Fighting Game Artwork! ft. GuileWinQuote! | Triple K.O. #84 - Triple K.O.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Rip Jo.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome back to another episode of Triple Ko eighty ish
something now kind of forget it all bleeds together with
so much fighting game news and stuff. Speaking of fighting games,
Justin Wong notable by his absence. He is currently world
worrying himself, I think, in Singapore and heading a twenty

(00:32):
hour journey apparently to get back us. So we got
Guyle wing Quote here once again to join us for
this episode. I think, since you know fighting game news
a little bit on the slower side, we're going to
brush through that stuff, I think, and then talk about

(00:52):
a subject I think me and Max have talked about
a couple of times, and mister wind Quote will also
be very good for this talking about god artists, all
masters at Capcom and S and K and et cetera.
But before we get to the news though, just Gyle,
just quick recap. Where do you stand on on the

(01:15):
artistry of fighting games as a whole.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
One of the most important aspects of the entire genre.
I find myself thinking about the art more than the
games sometimes, for you know, depending on the series, depending
on the game. I own pieces of fighting game artwork.
That's how important it is to me. So yeah, just

(01:40):
a huge part of the genre, and I'm very happy
to nerd out and gush, probably gush more than nerd out, honestly.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Well, I was gonna ask you, Gyle, when you when
you think of like fighting game god artists on the
capcom side or otherwise, what name like immediately comes to head.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
I think it's probably going to be the same for
all of us. It's being it's nineties.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Right, But a couple of notable releases this week dragon Ball, Sparking, Sparkling.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Sparking Zero, I think is the name of it.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Sparking Zero. I think Max has had a minute to
check this out, have you, Goyle.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yes, I'm I'm a huge DVZ fan, so and it's
I'm happy to be able to play a fighting I
don't want to call it a fighting game. I don't
want people to get mad. I've seen the discourse on Twitter,
but I'm happy to play a one v one game
that has fighting in it with my friends who aren't
into fighting games. We've been kind of we meet in

(02:40):
the middle in this game, and it's interesting to you know,
this is my first time playing a DZ Arena fighter
with like fighting game brain. You know, I grew up
playing these games, but I would just do supers, you know,
all day. But now it's like, oh, like I'm doing
option selects and this is like a two frame link
in this, and it's like there's no casualness in my

(03:02):
brain anymore. I have to apply it to this. And
it's just been real interesting that, like, you know, this
game does have some weird depth and it has more
defensive mechanics than most of the fighting games that released
in ten years. So it's been fun for me.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
I like it, Okay, what about you, Max?

Speaker 3 (03:18):
I did rate the super run it, and you know,
I've had to be extremely i'd say straightforward with my
chat about it, where it's like chat. I know, if
I stream this, I'm going to get twenty to thirty
thousand viewers. I know if I like jump online, the
videos are going to do friggin' amazing if I put
them up. But I have to be like honest with everybody.

(03:40):
I have zero interest in like firing up and playing
the game, and people like, but you played Dragon Ball Fighters,
you daft, bitch? What the hell? People are big people,
big mad that I'm like not covering it, and I
have to remind folks that I would never have played
Dragon Ball Fighters if it wasn't for two very important
things completely unrelated to Dragon Ball. It was made by

(04:02):
Arc system Works, and it was a Marvel versus Capcom game,
So that hat you got me in the same way
that like Power Rangers. I'm not a Power Rangers guy
at all, Like the show is just on and I
never really watched it, but Battle for the Grid was
amazing because it was a huge ip in like a
versus game sort of situation, and I'm like, oh, hell yeah,
that's amazing. And the same way I'm gonna try like

(04:24):
Hunter Hunter Cross Hunter when that eventually drops, I'm like,
the more we see on that, the more I'm interested
I get.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, Because like for me, let's like, you know, I
like DBC as much as the next person. But let's
let's flip it around. If there are two Berserk games
released in a year, and one's an arena fighter and
one's like, uh, like Teken or like Mortal Kombat, Yeah
I'm playing one of those over the other, sure, in
all honesty, but I would also do a rate the

(04:53):
super for the really And that's and that's the thing
I was saying where it's like, you know what, I'll
do you one though, I think rating the Super in
this is is actually kind of sick in the same
way that I've always wanted to do a rate the
Super in a Naruto game, because the visual splendor of
those games from like Cyber Connect two is so cool, dude,
It's like, wow, yeah, they.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Do it, really good job. So some of and in conclusion,
some of the supers were pretty good in Sparking zero,
pretty good. Some of them better than others, a lot
of them like kind of like, oh man, we have
animated a kamehameha how many different ways and you start
to get a little like kameha me fatigue after like
fifty of them.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Or so for a guyle since you've definitely put a
bit more time into it, like do you do you
see this me in a game that's like sticking around
even on like the more like casual level, like when
you have so many characters, like what is left for DLC?
Is there even?

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Oh no, there go? Me and my friends are like
how could they forget? And oh show at eight? Like
what do you mean? He showed up for ten chapters
and then he showed up again? You know, at the
end of DBC. So for casuals, I think this is
it's going to stick around, just like Tinka three, did
you know, Like that game has a scene, you know,

(06:06):
and you know, people are playing on Dolphin and stuff.
They've been playing it on Dolphin for fifteen years. There's
a bunch of mods for that scene. It's been going forever.
So yeah, I definitely think just like how you know,
this is just going into all the other DBC games,
Like they have dbz Cakrot, they have Xenoverse two. Those
are still both getting updated.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, I'm always surprised when I see that, just because
I'm like, oh, that's that's cool that they just didn't.
I think Breakers is the one that didn't really get
much life, or it might be wrong on that.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
I really like that game. It got, it got a bun,
it got a bit of DLC. But yeah, I think
I think Bandai is like, hey, this is going to
be our fighting game, fans service game. Xeno Verse is
gonna be our MMO type game. I don't know what
you'd really call it. And then Cakra is our this
is the story game, you know, this is where we
have cut scenes. So yeah, it's kind of interesting that

(07:00):
we're seeing because they're releasing DLC for Sparking zero for
the new show Dima, and they're also introducing those same
characters in the other two games, So I so whatever.
For whatever reason, Bandai is not treating these games as
like replacements. It's like these fit different niches in the
Dragon Ball fan community.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
So, because I haven't looked up the roster extensively, I
have two questions.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Of course, is Tappyon in it? Yes?

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yes, that's good, this is this is very good?

Speaker 1 (07:33):
And is annoying really annoying?

Speaker 2 (07:36):
And is uh what was the other one?

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (07:39):
And is Super seventeen in it? No?

Speaker 1 (07:43):
It has been data mined, okay, And I think the
voice actor for the American dub of Super seventeen like
quoted a tweet of it being data mined with like
a surprise emoji or something, so okay, okay, it's inevitable.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
I feel like, all right, that's that's good to hear though,
that that'll get me on to at least try it
out at some point, So yeah, I meybe we could
talk about this a bit more down the line, especially
if Justin has a hand chance to go hands on
with it.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
It's doing very well, by the way.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Something like three million copies.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
And here's the thing, it's it's gonna sell. The things
that made Dragon Ball Fighters appealing to people like myself
is and why it wouldn't be appealing to or like
us and not appealing to a certain other audience is
because Dragon Ball Fighters was a very fighting gamey kind
of game, and this game is not that. This game
is like how many, guyle, how many attack buttons are

(08:33):
in this game?

Speaker 1 (08:35):
There is I guess technically two. There's an attack and
a key blast.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Okay, so like physical like there's no punch or kick,
there's like punch ky, it's just attack key yeah. Wow, okay,
So there you go. Like that's all you really need
to Like people were a big badmin Powerstone took away
a kick button for Christ's sake, Like that's that's kind
of the casualization of the game where it's like, oh,
the whole point And we saw this at the at

(08:59):
the beginning of the game's marketing when they're like, oh,
like one hundred and fifty characters and I'm like, oh,
so that's what kind of game it is. I get it.
It's like an extreme dragon Ball fandom game where everybody's
ever wanted like these kind of characters and sort of
a good looking fashion. You haven't gotten that since the
old budakai ten kaichi games and shit. So that's where
it's going. It's going for that audience, and it hit it.
And that's that's the problem with like true like it's

(09:23):
hard to say true fighting games, but fighting fighting games
that really embellish on each one of their characters and
their mechanical depth and all that kind of stuff because
they take time, like a ton of time to make
a smash character, to make a dragon Ball fighter's character,
all that kind of stuff with like a full move list,
all their normals, a ton of specials, a ton of
supers like in this No, you don't have to worry
about that as much like you can just add a

(09:43):
DLC pack of thirty more fucking characters or some shit,
because the amount of time it takes for character is
much less.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
And it also makes sense when we're going down the
other like one GOA listed all the other games that
are currently still having DLC. It's like dragon Ball is
like one of the very few franchises where you can,
like you can have fighting games or combat games and
have two different like that. The audience is there to
support that one hundred percent. You couldn't, Like, I don't
think you can make a street fighter game that's like

(10:11):
a third person action game where you're doing story. I
would personally love that, Like I I bet I would
that be a big, big success.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Probably not where it fits dragon Ball so well.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
It fits dragon Ball perfectly. So yeah, yeah, yeah, good
to hear that. It's it's it's doing that well because
it's like you know, at the end of the day,
arena fighters still can be like great fun. So any
more of those released, like for franchise as well, where
its fits is always a good one.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Speaking of arena fighters, did anybody check out that like
uh fighting game origin video that core A Gaming put
up or he like categorized the style of fighting games
all over the place. This is only speaking of arena fighters.
And I got big butt hurt when we was getting
into arena fighters and we had games like gun to
to Mobile versus Boost and like the ten Kichi games

(10:59):
and stuff like that, and there was no virtual on
which was the first one, which was like, yeah, going,
we have to go back to ninety five for that
shit ninety six, but it's like the first one and
no virtual on I'm like, god damn v O appreciation.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
You know, when trying to tackle something that is like
so like there's raw, I mean the whole point, the
whole point of the video.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
There's no definition for it exactly.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
You know you're gonna, yeah, you're gonna find things and
be like, uh no, I'm actually the expert.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Exactly, because that's there's so much there's nobody there's there's
no way anybody's gonna have that level of expertise across
the board for every single one of those genres, because
it's impossible that you're into that many different fighting games.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, speaking of a bunch of more fighting games to
indie fighting games got released like this in the last
couple of days, the first being Terror Drome Reign of
the Legends. This has been in early access for a
couple of years. Me and Justin laid it last year
when they're I think they're still missing a character or two.

