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Best and Worst Choices for Rosters (Read 237321 times)

Started by EveryonesKouhai, March 11, 2016, 05:47:09 am
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Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#261  December 18, 2022, 08:39:49 am
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Well, since we're in the topic of the Vs. series, I might as well bring these two things up:

A translation of an old interview with some Capcom vs. SNK devs.

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– How did you select the game’s cast?

Itsuno: We took a number of factors into account when “balancing” the character selection; a sense of variety, special moves, playstyle, original series… But we had pretty much decided this game’s characters before we even released the first game. Development on Eagle and Haohmaru was already underway. And then the first pick after that was Maki. There was actually some discussion about having it just look like Maki, but giving her all of Linn Kurosawa’s moves (laughs).

The roster’s “balance” – “We understand that some people see the title “Capcom vs. SNK”, and hope for the ultimate fighting game, with over 100 characters on each side! But we can say with confidence that CvS2’s roster selection is the product of our sweat and tears” says Ishizawa.

Linn Kurosawa – One of the playable characters appearing in Capcom’s action game “Alien vs. Predator”, released in arcades in 1995.

Suzuki: Simply put, we all wanted Linn Kurosawa in the game. But it was just impossible due to copyright. So in the end, we just went ahead with Final Fight 2’s Maki instead.

Itsuno: At the very least, we wanted to avoid “who even is this character?” type reactions. Some people wanted to add Rain from Plasma Sword[4], but we thought picks like that would be too niche. We wanted even people who exclusively play SNK games to see the new Capcom characters and go “oh yeah, I’ve seen this character before”. And for people who only play Capcom games to see the new SNK picks and go “oh, they’re from that game”. Recognition was important for us.

Ishizawa: But Eagle and Ryuhaku Todoh were real curveballs! (laughs)

I'll let people debate on whether or not Itsuno and his crew made the right calls with the roster, but needless to say, some of these choices make me question at times.

Like, if they wanted to appeal to people who only play Capcom and SNK games, shouldn't they have gone for a wider variety of characters then? I'm pretty sure those two companies are more than just fightans. And I'm pretty sure Mega Man is the easiest example of this.

And if they seriously thought about putting Linn Kurosawa, but had to repurpose her into Maki, what was exactly stopping them from repurposing Captain Commando or any of the other MvC additions to work in a CvS environment?

Just weird things around. But, I can still say for sure that Itsuno and his crew had a better control with the roster than the MvC devs, and that's because they have a lot of rejected characters, most of which, have pretty horrid reasons.

I'll leave the thread as well for those who might wanna read it (it has a lot of funny trivia about Capcom's Marvel titles), but I will highlight one of those comments, involving Marrow's inclusion in MvC2.

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"newcomer#2 was Marrow, the newest X-Men who fights by pulling bones from her body. She was a brand-new comic chara so no1 knew if she was popular/well-known; it's like she was picked purely off appearance

ppl have said 'surely there were alternatives…'

"…but other options had their own drawbacks,f.ex:

Silver Surfer's fighting style—energy blasts & zooming around on his board—didn't mesh well with a fighting game system

Dr. Strange's abilities are very similar to Dr.Doom's

Mr.Fantastic's hard to draw"

"others included Daredevil & Black Widow (popular charas, not necessarily compelling fighters), Hawkeye (too few abilities) &, otoh, Scarlet Witch (too OP)

IMO at least, it seems like we'd nearly run out of Marvel charas well-suited to 2D dot-art combat

So let me get this straight: to the old Capcom devs, Strange was too similar to Doom, even though there's a gorillion spells and magic enchantments in Marvel, but Niitsuma and his crew, who had legitimate creative limitations with Marvel's list of do's and don'ts for the guy, were more than capable of pulling him off.

For these very same devs, it was very easy to animate the bizarre Shuma-Gorath, Blackheart, and Venom, but Mr. Fantastic (a simpler character in design) was too much?

These people were capable of making the powerful Magneto and Thanos playable, but Scarlet Witch was where they drew the line?

You mean to tell me, that Daredevil and Black Widow were not compelling enough, but Guile, Dan, Servbot, and so many other characters in 2 who had literally nothing to offer to the roster, were all acceptable?

Goodness' sake. This just makes 2's roster all the more baffling in hindsight. So many iconic characters rejected because the devs didn't feel like adapting them, but they were okay with characters that contradict their statements.

I have this as a precedent that the Vs. Series always had rejections with bullshit explanations behind.
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#262  December 18, 2022, 08:52:00 am
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These snippets you pulled are extremely interesting honestly. Where did you get them from? I call bullshit on Fantastic being difficult when they had Darkstalkers right there for how to pull off "stretch and squish graphics". Daredevil being "too boring" hurts to read too, he fits perfectly amongst Street Fighter characters. I always knew MvC2 was an absolute mess of a game, but this interview helps a lot in showing what the devs had thought and went through.

