Hanna Barbera and Filmation or relied too heavily on rotoscope, like Disney. Disney even copied their own frames on several of their animated features, further distilling the artistic importance of cartooning.

Animation legend Ralph Bakshi spoke at length about CGI animation, rotoscope and character animation. He said, and I agreed, that animation lies in understanding artform rather than the physical process. Anyone can create animation in either 2D or 3D but only an artist that understands the nuances or cartooning, motion and design, could ever make that animation come to life. Neither motion capture, nor rotoscope could be properly used to create games which were meant for a 2D experience. We've already looked at the lengths studios had to go to in order to make modern fighters work, things like hit boxes and frame skipping just to keep visuals consistent and create balance. How then would SNK be able to create hundreds of frames of new animation, in high definition, for KOF XII without hiring a massive animation team or spending a decade in development? It turned out that there was use for one of the animation shortcuts after all.

Rotoscoping might have very been the way that SNK was able to push up the development window. Rotoscoping might be the reason why King of Fighters XII has such amazing models. It was my understanding that SNK learned many things about the strengths and weaknesses of 2D and 3D fighters when they tried moving all of their franchises into one format. Samuari Spirits, Fatal Fury and the King of Fighters did not lend themselves readily to 3D. Problems with low polygon models, hit detection, framerate and animation kept most of these titles from being widely regarded. However this didn't stop SNK from trying to make 3D work while also applying these lessons to their 2D titles.

Development of KOF XII probably began immediately following the KOF Maximum Impact series. The models featured on this title were the closest the studio had ever come to recreating the Falcoon style in 3-dimensions. Their stances, animations and proportions were very well done, even if the game was not well received. Rather than dump the models I contend that they were used as the template for KOF XII. These models were used in a rotoscope capacity to help speed up the animation process in KOF XII. It makes sense when you look at how smooth and proportional the new animated characters were. Either the animators were trained highly in the style of Falcoon, or he created hundreds of character sheets that animators used as reference material. If that were the case then the game would have taken much longer to produce. Instead, I believe that these 3D models were given moves and ranges consistent with 2D presentation, this way artists did not have to imagine how a character looked while flipping, spinning, dashing, or even bouncing on the souls of their feet. They could reference the moves from a fixed perspective and then "trace" over them. They would thusly achieve realistic lines, shapes, highlights and shadows while also adding details like rippling clothing and "speed blurs" which were more stylized.

KOF XII seemed fluid because all of the frame skipping and hit box issues had already been addressed before rotoscoping. Moreover the characters were proportioned very much in the style of the designer, rather than being swollen in a concession to the west. Okay, to be fair some of the characters did get beefed up significantly. Terry Bogard and the Ikari Warriors Ralf and Clark were far thicker than they've ever been, but other characters like Kyo and Ash remained lithe to help make the contrast more significant. The same thing could not be said of SF IV. Models in that game were thicker across the board. By keeping the 3D models handy, animators were able to change proportions or add new moves without fear of losing the consistency between sprites.

Creating animations in 3D and then spending time redrawing them in 2D might sound redundant, and expensive for developers, but it made sense for the market. Fighting games had to compete for attention between themselves and against titles in other genres. Not to mention that for many studios the concept of the fighter was dead. Animated sprites were more striking now than in the 90's because 3D had homogenized graphics. It turned out that some fighting games, like SF and KOF have always worked best in 2D. Their visual appeal was in preserving the artistic intent and animating that style, while being mindful of the lessons that Ralph Bakshi had taught animators. The success of the best fighting game control, balance and animation had been in part due to the limitations of 2D technology. It was the imperfections of frame skipping, hand-drawn graphics, and the programming variables of hit boxes as much as the planned details that helped the games succeed. In a similar way the hand-drawn quality was making KOF XII develop into something truly special. But none of it would have been possible without the contributions of 3D technology and rotoscoping to shorten the development cycle.

The day is coming when a team of engineers, artists and animators will create polygon technology that is indistinguishable from the hand-drawn sprite. Until that day comes the best way of preserving the art of fighting games is by going the traditional route and creating sprites by hand. I hope that the teams at Capcom and DIMPS take these things into consideration when they begin working on subsequent fighting games, whether it's Street Fighter, Vampire, the VS series or something else. They have 3D models of many of the world warriors already, perhaps they have begun letting air out of their muscles in order to prepare them for a second life as a rotoscoped figure. Stranger things have happened...

I hope you enjoyed this short series, thanks for reading and commenting. Now please excuse me. I have some end of the semester work to catch up on. Take care!