Anyone who has been following my video game interests will know that I’ve always enjoyed playing fighting games like Street Fighter. That’s why it should come as very little surprise that when the Futurelooks team decided to hit up E3 Expo 2009 in Los Angeles, I quickly volunteered to cover the coolest fighting games being demoed on the floor. Here are a few titles that caught my eye.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom
Originally released as an exclusive in Japan late last year, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom will indeed be coming to the United States later this year. More specifically, the Capcom rep that I asked said that the Wii-bound fighting game should start shipping some time in the winter.
On the surface, the gameplay of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom will look very much like the experience that you would get with the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting game series that you already know. You pick two characters, mixing and matching characters from Tatsunoko and Capcom properties, and then you can “tag” between them during the match. You will see the usual “red” damage on your health meter and this will regenerate on the character not currently being used in the session.
Some of you may be familiar with some of the Tatsunoko characters, like Ken the Eagle from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, but I’m thinking that the majority of North American players won’t know who these guys are. I know that I don’t. It’ll be interesting to see how the American audience responds to this game.
In terms of controls, however, you can almost say that Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is Street Fighter for dummies. Rather than the usual six-button layout with three punches and three kicks, you only get three attack buttons: light, medium, and hard. It does not differentiate between a punch and a kick. A fourth button is used for tagging your partner.
At the very least, this indicates that Capcom has some interest in bringing more fighting games to the Nintendo Wii (and in North America). We probably won’t get a smaller version of Street Fighter IV any time soon, but maybe they’ll work on another versus game for the Wii fighting fans out there.
Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny
The portable market wants some fighting games too. Even now, one of my favorite games on the Sony PSP is Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. Well, Namco has brought its other fighting game franchise over to the PSP as well in the form of Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny. The gameplay remains largely unchanged from other Soul Calibur games, except you’ll be playing it on Sony’s handheld. You still get to wield a wide range of weapons and many of your favorite characters, like Mitsurugi and Cassandra, are back in action.
With the demo game on display at E3 Expo, we were only able to choose from about eight characters, but Namco has indicated that there should be at least 20 (if not more) characters in the final build. As is the norm with Soul Calibur games, they’ve also enlisted the services of a cameo brawler.
For Soul Calibur IV on the Xbox 360, we saw Yoda. On the PS3, we got Darth Vader. For Broken Destiny on the PSP, we get none other than Kratos from God of War. Sadly, he was not a selectable character in the demo, so I can’t say exactly how well or how poorly he plays.
No exact date has been set, but we should expect Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny exclusively on the PSP this summer.
TMNT Smash-Up
Did you like playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Nintendo Wii? Do you like fighting as a set of four green ninjas who dwell in the sewers beneath the city? Well, it seems that you’re about to get get the best of both these worlds, because TMNT Smash-Up for the Nintendo Wii is essentially the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles version of Smash Bros. The similarities are quite startling.
Just like Smash Bros, you get (up to) four characters on a 2.5D battle arena. Attacks are generated from just two buttons (A and B), and pressing them together lets you grab and throw your opponents. Everyone gets a life gauge rather than the damage percentage that you see in Smash Bros, but you can still die by falling off the edge of certain stages.
For the demo version in the Ubisoft booth, we were able to choose from Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelango, as well as Splinter, Shredder, and April. There was one additional spot that looks like it will be filled by an unlockable character, but I certainly hope that the roster will have more than just eight characters. Where are Bebop and Rocksteady? The Rat King? Casey?
Look for TMNT Smash-Up exclusively on the Nintendo Wii later this year.
Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny
I was quite surprised to see this game over in the Ignition Entertainment booth (which is representing SNK Playmore as far as I can tell). It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen a new Samurai Shodown game, because the majority of its characters have been happily ported over to the King of Fighters franchise along with the rest of their SNK stablemates. This is the same reason why we don’t see any new Fatal Fury games.
Well, Samurai Shodown is indeed back and everyone is once again equipped with a variety of sharp-edged weapons. This is the same kind of appeal that you’d get from the Soul Calibur franchise, but there is no magic involved here. You don’t get a character like Nightmare with a flaming blade. Instead, the attacks are much more realistic, just as you’ve come to expect from Samurai Shodown.
Unlike the 3D arena that you’d get in a Soul Calibur game, Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny plays out as if it were a traditional 2D fighter. The graphics, however, are fully three-dimensional and SNK Playmore is boasting some incredibly gorgeous backgrounds in here as well. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that there are no explicit plans, as far as I know, to port Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny to the home market. It is being planned for release in North American arcades this year, so we’ll have to wait for the period to draw some blood before we can hope to do the same from our living rooms.
Tekken 6
In and of itself, Tekken 6 is not a new game. It’s been out in arcades since late 2007, running on a PS3-based arcade board. Since then, we’ve seen a minor update in the form of Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion, but that too was restricted to the arcades. I don’t know about your town, but not nearly as many people flood to the arcades around my city anymore. They’d rather play at home. Namco has finally recognized this, porting a version of Tekken 6 to the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
The home version of Tekken 6 will include all the updates from Bloodline Rebellion, so you won’t miss out on that front either. Gameplay is exactly as you remember it as well, with two punch buttons and two kick buttons, as well as plenty of well-timed combinations and movements in the 3D battle arena. There’s a new “rage” system that can be activated when your health meter is low. You become stronger and are surrounded by a red energy field.
In addition to the core fighting game part of Tekken 6, you’ll also get a Streets of Rage-style brawler included in the package as well. It’s a little odd roaming the streets as Paul Phoenix, encountering random Tekken characters as you cruise around the waterfront, but it’s a nice diversion from the main game. There are also a handful of new characters. One of them is named Bob and he’s a hefty fellow similar to Rufus from Street Fighter IV.
Look for Tekken 6 on the Xbox 360 and PS3 this fall.
Fighting Their Way to the Top
In case you’re starting to grow tired of Soul Calibur IV and Street Fighter IV, breathe a sigh of relief because a full slate of terrific fighting games will soon be flooding the console market soon enough.
Let’s not forget about Marvel vs. Capcom 2 as well, which will be heading to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network soon. Could this mean that a Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is in the works? We can hope, right?
Don’t forget to check out the video on the first page. It includes some pretty great looks at what you can expect from Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Tekken 6, TMNT Smash-Up, and Samurai Shodown. Maybe these will be able to tie you over until you actually get to play the full retail versions of these games.
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