I really hope there is an interview for Marvel Super Heroes, that game was the peak of bad rosters, and also why they chose the freaky monsters. Very lovely fighter however.
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#263  December 18, 2022, 09:16:39 am
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Maybe Capcom vs SNK was a bit misleading as a title, because I guess essentially they wanted to make SF vs KOF with a few guests.

On the subject of SNK liking weirder picks, I think they did that so that SvC Chaos might stand out. SvC MOTM has a roster concept similar to CvS.

I have this as a precedent that the Vs. Series always had rejections with bullshit explanations behind.
Whenever I read stuff like that I just can't shake the feeling that the interviewee wasn't directly involved in the decisions made.
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Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#264  December 18, 2022, 08:27:49 pm
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It sounds very similar to "When you think about it, characters are just functions", just sounds like some made up shit that the interviewee said because they didn't know the answer or couldn't answer for real.
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#265  December 19, 2022, 01:58:32 am
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Whenever I read stuff like that I just can't shake the feeling that the interviewee wasn't directly involved in the decisions made.
That's part of why I didn't directly namedrop the artist who mentioned all those characters (it's Katsuya Akitomo btw). The other reason being that, well, he mentions that some of these guys were rejected by other members in Capcom's staff.
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"there were 2 charas proposed for MvC that were nixed by the team lead, Tomita: #1 was Howard the Duck; he's from a dimension where ducks have evolved into intelligent life, & while he seems might seem cute, he's actually foul-mouthed & short-tempered(1/2)"
"I thought Howard the Duck's distinctive silhouette made him a good candidate, but Tomita said 'Norimaro already fills the role of comedy character' and so that suggestion was scrapped (2/2)"
"suggestion #2 was She-Hulk: in John Byrne's Sensational She-Hulk, she was a meta chara who knew she was in a comic & would do things like tear the page

one could well imagine her in a game, with attacks like swinging the life bar at the opponent, but..."
"…I was told: 'games & comics have different user considerations—gags like those aren't a good fit for arcades, where the player needs to immediately understand what's happening, & she's otherwise just a worse Hulk'

it all made sense, so I didn't argue"
The only character Akitomo himself directly shot down was Symbiote Spider-Man for MSHvsSF, and even then, it's not like his inclusion would salvage that roster.
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"Hiroto Ishikawa once asked me, 'can you add black-suit Spidey?' but it was impossible for the same reason—in order to change the pattern on the costume you have to re-draw the pixels, it's not like a polygonal game where you can easily reskin a 3D model"
So, for all intents and purposes, I don't think Akitomo is to blame for any of the rejected characters in 2. At most, he just agreed with other artists where those are concerned.

And since we're on the topic of the Vs. Series, I might as well say now that I find Norimaro to be an awful character in general.

Like, what was the point of his inclusion? He's some weirdo based on a Japanese comedian noone overseas was gonna understand. His moveset is awful, he never shows up in tournaments, his jokes are cringe as fuck, and all he really accomplished was piss the fuck out of Marvel execs, and make Capcom reject better gag characters (one was the aforementioned Howard, the other one was Spider-Ham).

It says something when not even the more hardcore Capcom fans like Beximus care about Norimaro.
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#266  December 19, 2022, 03:05:23 am
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Normally, I wouldn't be upset by the inclusion of a character like him, I like random nonsense characters, like Anita was in Marvel Super Heroes. But the difference is that Anita was made with mostly reused sprites, since she used the same pointing animations for her attacks, which means she required very little to make, but Norimaro was made from the ground up instead of a completely different character.
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#267  December 19, 2022, 04:56:58 am
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I think it's important to note that at the time, Akitomo was the only Capcom staffer with any real familiarity with the Marvel characters, period. He was a passionate and devoted fan who was a huge reason those games feel so true to the source material; he even translated several comics for the rest of the various development teams working on the Versus games, so they could better understand the characters and concepts!

But he was still only a single person, so it's not that surprising that there was some questionable roster decisions back then. Though one could argue that it worked out well in some cases, like Shuma Gorath.

There's an entire thread of (translated) Tweets on the subject here, it's really incredibly fascinating stuff.

Relatedly, on the subject of Norimaro: apparently one of the Capcom execs had promised that Norimaro would be in the next fighter Capcom developed, and Akitomo suspects that Norimaro was placed in MSHvsSF specifically to avoid having to put him in the then upcoming SFIII—in other words, they stuck him in the game series that wasn't really a huge hit in Japan so they could keep the big prestige titles "clean".