(12:04):
So that is officially now released version one point zero
on Steam and listen. Is this as mad cap and
as crazy and as lawsuit flirting as the first Terror
Drome Rise of the Boogeymen, No is there, Yeah, exactly.
All original characters are royalty free, you know, public domain

(12:26):
style characters, you know, just a vampire, Dracula, a Frankenstein.
That being said, I think Capcom can just never release
a Dark Stalkers again, because we have a new Dark
Socker right here, are at least close to it in spirit.
I really enjoyed this one. A lot of work, a

(12:47):
lot of passion put into this, and it has, like listen,
Rise of the Boogeymen. As fun as it is, it's
still a bit janky, and that that charming bit of
jank is still in this one, but there's still so
much more mechanical depth of there's wall splats, you can
do insane air juggles, there's fatalities, ex's. Each character has

(13:09):
like a gimmick, like a KI style gimmick that they
can all pull off. And for being a very small team,
it really grew to look quite good I think in general,
with the with the three D engine that they have,
and each character has like endings, and each ending has
done really well, like illustrated. So I am I'm just

(13:31):
saying as a personal recommendation, especially for October a great
spooky game. Yea to to you know, it's nice that
these guys can actually get paid for the work they've
put in over the years.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, shout out to to Acid Brad. It was one
of like the lead devs on this game, I think
the main dev and was one of the couple dudes
I think that made the original Terodrome, which was a
good looking game, like it was made in the style
of like a classic Killer Instinct Mortal Kombat in a way,
but it was like legit not bad, with a lot
of crazy mechanical depth and really fun. This one, I

(14:02):
offers something a little bit different, and it's been a
long time since I've played it. But you know, if
you're looking for a spooky Frankenstein guy versus sas squatch
ish looking thing big not Bigfoot, you know the sort
of things.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Versus the Jersey Devil and the Invisible Man, it's a
crazy lineup of Have you ever tried either? I don't
even know if I've asked you this. Have you ever
tried this before? Late in either of these games?

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Actually I put out a video on the first one.
Oh yeah, sorry you didn't like Yeah, that was like
very early on in my channel, and then I have
played the second one. I haven't played the whole release,
but I just think it's cool that, like, you know,
because usually when in an indie or dojin fighting in
comes out, they are like in an anime style or whatever.
This is very American. This isn't This isn't NRS.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
Like, no, you know, it's more like capcom ish, you
think so. I think just the feel of it, like
this is was a while ago. That's related to Terodrome one.
They had like the snappiness. It didn't have that. It
didn't have like the sort of like input delay of
the old MK game sort of have in a certain way,
it felt a bit snappy, and I was like, oh,
this feels good.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
You know, I'm thinking of more like if I remember quickly,
it's like more like strings or dialo combos and stuff,
rather than you know, just normal into fireball sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, and that's that's very MK ish.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yeah. The the sequel feels a little bit like an
NRS game, if I could compare words, like, the first
one does feel like tighter in a way.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
It does.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
It doesn't necessarily feel like a Western fighting game per chance,
even though it really really is.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
It reminds me of that same feeling when we are
throwing a game like Dong Dong Never Die and you're like, Okay,
this is just going to be bad. Let's just laugh
at it. Oh no, it's HELLI fied. Oh no, it's
actually super fun. It's like, oh gosh it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
It does kind of have that because when Justin and
I were playing it like a like a year ago,
after a little while, he's like, you know, this game
is low key fire. I was like, yeah, right, like
you can get some fun stuff going. And the way
fatalities work is actually really interesting. It's like you just
do an ex special at the end of a character's

(16:14):
lifebar and it just triggers the fatality. And the animations
are are really elaborate. It's it's again like NRS level
of of like you go to another dimension or the
camera angle gets all crazy, like some significant amount of
work is put in those animations. God, what are they called.
They have such a good name. They're called death sentences.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
That's a great name for a fatality.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
That's good amazing. So yeah, if you're interested in anything
of the horror variety and like your fighting games, definitely
check out Terror Drome. I don't know if they have
any console plans in the future, but I don't see why.
You know, eventually it wouldn't be a possibility because all
the characters should be uh not give them any legal trouble.

(16:57):
But aside from that, Strike also finally released on Steam
PS four, PS five, and Switch and I invited a
friend over, my friend Rocky, who I usually just play
fighting games with. I want like a local friend. He's
lived too far and we had a great time, uh

(17:19):
just actually playing it, you know. Unfortunately, the game does
have some rough edges in terms of its presentation, for
like menus and just some quality of life like things
features just not being.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Fighting games are hard, dude, You've created all these systems
and shit and you're like that's all I got.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Oh no, yeah, when you're one guy, making a fighting
game is hard. Like there's there's the one main designer,
rare Breed, and then I think there's a sound guy
and that's kind of it. And then Absalom who does
the incredible character artwork that you see for the purchase,
and I think that's about it. I'm apologize if I'm
if there is someone else I'm missing but rare Breed

(17:54):
makes games primarily the main dev behind it, and when
you're actually playing a blazing strike like it's it's a
good time. Like I saw a clip recently where a
character has like just a photon cannon. They're just shooting
it and the other the other character on the opposite
end is able to moment thirty seven through the entire

(18:16):
hit string and then just dash in and just win
the round. It was. It was pretty sick, and it's
been a long time since I've seen like a two
D like sprite based fighting game have like new moments
like that because we're so you see exactly exactly, so
I'm also really impressed. I'm not sure if you caught this, Maxim.

(18:37):
Maybe you did, Laighton, but uh, two dealc characters are
scheduled to come out, and they promise they're going to
be free. They just don't want to charge them. I
think there's two unlockable bosses. I think that makes the
roster with the two dealc cares like sixteen characters, which
is a great amount for like you know, within the

(18:59):
law on period. I don't know when those two characters
will be shown. They showed the first one, who's like
this cool Mexican mecha skull guy that goud dude look
really sick. But yeah, I'm enjoying this personally. I haven't
had a chance to go online yet because I was
just playing this last night with my friends, so I'm

(19:20):
keen to see and and they they know that there's
certainly some work to be done, uh with with some
stuff like there's things like when you're in story mode.
You can't quit out a story mode unless you're in
a match, so you'll you'll be in these these cutscenes
and just kind of like stuck until they you have
to get through them then quit out. It's just like
things like that. It's like stuff that that is totally fixable.

(19:44):
And I was talking to to Absolom, who's on the
dev team did the artwork, and just said, yeah, no,
we're we're looking into all this and we do want
to improve it because it's just like a monumental amount
of work for such a small team. But I'm I'm
really looking to see that they that they do improve
things and and fix some things up. I've you've been

(20:07):
able to play it at all late or no.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
No, I haven't, but like like you guys probably have
you know, we've I've been seeing it on Twitter for
years at this point when it was small like just yeah, well,
I mean it still is almost a one man project.
But regardless of I guess, uh, you know how it
looks right now or anything, or you know what it's

(20:31):
missing currently, et cetera, I still think it's just awesome
that an independent fighting game project kind of got picked
up by like a big publisher and it exists, you know. Yeah,
an achievement for sure. So I'm definitely gonna try it
out hopefully.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Soon, because like Pocket Bravery is the only other one
that comes close to my mind is like an all
original game, and that will like got its full release
like about a year ago, almost a year ago. Yeah,
and I really enjoyed that, and they put in some
definite like improvements and additional characters into that. So I

(21:07):
think I saw Justin had also gotten the game, so well,
we can talk about that with him next time, so
see how he feels about it as well. But yeah,
aside from that, really really quickly, two demos also got released,
one for Rage of the Dragons, an actual offline demo.
This is in contrast to the beta, the online beta

(21:31):
that was released a little while ago, so I was
able to play through that. Rage of the Dragons is
still super good. Love that game, and I really like
all the presentation stuff that they're doing with it. It's
the same team that justin correcting me on last time,
the same team that did the Breakers collection. So I'm

(21:51):
assuming that game is going to get released soon, the
Rage of the Dragons, but I don't think they given
a release date yet as far.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
As I know.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
And the other one was Rivals of eighth or two
got a demo as well. I think for first that's.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Coming out soon too, is it not?

Speaker 1 (22:06):
I think sink I think this week. I think this
is like their release date just happened to fall on
the Steam next demo. Yeah, Demo Fester whatever.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Demo fest might as well just call it that. Yeah,
I downloaded this, didn't have a second to start it up. Yeah,
it comes out in a few days from this recording,
so it'll come out roughly when this episode goes up,
actually the day the day after the twenty third of October.