Maybe Capcom vs SNK was a bit misleading as a title, because I guess essentially they wanted to make SF vs KOF with a few guests.
Oh yeah, those games are 100% meant to highlight each company's respective fighting game franchises, and probably would've just been titled "Street Fighter Vs. The King of Fighters" if that was not a terrible title.

Also helps to keep in mind that the (Marvel) Versus series took like 3 entries until it stopped being solely about Street Fighter vs. one particular segment of Marvel per entry! They weren't rushing in to put Mega Man and Arthur from moment one.
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#268  December 19, 2022, 05:52:09 am
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Relatedly, on the subject of Norimaro: apparently one of the Capcom execs had promised that Norimaro would be in the next fighter Capcom developed, and Akitomo suspects that Norimaro was placed in MSHvsSF specifically to avoid having to put him in the then upcoming SFIII—in other words, they stuck him in the game series that wasn't really a huge hit in Japan so they could keep the big prestige titles "clean".

Lol. If this is the true reason of Norimaro's inclusion in that specific game, at this point I think he might be the closest situation of a truly "out of place" character that any commercial fighting game ever managed to get.
Last Edit: December 19, 2022, 06:13:47 am by NDSilva
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#269  December 19, 2022, 06:17:01 am
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I personally like Norimaro, coming from someone who does not like Street Fighter characters that much however. Was not certain MSHvsSF had any sort of following, figures he is bottom tier. And Symbiote Spidey, Spider-Ham, and Howard the Duck got turned down? Pain. These games man.

I'd still like to give smoke towards Shuma and Blackheart for both being awkward to use and outshining their own protagonists for way too long on the other hand.
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#270  December 19, 2022, 06:56:35 am
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One of the reason I like weird choices is because they can give a fanbase to characters nobody cares about, which is precisely what happened to Shuma-Gorath, he has a following because he was the weird tentacle monster in MSH that people ended up liking. He was even supposed to be in the MCU, though considering the movie he was gonna be in and the role his replacement character had, its actually good that it wasn't him in the end.
Last Edit: January 25, 2023, 07:35:32 pm by Macaulyn97
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#271  February 22, 2023, 02:36:24 am
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Maybe Capcom vs SNK was a bit misleading as a title, because I guess essentially they wanted to make SF vs KOF with a few guests.

On the subject of SNK liking weirder picks, I think they did that so that SvC Chaos might stand out. SvC MOTM has a roster concept similar to CvS.

I have this as a precedent that the Vs. Series always had rejections with bullshit explanations behind.
Whenever I read stuff like that I just can't shake the feeling that the interviewee wasn't directly involved in the decisions made.


Furthermore, the SVC Chaos non-fighters are about as few and far between as the other entries, but the difference is that they’re much more far-removed bar Hugo. Even then, the non-fighters were secret characters and superbosses rather than main roster members. Hopefully a third entry in either series (which has apparently been talked about by Oda) will truly break into the diversity and variety of both company’s rosters, from the characters added since through continuations of their series (CVS 1 & 2 didn’t even tap into 97 or the NESTS saga, and barely had SF3) and acquisitions (like the ADK characters), those games which were forgotten during the initial releases like PowerStone, and of course, the non-fighting game catalog. And face it; perhaps building up hype over non-fighting game entrants with popularity outside the FGC could even build up resources (money, players, talent, skill) for more obscure fighters to make the jump. So Lady Dimitrescu and Megaman.EXE being added so we can also get Hayato, Mudman, and so on is a good idea.
Re: Best and Worst Choices for Rosters
#272  February 22, 2023, 07:29:15 pm
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It is true that SVC Chaos was a mess of a roster. It had weird choices like Choi Boungei, Earthquake, Hugo, Goenitz, Mars People, Firebrand and Tessa, just to name a few.

Also as mentioned, CVS seemed like it indeed was intended to be KOF vs SF + Friends, which is fine, because that is basically what SNK does.
The whole King of Fighters spheal is simply an amalgamation of Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug/Ikari Warriors, etc.

If one would TRULY wish to see a diverse representative roster for a Capcom vs SNK roster we would have to look into Capcom vs Marvel terratory, and SNK Battle Coliseum terratory. Both franchises have a bunch of interesting IP's and classics that could be implemented into a crossover.

However, both SNK and Capcom are mainly fighting game companies, and their top IP's are in fact King of Fighters and Street Fighter for SNK and Capcom respectively, and that's not wrong to try to bring their best into one clash, plus, it would indeed help that both are fighters when making a fighting game lol.
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