(22:40):
And yeah, another game that is going to have DLC
characters for Freeze, so very cool stuff. I think the
last thing we can kind of go in on Street
fight Er six, director hints that a Dark Sokkers game
was canceled. Fortunately, since none of us here really care
about Darkstalkers, I think we can just you know, pass

(23:05):
by this. There's nothing else to say, right, Uh no,
that's les move on. So this was true. This wasn't
like a mistranslation or was there like I think I
saw that bit of discourse saying no, no, that's not
what he meant or no to deal with that.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Well, he's he didn't he put like a you put
a batt emoji? Yeah, next to like it was a
it was a it was a Capcom fighting game, he said, like,
not a street fighter game, and it had a little
bad emoji. And I was like, oh, so he's definitely
talking about and that lines up because this is like,
I'm not breaking any news here. There was a Darkstalker's game,

(23:42):
like we saw the trailer. It never got publicly released
outside of the SDCC twenty twelve where you know, that's
the whole meme that Darkstalkers aren't dead. So that's that's
that's kind of public information. A lot of people just
forgot it happened, but that's effectively what he's talking about
it lines up in that timeframe too, which is like
around twenty third, right when the first right when the
big Dark Socker's test would have happened with Darkstalker's resurrection

(24:05):
that just hilariously didn't sell. I had I have a message,
by the way, so I have to go back to this,
and I'm going to quote a part of it. I
can't say that everything but a friend of ours and
many people that I worked adjacent to at capcrim USA
on a lot of projects in that timeframe loved Darkstalkers,

(24:25):
Like in the same way that those people were working
their butts off to get an RI two remake, to
get le Japan to be like, hey, you know, please
make Ari two remake. People will buy it, please, dear God.
A Dark Sockers game was another one that they were
all feverishly attempting to make a reality. So long story short, yeah,
they knew, they knew that everybody wanted Darkstalkers, and unfortunately,

(24:48):
Dark Sockers has this history of just not selling very well,
and a lot of people all the years were like,
that's not true. How dare you? Darkstalkers is so popular?
Have you seen the size of Morgan's sales and everybody it.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Was a cartoon.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
There was a cartoon, and yeah, I would agree with you.
The first Darkstalkers it hit a note that was pretty unique.
But the other ones, unfortunately, No, dude, people don't even
know how like a vampire savior is unless you're really
into fighting games. So anyway, I'm gonna get to this quote,
which is which was coming from Capcom analysis and an
analytics in like the early twenty tens when they were

(25:24):
trying to decipher Okay, so how do we convince Japan
in a pitch that this is worth doing? So they've
got to a point where when investigating the sales and
the history of sales for the franchise, even before Darkstalker's resurrection,
the sales history of Darkstalkers reads reads like a Tale
of Two Cities, except that it was all the worst

(25:44):
of times. That was the quote from an old Capcom friend.
This is from like ten thirteen years ago. It's not good, man.
Those characters kind of exist in their own their own
individual universe per character, and the franchise that they come
from has just never had a chance to establish itself

(26:04):
outside of the first game.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, here's the thing though, today. Nowadays people sell games
where you date and have sex with cryptids. Darkstalkers would
do so well in today's.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
In Yeah, dude, if you turn Darkstalkers into a fighting
dating sim, if you like, try Charge of Justice that shit, Yeah,
that could work. But I think that might be too
highbrow for Capcom internal. I think they have done dating games.
They had that one. They had one dating game that
came out over the past few years. I don't know
if it was internally made. But Capcom is weird, like

(26:43):
they're a little highbrow, like we will not make a
sequel to a game just because it was successful. Like
they're they're like that, they're they're there, and I kind
of respect them for that too, But at the same point,
it's like, fuck, you come on, like we're making about
twelve you piece of shit. They're but they're like that then,
So I don't know if they would do that with
a franchise like this, because we all know, if you
made a Dark Sotalkers, dude, it's got to be violent,

(27:04):
it's got to be sexy, it's got to be Looney Tunes,
you know, and all that shit is difficult to ship
to do in three D like it's it's really hard
to look up those squash and stretched Morrigan poses and
shit off her good eyes turn into eggs and shit.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
If you can't handle her during her Looney Tunes phase,
then you don't.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah, then you don't deserve her phase. Like that's exactly it.
And and to think, like I'm looking at that, I'm like, yeah,
this is so cool. I love it. I don't know
how you do it in three D without it looking dumb,
Like it's just so hard.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
So I don't know.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
To me, it's like the best, the best Bedford Dark
Sockers if it was to get in its own individual game,
hire the skull Girls devs. Just get them. Just let
skull Girls devs do is. They're already good at it.
They already practically made a Dark Sockers game out of
Skull Girls, you know.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
No, yeah, I was just gonna say, like, you know,
Vampire Savior is my favorite fighting game of all time.
I just love Vampire in general. And you know, I've
been like trying to like get like a lot of
old Dark Stalkers like merchandise and stuff like that, and
I've noticed that like ninety percent of the merchandise, like

(28:08):
dating back to like Japan, where it was I guess
obviously a lot more popular. Here stops at Vampire Hunter,
which is the second game. You get to Vampire Savior
and you have like Gasha Pond's, you have like maybe
a few figures, but like this merchandise train like ended there. Yeah,
so even back then in Japan, we know we got
to the third game, which is the fighting game players

(28:29):
like one of the you know, most critically acclaimed greatest
fighting games ever. But yeah, I guess like even the
popularity train with like the casuals had like come to
an end at that point.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
And that's the thing. It's like, I think Vampire Savior effectively,
which is like the best Dark Soccers game, has an
audience comparable but larger than most of the other capcom
franchises that people screamed to the heavens for, like Project
Justice and Powerstone. I think it's bigger than that. I
think there's more of a of an audience of people
that realize because at the surface level, you can look

(29:01):
at Vampire Savior and never seen it before and fall
in love with that game even in like twenty twenty
four and be like, god damn, look at this shit.
I can't believe this existed if you didn't know it existed.
I think for Powerstone and Project Justice, you kind of
got to like tell me why this is good. You
got to sort of like pitch to me, why is
this really cool? And then you'll get it over time.

(29:22):
I think Vampire Savior is one of those games where,
similar to the Third Strikes in the timeframe, even the
CVS's and all that kind of stuff in the late nineties,
when we start to get to that era of Capcom,
it has clear reasons from a visual standpoint why people
love this shits. But that's the problem is that you're
going to get those people like one at a time
in a line that they're eventually going to get told

(29:44):
from a friend of a friend, and the people that
are really vocal about it are really vocal about it,
but we have to like be reminded. Capcom did another
Darkstalker's test practically, and it was two years ago because
the Hero franchise of the Capcom Finding Collection one was
Darkstalkers and all the games, like even the weird ones
where they had to like, you know, there wasn't enough

(30:05):
memory on the Vampire Savior friggin like CPS system board
and they had to swap out characters and that was
a sequel Vampire like Hunter two or Savior too, what
the heck was called?

Speaker 1 (30:17):
So both, it was both.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
It was both more confused, so confusing, and that's and
that's the thing is like they they've actually tried. There
has been a lot of attempts, even modern Capcom has
tried at Dark Stalkers. And when I told people that,
they're like, no, no, it didn't I would have bought it,
And I'm like, dud, look at this. I would I
literally fire it up on Steam. I'm like, they were
right here. I told you to buy it two to
three years ago. You didn't do it. It happened again.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
I told you to buy and you didn't do your
stupid bastards.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
It was right here.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
I feel like, aside from the PSB collection in the
two thousands, Darkstalkers was specifically carried by cost players and
the Iron Mouse CG shrines.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
Like Iron House, Wow, goddamn.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Because that's where I got my Dark Socker's content. Because yeah,
I didn't have a PSP for years and years, but
i mean, listen, the the emoji looks exactly like the
bat pattern that Morgan has on our tights too, So
you have to assume that was a conscious decision. With
all of this said, it's like, there's no way that

(31:26):
Calcom will release a Dark Stalkers a new one within
like even a stone's throw between were a potential S
and K collab game will will come out like it
is it is maybe after.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
That, But you know what makes the most sense just
just throwing it out here, if another multi media, multi
billion dollar company was like, hey, we got a fighting
game franchise that we're looking to expand in some way,
and hey, you know what, you also have a fighting
game franchise. We should combine our fighting game franchise with

(32:02):
your fighting game franchise because they already share a lot
of similarities. And just Darkstalkers cross Killer Instinct.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah I knew it.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Sorry, there's the and there's the cam for the stream.
Sorry for for the for the for the podcast. Yeah,
I mean yeah, that would be fucking amazing. It allows
it allows one side to expand, it allows the other
side to expand. It's like, but again, Microsoft's not gonna
do any of that ship because we just bought Call
of duty and shut up.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, yeah, very cool idea. Not gonna happen, Not gonna happen.
I I heard someone say, if you want to just
inject a bunch of characters that already have a little bit,
a little bit of name value, it's like combine Red
Earth with Darkstalkers. So a couple of Red Earth. Tessa
is a magician a wizard. That's kind of a horror trope,

(32:50):
and like Leo, uh, there's monsters in there, and they're
like you kind of do a fun game like that. Again,
not a Triple A street Fighter six game, but maybe
some a bit below that in terms of budget.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Here's here's the thing. The only way I could see
that happening is if they made a Dark Socker's game
by itself and then Red Earth characters showed up in there.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
But still, that's what I kind of meant, Like that.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Appeals to nobody, Like that's like appeals to me. Dammit,
that's such a small group of people like that even
still know what Red Earth is.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
You're you're right, you're right, but you know, at least
now we're living in the post Fighting Collection one world,
so at least you know more people about to experience
Red Earth than any other Layton, Do you feel Dark
Sockers has any chance of coming back in the future
giving the state of Capcom today or no, I know
you think about this like literally when you go to

(33:43):
bed every night.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
But you know.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
This is gonna be a hot take. You know, people
might want to close their ears, you know. Yeah, but
I'm in the camp that, like I love Vampire Saviors
so much that I'm like, I'm okay, Like I don't think.
I don't know if a game you can't make a
game like that. And that's not just like a boomer like,
oh my old game is better. It's just so many
ideas in Vampire Savior on like a competitive like level,

(34:09):
like sound horrible on paper.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Mash for pushock and ship, Like what is this? Dude?

Speaker 1 (34:14):
If you if you tell anyone, they're like that sounds
so stupid. Yeah, Like it somehow creates a very cool,
interesting dynamic execution heavy very just yeah, a super cool
meta yeah, because it was all experimental, you know, like
you know, like Shinko's Tin Raha input is like what

(34:35):
is it? It's like light punch, fierce punch, medium, kick
up up, you know, and it's like no one would have.
That was just that was a team at Capcom just
being like, all right, whatever, we're just gonna do this.
It sounds interesting, but through that it's like, oh, you,
now you have a character with so many creative OS's
and so many creative ways to apply pressure with this
instant overhead, you can't make a game.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Like that anymore, and that it just go go go ahead,
I'll let you finish your thought.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
No, I was just gonna say, you can't make a
game like that anymore. So I feel like I mean,
and obviously the Vampire Savior community doesn't speak for all
of the Darkstalkers community or anything. I don't think a game,
a new game will make me particularly happy. I'll be
happy that Darkstalkers exist. So I'm not gonna say there
should never be a Darkstalkers game. But what I love

(35:21):
about Vampire Savior at the end of the day. Of course,
the characters and everything are cool, but it's like the
gameplay and I'm not sure if a modern game can
be designed that way because it it just I don't
think it would be digestible and it just kind of
wouldn't make sense in any way.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
You know, Well, what you just explained about. So I
think it's the best example of it. The sort of
experimentality of Dark Stalkers in the Last game, where they
were kind of like, fuck it, let's just try shit.
I think that game is probably one of the best
examples of when devs just let shit rock and fighting games,
when they were just like, this seems fun. It doesn't

(35:58):
seem like it's going to be super broken. We have
approximately maybe twenty people that are even play testing the
game in small fashion, let's just let it rip. And
that is kind of the way fighting games were designed
back in the day. They were not designed to be
inherently competitive. That what's his name God third Strike designer,
Marvel designer designed all the old capcom fighting games. He

(36:20):
might have been the guy thank you. Neo G went
on interview back in the early two thousands and he
was asked questions about have you ever thought about where
this would lead to competitive viability for the choices you
made in this game? He's like never, Like they're like,
we never made those. We just made things that seem fun. So,
if anything, modern fighting games are very designed right, especially

(36:43):
over the past, like getting to be Tennis years now,
like a bit over that, maybe like seven eight years
very designed. Almost every interaction that's in the game is
designed by a developer to be that certain way, to
play out a certain way, or their mechanics will cover
those situations where something funky can happen. So it's very
rare to find he like, some thing somebody's doing that
you've never seen before and you can't really replicate it

(37:05):
because you don't know what the hell they're doing. Very
rare to find that situation because the devs want you
to enjoy their game at like ninety to one hundred percent.
We want you to look at this and be able
to do those things and share those experiences and give
it to somebody else and just have fun with it,
and that is cool. It leads to a very very
fun like month one week one for some of these games,
but then it gets a little tired because it's like, oh,
we found all the shit they designed, you know, like

(37:26):
it's effectively been discovered. Dark Soccer's Vampire Savior is like
the best example of the old way of making fighting
games because they just threw shit in there and there
it's just like here, have fun with it, and people
will still find stuff you'll find people playing characters in
completely different ways many years later. So that's why I
appreciate that game because there's so many As soon as

(37:46):
I learned what pushblocking was, I'm like, you have to
be fucking shitting me, right, this is the game people love.
And then I tried it and I'm like, oh, it's fun.
Oh put it like pianoing out of like block strings
and stuff. I'm like, oh no, this is actually pretty
fun because it happened. Sometimes it's just really chaotic. I'm like, oh, okay,
but the game's moving so fast you don't have time
to be like, gosh, darn, I missed a pushblock. Geez,

(38:09):
like no, no, no, I've already blocked three overheads from
the stupid dog.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Like you know, it's great, That's exactly it, you know,
because there's some players who they can because there's three
different kinds of pushblocks, different distances, and there's a bunch
of mind games of like oh I wanted you to
push block that in that distance because now I still
you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff like that,
and you know, I wish there was a way, you know,
I wish there was an easy EVO moment thirty seven

(38:33):
to explain like why it's cool, because you just can't.
Like I've talked to people who are deep into fighting games.
I'm like, yeah, this is how you take it in
this game, and they're like, fuck you.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
You know, it's so fast, dude, there's no time for
moments like that to exist because by the time a
moment has happened, we moved forward and it's gone, you know.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
So it just seems like one of those things where
it's like modern capcom fight and just like marketing and
fighting game design today, it's like, how are we supposed
to get that weird that mechanical depth that people have
like been like, this is weird, but it's fun and
encapsulate that and have something that like some casual people
will buy as well. That that's like easier with Street Fighter, right,

(39:13):
because street Fighter is always more popular. The characters are there,
and while Darsuker's characters are really appealing, just like still
not as many people just know them and go oh,
like Chun Lee is the girl that kicks really hard,
Versus someone looks at like QB and they go, ah,
you know it's okay.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
You know, what's one of the first characters when it
came to like, oh, you're just letting people sort of
rock with these mechanics and it doesn't really happen on
an entire game basis. Street Fighter six as much as
it has a shits on a mechanical depth and like
defensive options and stuff felt very designed where it's like, oh, man,
they really thought about these systems when you play it.
The first time I felt it in the past, like

(39:52):
you know, several Capcom fighting games over the past five
years was Orro. Orro came out in the Street Fighter five.
I'm like, this dude's weird. He kind of plays like
an old cap I'm fighting game character with the rocks
and you gotta time all this shit and people really
unlock his abilities. Like months later, it's like, yeah, this
is this is the kind of stuff that was in
the older games, you know, Andy, But they can't let
this shit rock anymore because we'll literally rock because this

(40:14):
this jumping yellow man all over the place is so
hard to play that very few people are going to
play him, you know.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
You know, yeah, Like it's hard to get on a
soapbox about like old fighting game design without sounding you know,
like cranky or whatever, But it's just like, I mean,
we got accept the reality that like old like nineties
arcade games were developed by like ten people in the
span off like eight months, yeah, three to eight months, yep,
and they weren't going to be played for millions of dollars.

(40:43):
No one was going to make a job out of it.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
You know, so I can't.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
It's not even like modern fighting games game design sucks.
It's just it's obviously two different worlds we're talking about,
and you know, I think about this is sorry to
get a little bit off time topic, but I read
an interview with the guy who wrote like Fist of
the North Star Hakodo Nocan, and you know, they talk

(41:06):
They asked him. I was like, oh, like, did you
ever expect, like, you know, this to be as big
as it is today? And it's like, no, I was
writing a weekly Japanese comic book for like ten year
old boys. Yeah, and they yeah, you know, I had
no idea. We were just we had a deadline and
we did it. I didn't know people were going to
be talking about what I wrote forty years ago and
like a weekly magazine.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Because it's really rare, rare when someone gets one of
those questions and they go, oh yeah, yeah, no, I
was going to take over the world. I knew it,
like no, like barely any creatives.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
Of rather Ninja turtles and shit, you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yeah, we were going to sell like five billion action figures.
Yeah no, no, we knew it.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
Like no. It's kind of what's nice about old media
is the humility of it, you know, where like so
many people back then were just like, yeah, just we
have this idea, let's just do it, just pump it
out and and to a point where what I appreciate
about some of these older older media old man talking
here is that there was decisions, but then they were
decided and you move on. And now it's like there's

(42:06):
meetings and consultants and focus groups and like all of
this stuff to make sure your decisions are are good.
But back then they just like went with their gut
and go because we don't have any fucking time, dude,
Like you just have to put this game out in
six to eight months. It's just got to go. So
kind of like their gut reaction to it instead of
dwelling on choices and decisions for a long time, just

(42:27):
doesn't you don't have the time to do that.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
I the more we talk about it more, I'm like, yeah,
just you know, slots and versus fighters for the rest
of time for dark Sockers.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, I'm kind of on the same boat you get
cap You know what I'm excited about because clearly it's
happening is Capcom and S and K crossover stuff in
the future where whether or not Capcom and SNK or
S and K are making a crossover game at some
point way down the line, that's where that shit shows up.
Because CBS two is cool, but it's nine twenty percent

(43:00):
street fighter characters on the Capcom side, dude, So we
really don't have to deal with old Morgan Sprite and everything.
We can get a lot of different characters.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
I would love to see. I mean it sounds crazy,
but yeah, I would love to see like a John
Talbane versus like Marco for Metal Slug or something, you know,
rather than just kof versus street fighters.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yeah, right, you can Leon Kennedy versus you know, like
like like well Marco Rodriguez or something like that. You
can get reasons for that shit to happen.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
That's why Calcom versus S and K one and two
lies to you because.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
Street Fighter versus I mean everyone's.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
SBC Chaos that actually said no, this is this is
this is actually the game. You know, like.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Kyosk, It's like, okay, cool, Kiosk is here. You know Eagle,
I mean at that point, like I guess we just
kind of like know of Eagle as Eagle, you know.
But I feel like in the nineties I wasn't around
for that. But it's like, who the hell is this
dude from Street Fighter one? What a crazy what a
crazy pick?

Speaker 3 (43:55):
You know, here's a new too.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah, so we could probably talk about this all day,
but you know, going into dark Soccers so hard. Dark
Soccers definitely for me is like around number two of
games where I was opening up game magazines like Game
Fan or like EGM, and they would just have those
spreads where it would just show Darkstalker's artwork, like just

(44:22):
like you know, the really sketchy drawings of Dmitri like
holding his cape above his head, or that kind of
odd one of Morgan like kind of sitting down and
she has like kind of her wings sort of splayed
out around her. And when I was like looking at
those articles not really caring about like any of the
words that are written, because it's just basically a preview, right,

(44:43):
and it's for an arcade that'll probably never get to
play in my life at that time because I was
allowed to go to the arcades. I didn't have a
PlayStation at that time and stuff, so I was absorbing
that through the artwork and just going, oh, these characters
are so awesome. But honestly, for me, that started, like
I said, Dark Sockers was number two. Number one, I

(45:05):
you know, forgive me for being presumptuous, but number one,
I assume for all of us is street Fighter. Correct
me if I'm wrong later, But I mentioned this before
in street Fighter two. I didn't get to play the
arcade or even the Super Nintendo version that much. I
had the IBM PC version. That's the version I bought

(45:26):
shit that had the big box. I would go to
her friend's house play Street Fighter two there. If I
ever saw it in like a movie theater, I play
it there. But my only home version for a long
time until street Fighter Alpha two, no sorry, until Super
street Fighter two on the SNS, I had the PC version,
and the PC version always had a gigantic instruction booklet,

(45:49):
you know, traditionally a bit bigger than console booklets, and
that's where I saw the American renderings, the paintings by
Mick McGuinty, so all of those. It's just that picture
of Riu just standing there, kind of like this picture
of Ken looking really really depressed. You're just kind of
standing there. And of course all the box arts for

(46:11):
the home console parts. I love that stuff so much.
It was like, the characters look so cool, and it
wasn't until years and years later where I would see
the Japanese drawings of the characters, just going, oh, they
look even cooler.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Yeah, I didn't think.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
It was possible, but I remember falling in love with
fighting games, like the second element to falling in love
with them is seeing all these really cool characters because
there were so in your face and these drawings were used, like,
you know, a lot in the marketing promotional materials. Is
that the same for you guys, street Fighter too, or

(46:47):
was there like another one that you remember first being
making that impression on you.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah, I'm a bit younger than you, guys, so.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Always quick to remind us.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
The first Street Fighter that I did play was a
Champion edition on the Genesis. You know. So I would
see the box art of you know, like Gile versus Bison,
and I'd like, I was too young to like, I
guess really think about it. This was, oh, this is
just street fighter, this is the box art. I wasn't
like thinking about the art. But like the first time

(47:23):
I think I had really like I guess went to
school and I think I was in literally I was
in the first grade. I remember seeing the box art
or the promotional art for Alpha three of like Cody
Busting the Wall. Yes, And I remember going to school
and like telling a friend, like I have, like I

(47:46):
played a street Fighter on the Dreamcast and it has
like a dude who's like in jail broke out. He's
like the coolest guy ever, you know. So that was
like and so then that introduced me to you know,
obviously the rest of the I guess, the Japanese aret.
And it wasn't until like I was older, because when
I guess I would appreciate the American box off for

(48:07):
what it was because at least for my like age group,
I would say, that's when like anime started becoming like
really you know popular. So in my head I would
grow up thinking like this is not the real art.
This sucks sort of thing, like they've replaced the greatest
artists of all time with this American trash or whatever.
But yeah, it wasn't until like I was much older,

(48:28):
like you know, like this has its place. This was
part of like the culture, and so at the time
I didn't appreciate it, but now I do. But yeah,
righter off of three in the two thousands.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
In the two thousands, totally the same thing. Everyone's kind
of like, ah, that trash American art. But I think
in like the last you know, a couple of years,
five years, people are like, you know that that shit
was important. Was it exactly the Japanese dev team's vision
of the characters? No, But I mean it's like that's
just the way it was. You know, a lot lots
of properties in the nineties, if they're made outside of

(49:01):
the US, they had to have like, you know, more
US appropriate illustrations and marketing and stuff. So I think
in the last couple of years, and plus the artist
that drew them, Mick, he's like still around, he still
talks about all that artwork that he does. He's like, yeah,
it's good times. My favorite character is Blank. It he's
so cool, and I was like, oh, that's wholesome as shit.
So what about you, Max? I assume it's street Fighter,

(49:24):
but correct me if I'm wrong.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, So I think the first game. That really what
I think, because I grew up as an artist, like
just drawing constantly. That was my identity, that was like
who I was. So I was drawing until it was
effectively like in my mid twenties, constantly until my career
just sort of shifted. So there was a very large
period of time where my life was focused on drawing

(49:46):
Transformers at a very young age, Mega Man stuff for
after that, Aliens and Predator stuff, more than you can
possibly imagine. But the first street Fighter game, and obviously
playing all the street Fighter games not really paying attention
to the art or like appreciating it to the point
where it's like my fandom has me drawing this all
the time. The first time that happens is street Fighter
Alpha two, and something about the way Alpha two characters

(50:09):
looked and their design and like the angles. I believe
Edi n was the artist on that one. I loved it.
I thought it was so sick. And that was right
around like the mid nineties, when like anime started becoming
a thing that you can identify that we didn't know
what the hell how to pronounce it. Ani'm anime, like
we didn't know even know how to pronounce it, So

(50:31):
that that had a pretty big influence on me. And
then yeah, obviously, like you know my anime years that
came after that, for like five six years or so
where I was like super into it. Alpha two was
the first game and I just drew those characters a ton.
I love the way it looked man. And then Puzzle
Fighter happened like right around the same time, and the
chibi versions of the characters done by the same artist.
It was like, oh, this is so cool. And then

(50:53):
not even talking about the stuff.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Right yeah, because because all of these artists were different,
like worked on a bunch of like Edn worked on
like Rival Schools as well, did a lot of the
main artwork there at.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
And read the series. And I feel like he's probably
like by name, I feel like he's maybe one of
the most like underrated, because I feel like everyone knows Vengus,
everyone knows.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
We all know who Dan is. I got a question.
He's gone under several different aliases for like a while,
and I swear this confused. The same thing with Vengus.
It gets confused in some of the books because you
hear like of Showy and I'm like, no, that's not
that's not him, And I get confused of because sometimes
they have like the wrong name next to the artwork
because even at Capcom they didn't know. So I feel

(51:43):
like at times it could be sort of confusing of
identifying this art style. Definitely is this dude, and it
says somebody else's freaking name.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Yeah, I mean yeah, it doesn't help. At the same time,
like where I have the The Darkstalkers like art book.

Speaker 5 (51:58):
Like complete works, yeah, the official complete works, and there's
literally like in like you know, like little excerpts from
the artists like mostly Bingis and next to some of
the drowns, he's like, I don't remember drawing this, ye,
So it's like, you know, so they don't even like
I'm sure, and like, of course, when you're making official
art for a particular title, you're probably going to copy

(52:21):
like you know, the other artist style that's already been
set in stone, you know sort of things.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
So yeah, it does get like kind of it's all
over the place. Yeah, I definitely think Eddie On is
one of the more like unsung heroes because I feel
like he personally to me, the way he draws, like
the street Fighter cast is very he like took the
best of like everyone, Bro, I mean like this is
like this is the amalgamation of re you.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Ye, I have the best example for this. I'm gonna
remind you that this should exists right now.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Where you're going.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
The artist Super street Fighter two Turbo GBA, Yes, got
the best that I swear to god. It's like the
best street Fighter characters have ever looked. It's so sick.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah, no, the like when I first saw that, like
I didn't have a GV at the time, but when
I would open up, like I think it was a
Nintendo power and you would see that like that like
dark shading on certain parts of the characters that they're
they're musculature their poses like Ken's.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
That shot of you and Ken like like this is
street Fighter Bro, look at this shit.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Ye Yeah. So yeah, he like you know, maybe not
as well known as like Bengus or even like Akimen,
but like definitely, I I agree one hundred percent, like
one of the more underrated artists. If not the most
underrated at working at CACOM at the time. And the
other thing that made it confusing is when you had
games that had multiple entries like Alpha or Street Fighter three,

(53:45):
they would change the artist for every single one, so
like it would also be confusing. So like from Street
Fighter three it was like Aki man and uh like Nishimura,
and then in two would slightly changed, and then three
it changed into Aikino.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
So Tychowai Kinoe.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Yeah, and that would also be confusing because until you
got art books or the internet was like you know,
really really, you know, you're on it every day and
checking things out if this information is even there, it's
like you didn't even know half the time. Like maybe
if you're living in Japan you could get mooks and
stuff that would kind of explain a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
But and like the relationship of the artists to the
company now is a lot different, Like there's there's even
at these companies. Artists aren't really like relegated to just
working there because that doesn't make any sense anymore. Artists
are effectively freelanced now from what I understand. I don't
know if it's that much different in Japan, but you
see Kenu Nishimura and Bengis and Documen working on a
ton of different games and like a ton of different projects.

(54:43):
They're not specifically tied to this, but in the nineties
they were producing so many goddamn arcade games a year
that needed artwork. They had to be hired full time.
Where you're just going to start pumping out artwork for us,
like eight to nineteen to thirty eight hours a day,
you know, just draw your heart out. And now that's
not really necessary and most of these artists have just
gone their different ways, and you know, we get to

(55:04):
we get to be like, oh, Keino Nishimura is doing
art for this one mobile game that's clearly her.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
You know.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yeah, yeah, you guys mentioned Bengus earlier, so we might
as well get into it. I know Bengus has had
other handles online, but let's just let's just call them
Bengus for the time being.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Sure are they to you?

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Are they your your favorite or the most notable? Like
how are we actually feeling?

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Yeah? So, so that's a good question. Why Bengus. I
think we'll ask you, Laton, why Bengus?

Speaker 1 (55:33):
So I think Bengus just like encapsulates that like late nineties,
you know, Fighting game Golden Era for capcom. For me,
he had his hand in like almost every game. But
most importantly is that his style, I guess like became
so iconic that in my head, that's how I think

(55:55):
of these characters. Like, Yep, this might sound sacrilegious, but
when I think of Cyclops, I don't think of Jim
Lee's Cyclops. I think of Bingus. Is Jim Lee's Cyclots Sentinel?

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Same shit?

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Yeah, I think of weird blue Venom, you know, his
like roundy blue venom. I don't think of Todd McFarland Venom.
And yeah, I think that just really like speaks to
how iconic and like just the even the way he
colored the characters, Like if you colored Spider Man a
certain way, thank you. People are gonna be like, oh,
that's that's obviously like capcom bingus spider Man. That's not

(56:27):
Todd McFarland, that's not anyone else. That's that shade of blue,
that shade of red is capcom Bingus.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
You know, I'm glad you're saying that because it As
the art director for the Marvel Infinite Beyond thing, that
has been the whole goal of mine is like, Okay,
this is the wrong blue, Like, this is the wrong red.
Spider Man went through like nine or ten different iterations
before I effectively was happy that that's Capcom Spider Man
finally founded. Dude. Same thing for Mega Man, same thing

(56:53):
for a lot of the characters. The blues and the
reds and everything in between is so specific to look
like the old ninety style.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Because Capcom Man is not red. It's orange, slightly orange.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Yeah, exactly, He's like salsa red. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
I want to give special shout outs to Bengas for
this one particular thing. You guys know the street Fighter
one artwork, Like when Street Fighter one was coming out,
he did these amazing illustrations that were like never used
like in the game.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
You know, yeah, I thought it was is it? Is
it the first the first picture example, we're looking at
here right with like Ken reusagat Yes.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
So this this stuff was like when the game was
coming out or being in development, and you look at
and you're like, why is that so fucking good?

Speaker 3 (57:36):
That looks like he did it like much much later,
I thought the exactly thing.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Right when So when I got the udon street Fighter
Eternal Challenge, art book and I saw this artwork, I'm like, oh,
it's nice that he re rendered the characters again, It's like, no, no,
he did that in like nineteen eighty seven or eighty
six around then. And then when you go back to
street Fighter Alpha and you see he did the characters

(58:01):
exactly like that for Alpha to match those art styles,
I was just like.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
This, dude, Yeah, this fucking dude. He's so cool, so
cool like that. And that's the thing about this artwork
where I was like, I thought this was artwork produced
in like eighty seven eighty eight, and I'm like, damn, dude,
they really were in touch with how this shit looks.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
And it was like no, no, no.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
He effectively went back like and when Alpha one was
coming out and redesigned the Street Fighter one characters to
be like adjacent. This is what they would have looked
like if they were like a bit younger from the
Street Fighter one era. And I was like, oh, I
thought he was always on board and he always got it,
and it's like, oh shit, Okay, that makes more sense
why this looks so good compared to this shit. He
had street Fighter one art.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
So then in Alpha two, like eddieon handled that, but
then when you go to Alpha three, I think it's Bengus,
it gets back to it, like it's completely different. It's
like super solid bright colors for all the characters, and
I was just like, that's again a little bit confusing.
About the same time, it's like, yeah, you can't just
keep re rendering the characters, especially in the same sub
series over and over again. So it's like Alpha was

(59:06):
also a really big Like that's when Max you're saying
you were drawing stuff. I was drawing stuff too in
elementary school, where I had like a binder and I
had like my pieces of eight point five by eleven
paper that was just drawing fighting game characters. Here's my
section for KI, here's my section for Ultimore and Combat three,
here's my Alpha one. And I would show it around

(59:27):
like anyone that would be willing to look at it,
like look, I drew all these characters, and everyone's like cool.
And then one day some guy's like, can you draw
me Rogue? And I'm like, uh, yeah, I could draw
rogue And he's like, can you draw naked for me?
I'm like no, I might get in trouble and it
ran off. He's like I'll pay you, And.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
I was like, no, there was jumped off the cliff.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
That was a dark path that could have gone to
be in like a hen tire.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
The dark path to go back to.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Like I guess, like the last versions of The Street
Fighter three and Alpha having like different artists, I feel
like those are also like kind of maybe maybe I'm
looking too into it, but you know those Alpha two
to Alpha three and Second Impact and Third Strike have
totally different like design philosophy. Yeah, like like not just

(01:00:17):
like outside of the game, but like system mechanic wise
and everything. Obviously. I feel like that's also kind of
like this is its own, this is its new thing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
You know. That's intentional.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Yeah, because both of those games were released, you know,
because Alpha one to Alpha two that was maybe like
a year new generation. A Second Impact was like five
or like seven months or something. Yeah, but like Second
Impact at Third Strike Alpha two to Alpha three that
was like a few years in between. So yeah, I
feel like, you know, switching artists was probably a way
to be like, hey, this is fresh, this is new. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yeah, yeah, because if you're like the same art style
for all three, it's like, eh, well is it is it? Two? Different,
Like even the the on the on the select screen,
it was like the artist art. It wasn't just like
the sprider whatever, right, So it would like show them
popping up, and every time you saw refreshed art made
you go oh, I think it always harkens back. That's
like when people really knew shit was was getting crazy,

(01:01:10):
was in like Super and Super Turbo. It's like, look
at these fucking new portraits.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
They look so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Compared to like the kind of more cartoony ones that
that you saw for a while in the early Street
Fighter two Days.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
I mean yeah, I mean World Warrior Reu looks like
a boy. Yeah he looks Yeah, he looks like someone
I would hang out with. New Challengers Super Turbo re.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
You was like, this is a man that is mass.
I still think the in terms of like artwork in
Street Fighter just sort of blowing me away, and like
the visuals and and how it looks is Super street
Fighter too. And it's the shot of Reu uh completely backlit,

(01:01:53):
you know, in darkness but with like the blue and
the purple lighting, him just bouncing up and down like
ready to throw the haduken. That's arguably like in terms
of simple but effect that. One of my favorite intros
in a fighting game ever is like the first one,
Super Turbo obviously like covers are on Camming and everybody else,
but dude, full rendered, giant body, full screen half body,
REU about to throw a fireball, and it's like all

(01:02:16):
the detail you could ever imagine. That still leaves an
impression on me today.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
No, it totally does. That's why you or I or
other content creators have like made intros to look like that,
like oh yeah, little inserts like it's like ultimate, It's.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
The most iconic intro of all time in my opinion
for fighting games.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Yeah, totionin End two I think is up there, but
sure like Street Fighter two is.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
I think when it comes to for me, like Bengus,
my my brain immediately goes to Marvel versus capcrom One.
I just MVC one is so special and it sort
of makes me feel like a sigh of relief that
it's like maybe I'm just a weirdo and I'm just
attached to this old ship in a certain way. But
when that when the collection came out and a lot
of people started hovering and MVC two is the hero game.
Everyone's gonna be that. But it kind of like there

(01:03:02):
was this little bit of in all the reviews and
people that aren't great at fighting games, NVC one got
this come upp ins that I really appreciated, where it's like, yeah,
Marvel two is really good, but have you played and
seen MVC one. It's so much different. It looks so
much better. Like people said all this kind of stuff,
it's so unique feeling compared to all the other games.
I'm like, yeah, I know, man, Like this is what

(01:03:22):
I've been saying for years, Like the half character portrait art,
Like there's so much legendary art that's from NBC one
that got emulated and replicated, like it's the Akira bike
slide over the years that it's like, that's why that
game's the goat, dude, It's just it. It's art is
unmatched in my personal opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Yeah, I wanted to touch on Bengos for one thing.
It's like it's it's not all the artists, but some
have like are still or came back to Capcom Yeah
and listen, listen. I know he had to draw so
much stuff for Street Fighter five. Oh yeah, but when
I look at Bengus Street Fighter five stuff it's just

(01:04:02):
it's just or not it's it's different. It's different. There's
it's certainly like more stylized to the point, but it's
just like and I know, like artists can change throughout
the years, uh you know, for the same good or
or or or worse. But and and it's not like
insulting or anything. It's just like, this is not just

(01:04:23):
what I think of when I think of Bengus our work.
But at the same time, it's like he probably had
three months to draw to fucking endings.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
I mean even with like for his modern stuff. I
like the key art for like the belt action, the
beat Him Up collection, Oh yeah, and the Capcom Fighting
question one two with more or yeah one or two,
the one with Morgan Yeah it's one, yeah, yeah, I
really like that one. Like I think it looks good.
I don't think it's quite you know, obviously nineties Bengus,

(01:04:54):
but yeah, it's been twenty something years. He's it's obviously
a lot older. So you know, I'm not gonna uh
you know, counted against some Definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
He's a funny artist because in all of the games,
especially in like the Versus series for example, as as
it goes on for like a long time. You realize
in the nineties how much his style was influenced and changed,
and and that was like a big thing. Like I
think me and mattl resonate with this a bit. When
when when Spawn blew up and Todd was on top

(01:05:25):
of the world but also drawing all of the books
until like the mid teens of Spawn, he was clearly like,
all right, so I can't do this all the time,
And he brought on a new guy during the Redeemer
arc that was Gray Capolo, and it did not look
like Todd's work, But three or four issues later that
shit looked like Todd's work. His art style had completely

(01:05:48):
changed to look like something else. So that is the
nature of like of like artists is that they will
conform and adjust and and effectively do something that they
feel fits the medium better. But over time, like I
would imagine, as you get older and as somebody that
is an artist, you sort of rely on your comforts
and you sort of sit in the laurels that you

(01:06:09):
know and stay with those things, and there's not really
much of a reason to change anymore because people like
the stuff that you do.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
You know, and you know slightly like not a problem.
But the reason why Bengus is like ending art kind
of also sticks out because it's like, it looks nothing
like street Fighter five. Street Fighter five, they're all doe
and they have like painterly textures on them. They're all
like action figures, even more so than Street Fighter four.

(01:06:36):
So if the entire game looked like something similar to
Bengus's art work, I think it would have been like fine,
But it sticks out like such a sore thumb compared
to like how endings were usually shown in street Fighter games,
either via the anime eclips in street Fighter four or
just like you know, the the sprite drawings or you know,
not spright drawings, but like you know, the pixel art

(01:06:57):
in street Fighter three or Alpha. So it always sticks
out to me worse in that regard.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
He's probably been talked about a million times to death. Yeah,
I mean that along. I don't think we'd be talking
about it as much if like the launch of street
Fighter five and everything else about street Fighter five didn't
miss so hard.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
It just lined up with the rest of the game's
quality not being particularly great. It was just you know,
obvious that this game was made in like less than
a year.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
With that said, I still prefer that I had a
rough time adjusting to all the promotional artwork and some
of the illustrations you would see in the early days
of Street Fighter four, because when I read slash heard
that Ikeino from Third Strike is the art director of that,
I was like, ohly shit awesome. And then those first

(01:07:44):
couple of drawings came out that really weird one of
Riu and Ken kind of back to back. Re's got
this one massive stink eye.

Speaker 4 (01:07:54):
Art.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
Yeah, was that ni Ken has this like long flowing
lock I had.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Yeah, okay, you know that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
That's my general, that's my generation. I can't like, I
can't art person I you know, even now, I feel
like a lot of people like go back to Street
Fight or four in general, and it's art style and
yeah it is ugly, he man whatever, but I don't know,
I it'sstald, it's weird and like a.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
Lot of bad box arts in the Street Fart or
four era.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
Yeah, oh no, that's true. And there was an interesting
take because he Keno was the main artist on the
game is the character select screen art, so they they
incorporate an interesting thing that a lot of fighting games
from this point forward would do including games like Killer Instinct.
For the portrait slash bust art, you know, of the characters,
they effectively take a three D model and draw over it,

(01:08:44):
so it keeps the proportions sort of lined up. That
that what's on the character selects screen is now somewhat
representative of what's in the game, you know, just obviously
polished up from an artist, you know, in several ways,
so that that's that's a I don't know if Capcom
was one of the first ones to do it, because
this is you know, HD two point five D games,
but that's what I noticed, because they changed Ken's face

(01:09:06):
several times in from the arcade version to the eventual
launch version because we were all playing the arcade version
of four. So yeah, it's it's it's cool looking, you know,
but it lines up with the fact that it looks
a little funky. It looks a little like like like
it's from the in game.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
You know, Chunley's hands because model crazy elbow.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
Yeah, I won't say anything more.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Yeah, when they got to Ultra street Fighter four and
you see like the pictures of Poison or Hugo or Rolento,
those look great, like they they nailed that process by then,
and even by super there or Arcade edition. Uh, they're
doing really well there. I want to talk about Akimen
for for a minute. He is an artist where he
did a lot of like you know, uh, the you know,

(01:09:52):
tertiary illustrations you wouldn't really see in the game, but
he did those main ones of the entire Street Fighter
two turbo cast, so the bosses included, and it was
just that one simple shot of them in a background,
like it's like Balrog standing in front of like you know,
the ring girls and he's got his fist together, or
Reu when he's just on the castle just kind of yelling.

(01:10:15):
All of those are like perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
For spur Fighter two.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
They're absolutely perfect. But as time went on he would
get less and less like active work, like being the
main illustrator. But during Street Fighter four and five he
would Calcum would either commission him to do like you know,
here's here's a picture of Chun Lee and drew so
many Chun Lee's during that time. Some of them are amazing,

(01:10:41):
Like he is.

Speaker 3 (01:10:42):
Better created, just like he's arguments the father of Street
Fighter visuals, like he created the sprites and the visuals
like I think.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
He's better nowadays, Like some of his pictures are so evocative,
like of Chun Lee specifically, because he was trying so
much that I'm like, oh my god, this looks so good.
And even Reuw draw re you a lot during that
like a couple of years ago as well. So are
you gonna say limb oh yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
I was just I feel like at least maybe you
guys will think differently that, like, yeah, he obviously like
he created the image of street Fighter basically, yes, like
these characters are from him. That I feel like he's
just kind of I don't want to say, glossed over,
but not really brought up and like the best of
because we've just accepted that. Like how I don't know

(01:11:29):
how important his artwork is that I never really see
anyone say like, oh, document, it's my favorite, yeah, because
he like he he created it all, you know, he.

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
Created the colors, he created everything, dude. And I think
the reason for that is because he the last game
and I just posted it in the chat. The last
game he was like a main character artist on was
new Gen was Newgen yet and it was the and
it looks very different than his usual art style, right,
it's like the heavy that the really heavy, like black
outlines and stuff like that. And I remember not liking

(01:11:59):
this artwork when I was young kid. I appreciate it
now because I love details. When I was a kid,
I just loved characters with a ton of details, which
is why Todd McFarlane was so popular for me. But
this this stuff looks great nowadays, where it's like, oh yeah,
the simplicity of it is what makes it's so good.
The fact that they don't need all those lines is
what makes it evocative. This was the last game I

(01:12:19):
think he worked on where he was a main character artist,
doing like character select screen art and stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Yeah, just just when you show me a page like that,
I just you know, I have several because Eternal Challenge
is the one I mentioned before the first art book
and it's relatively thin. And then afterwards, when that was
a success, Udon and other people would be like, we need,
we need more of these art books, and then they
started getting thicker and thicker than it became like all
of Calcom's are work, not like just street Fighter and

(01:12:47):
it was done in the sections and then just Marvel
just the Versus games got their own art books and
stuff like, that's how good this stuff was.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
Oh and Project Justice is getting one. Rival Schools is
getting one right now.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
Yes, put in TKO when you check out to get
ten percent off. I wish, yeah, yeah, cause I got
the Dark Socers one. I'm sure. I'm sure we probably
all have it, and like the Marvel ones, but like, yeah,
Rival Schools is a big one because that's a lot
of Eddian treasures. I want to touch on American games

(01:13:22):
a little bit. Mortal Kombat one not that much of
an impression. The story sequences at the start of Mortal
Kombat two made such an impression because it was a
combination of actors and really good background design and like
getting Goro and that one shot, that one shot where
it's like a bunch of fire and Shao Kan like

(01:13:43):
admonishing shank song, like how dare you fail? That was
such an impressive story sequence. And as Mortal Kombat and
two D Mortal Kombat era went on, you saw that
stuff less and less. You would just get that one
shot of raidin but they do a really good job
of it. But there's still not that much to say
because they're the actors dressed up there's not like a
million renderings John Tobias obviously, did you know the very

(01:14:06):
comic bookie looking like, but you never see that collected
anywhere else. You wouldn't really see it that often in
game magazines, at least to my recollection. So like Western games,
aside from KI, which would be shown a lot in
Nintendo Power because that made sense. Why would they not
advertise that? But those main illustrations from k I one

(01:14:29):
to two where it was like slicing the underarm of
TJ Combo, or that one like full Gore where he's
standing on like a thunder stage.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Like, but here's the thing. Unlike the Street Fighter art,
this art would never change art styles because there was
no art style other than rare CGI rendering.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
Yeah it was. It was an SGI rendering machine.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
Yeah yeah, so they picked really good shots.

Speaker 3 (01:14:56):
Yeah, well I have to give I have to get
credit where credits due. You know, if effectively the art
style of Nintendo in our childhood is actually Kevin Bayless,
you know, he created Donkey Konget, created Diddy kong Get,
created the entire cast of Killer Instinct. He created friggin
Banjo and banj are like He's like the guy that
was responsible for the majority of these old games because

(01:15:17):
he was one of the only people that learned how
to use that SGI rendering machine that made like the
Jurassic Park movies and shit. So I've talked to Kevin
several times any streams and stuff like that. But yes,
I think I think I have to give Kevin Bayliss
a lot of credit. Nothing looked like those illustrations quote
unquote like CG illustrations from KI in nineteen ninety four.

(01:15:38):
Everything that was CG looked like ass dude. The only
thing that looked good was toy story and it still
looked relatively bad. It was like, yeah, this looks decent
because they're toys, you know. But the humans were like, ugh,
like even in the nineties were like, uh, dude, like
the way characters looked in the way they were lit
and killer instinct, I still looks good to me, Like
it still hits me. It's like, this is fucking cool.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
And do you know what was key? Unlike Mortal Kombat,
every character got like their illustration like it was ripped
oar facing off against I think I think it was glacious,
but every character like had like that's their one really
cool looking illustration to sell you on that character or
kid bending over cleaning a car and that's the one
that sell or kid oh yeah, stuff like that. And

(01:16:20):
that's like what Mortal Kombat kind of lacked. They didn't
really have a dedicated like here's this. I think when
MK three came out, they had these one really static
shots of everyone just standing there like not really doing
a move sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
Which which which I love, Like I love that particular
like things of artwork of the Ninja's like how like
like baggy almost like they look very like I don't know,
they just look cool. Like I'm assuming that was that's
John Tobias. I've always assumed that it was that was
like his like like whatever, yeah, Like I wish I

(01:16:53):
don't know if it was marketing where it's like like,
our whole appeal is that it's live action people, So
where are we gonna market.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
You know, to work?

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
But like whenever I see his like you know, drawings
of Kano and stuff, I'm like, these characters are badass,
Like this is awesome. I wish there was like key art.
Maybe we wouldn't have gotten the iconic quan Chi on
the side.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
Of the m K four cabinet or something, you know,
but how a human can render that?

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
But like how cool it would it have been, you know,
to have like you know, like a maskless of zero
punching like Cyrax for MK.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Three, like like arc you know, because since for promo
shots like from m K two, it's like the actor
that played Kung Lau then Baraka, then Katana and they're
all like the new characters and they're all kind of
doing like a martial arts post and that's kind of it.
So like I get that from Mortal Kombat. So so
John Tobias, like his artwork was never used as much

(01:17:47):
as it you know, probably should have to because they
work so hard on Mortal Kommet backstories and and motivations
like that kind of helped out a lot. But like
in terms of like Western stuff, like they're they're like
aside from k I in my head, especially like in
the nineties, there wasn't that much to gravitate towards. But
we have to we can't just spend all the time

(01:18:07):
on cacom stuff. Have to have to talk about Shankiro
at the very fucking least.

Speaker 3 (01:18:12):
Also a capcom artist, you know, as time also.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
One yes, because now I think it's like Shankiro has
worked for Capcom longer than than S and K.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
I think, oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:23):
I think the first time I noticed Shinkiro ar for
Capcom was like the Resident Evil Deadly Silence.

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):
Yeah, like mine was that Dinosaur game. There's like a
dinosaur that was like, yeah, I looked at that box.
Is this why? Why is George Clooney on this box?

Speaker 2 (01:18:42):
I'm not sure you guys saw my my tweet. But
the most obscure Shinkiro artwork is that he was commissioned
to draw the Japanese artwork for syops the mind Gate Conspiracy.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
That's the shot I remember.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
It's so cool, but yeah, like, uh, I would not
see kof stuff that often, and because he wasn't like, yeah,
he would draw like artwork for Fatal Fury, but you
wouldn't see it like too often in game magazines and stuff.
But it's like, yeah, the shots of Joe, Andy and
Terry all having the exact same Mel Gibson George Clooney

(01:19:17):
face like that didn't make much of an impression on
me for a while because I was like really into
the Fatal Fury animes, so like to me, Fatal Fury
was kind of Masami o Bari rather rather than fucking
Shanghiro for a while, But it was only when Shinkiro
moved to Capcom or at least started doing the uh

(01:19:38):
like little promotional shots of like various games and stuff
like Dino Soccer, I was like, oh, yes, the S
and K artist. Yeah, And as time went goes on,
I think Shinkiro is kind of like age like a
fine wine, where it's like Tatsunovo and and Capcom Fighting.

Speaker 3 (01:19:56):
Evolution, Marvel three that's yes, and Marvel.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
Three, all of that art work, it's like almost better
than Nautas themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
Especially I'm the same way where it's like I feel
like as a young kid when I was looking at
kof Art and S and k Art around the time
frame fetal Theory and not really into it as much.
I was pretty critical on it. I didn't like the
way those characters looked and a pretty like unnecessarily harsh
because of a child brain. But as time goes on,
I think I've gone on to like really appreciate it,

(01:20:24):
and the same way we talk about some of the
Documen's work, it's the same thing where it's like I
look back and realize, like, how kind of expertly crafted
like this shit really is? It just did not look
like everything else at the time. Uh. The the one
that really did it for me when I realized that, like,
oh no, this guy really gets it. Like the game
that did that was Totsunoco Versus Capcom that that art work.

(01:20:45):
When shin Kiro came in and finally did a fighting
game for Capcom, it was like, oh, you know, he
did Capcom Fighting Evolution, which I didn't love. I didn't
love that style. But to me TVC it looks really good.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
And I think his style like, I mean, I had
the same thing. I guess this is this is a
very American experience. We didn't we didn't appreciate Shinkiro when
we were you know, it wasn't until we got older.
But I mean, especially his style is very I guess,
like to me, it's like old like classic.

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):
Yeah yeah, you know, so you know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
To compare or to you know, have his style mixed
in with a seventies anime company with seventies properties just
like makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
You know, I know this might be weird, Shinkiro drawing
Ryu and Ken feels a bit off to me. Still,
Shinkiro drawing chun Lee looks like he's hard.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
It's like the best.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
Yeah, And still seeing his artwork pop up in Street
Fighter six for for Terry's stuff is just like, you know,
like a lot of the artwork is it has different
artists doing the cuts and stuff, like Bengus is still
there amongst other people, but like Shinkiro's specifically showing like, uh,
showing up in that game is just so crazy and weird,

(01:22:06):
even though it's like, yeah, he's been working for for
Capcom for years, He's done lots of games.

Speaker 3 (01:22:10):
Can I can I share you guys my favorite Shinkiro
piece ever? And I want to gauge your reaction based
on me pasting it in the chat right now? A,
uh yeah, what do you think it is?

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
I mean I would think it's like, you know, k
F ninety eight, but that's like too obvious.

Speaker 3 (01:22:26):
All right, it's too obvious.

Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
I want to say it's it's it's like that. Uh,
I think it's for like Calcom versus S and K two.

Speaker 3 (01:22:37):
You're close. No, no, I mean you might have forgotten
this image exists. Get ready. Oh it's big. It's very
high res.

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
Oh of course, of course.

Speaker 2 (01:22:46):
Hell yeah, dude, this ultimately look Cam three. Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:22:54):
Love it man, It's Shinkiro is now Like what while
while growing up, you know, the influence of Capcom artist
was pretty big on me, but as an adult with
refined taste, I love this shit. It's so good.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Yeah, Like perspective wise, does it make any sort of
sense at all? No, But that's not the point.

Speaker 3 (01:23:12):
It's not the point.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
It's cool.

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
There are a ton of bodies.

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
Yeah, and it's a cool I mean, at least to me,
it's like a callback almost to the NBC artwork.

Speaker 2 (01:23:22):
Yeah, so for sure the sorry go ahead, Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
Was just gonna say that, you know, like S and
K artwork in general, Like I'm a Capcom fanboy. My
name is Kyle quote of course, So like you know,
it didn't take until like I was older for me
to like look at, you know a lot of the
S and K artwork and really like you know, come
to the realization that, oh wow, like they did something
that Capcom didn't a lot of the time. They gave

(01:23:50):
these characters like personalities in a way to like live
through the art work, right, which I think is like
S and K is like strongest you know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
You like like Kio and friends, like having fun at
the beach.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
Just the fact that, like you know, I just mentioned
the kof ninety eight artwork is like all of them
standing outside of a building or like you know, because
a lot of the Street Fighter key art for their
games is just you know, the characters. They're not really
maybe existing in an actual situation. They just like you know,
but like you know, you have the kof like dinner
party art and stuff like that. You know, Like to me,

(01:24:25):
I think like that is S and K's artists strong
suit is. Yeah, they made these characters feel more than
just people who meet up and fight. Yeah, they have
like a lot of relationships.

Speaker 3 (01:24:36):
There's there's one that got me and it sort of
bled into Capcom's influence right around Capcom versus SNK one
and two. There's an illustration that I don't think pops
up anywhere in the game, but it's like a city street.
It's like an isometric view, but it's Sakura leaning over,
like you know, sort of like on the floor with
another character leaning over, leaning in and they're playing like
neo geopocket color together. Oh yeah, yeah, it's an acted

(01:24:58):
by a link cable. It's like Soccura in year.

Speaker 1 (01:25:01):
It's a I think it is, and like and yeah,
great Nimura. I feel like it's the only like big
capcom artists who like drew their characters in situation. You
also have like the the one where like all of
them are on the subway with like flip phones and
stuff like that, you know, which I really appreciate.

Speaker 2 (01:25:25):
As an aside, I wanted to like say specifically, like
I said Bengus, you know, kind of like top three,
Nishimura is my favorite of all time, like uh, specifically
street Fighter three art that she did. But even even then,
like I have it linked in our doc but will
be it should be on screen. It's like even their

(01:25:46):
street Fighter five art that they did. Sometimes like I
was like, that's just that just still looks like their style.
It's slightly a different involved, but that's that's still them,
and you just know whenever you see it, Like I
think Max mentioned earlier, when they get commissioned to do
other games, like what was that one game, the Princess,

(01:26:07):
the Princess Beat Them Up game. Yeah, Princess Cota, Princess,
all those characters on the gap. That's Nishimura love it,
Like I gameplay wise, this could be better, but I
love this artwork and stuff, so they're they're kind of
my go to. But it's like everyone we've essentially talked
about as all is all amazing before we have to

(01:26:28):
show off. Yeah, police, please, what do you guys got.

Speaker 1 (01:26:31):
My one of my besides my calves, is one of
my prize possessions. It's Aura, actual Aura piece.

Speaker 3 (01:26:39):
Oh my god, that's incredible Jesus.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
At EVO twenty three, the cap kom booth had Shinkiro artwork,
had Bingis artwork that they made like for that event,
and they had artwork, and they had like a little
booth that you played a bunch of carnival games and
if you get enough tickets you can you know, get
a piece all day and no, so I got there.

(01:27:07):
I was first in line because I thought there, I
don't know why. I was like, they're gonna try to
sell this or something, right, of course they're not. You
got to do some things to get it. But like
everyone else who was there, we're just trying to get like,
you know, because they had like statues and stuff. I
don't know if everyone realized like we're like sitting in
front of a museum here. You know, so I I
gained the system. I was playing little ski ball and

(01:27:30):
stuff like all day and I realized, like, there's no
way I'm gonna be able to enjoy EVO and get
this without you know, like just wasting my entire weekend here.
And I actually met a subscriber in line and we
formed a deal. We formed the deal gave me, he
gave me, He gave me his tickets. I compensated him

(01:27:52):
very handsomely, and so thank you. I just shout out
alpaka being I'm gonna cherish this for like literally forever.
I Nisa is my second favorite.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
Artist, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
I love the way I feel like her Dungeons and
Dragons are is, oh my god, like my favorite. It
is probably like my second favorite.

Speaker 3 (01:28:09):
Those characters are iconic as ship looking. I couldn't belie
they're so good.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
What Max said about Bengus for Marvel, that's what I
think of when I think of D and D characters.

Speaker 1 (01:28:21):
It's it's beautiful. I mean, of course, her being a girl,
she has like a certain style with it. You know,
she draws everyone very pretty, you know, very beautiful, very
I guess like you know, handsome. So yeah, her style
is just so iconic and.

Speaker 3 (01:28:36):
If she's also an NBC one artist too. She did
the circle of all the characters looking down. That's her.

Speaker 2 (01:28:41):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's a that's a classic one,
of course, going back to Eddie on of course, Uh,
you know the most iconic Marvel artwork, I've re naked
on a table getting tortured by a bunch of scullomania.

Speaker 3 (01:28:56):
Yeah, the weird shit or the one where I think
it's all so it might be keno or reused like
in a locker room but with another a bunch of
dudes that are like, oh, like this big guy's like
buffed and flexing. They like, I think there's some weird
ones in there.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
It's it's always great when they have those, Like you know,
no one's ever going to see the light of day
of this when they were made, but like, hey, someone
will collected in art book one day. I do Before
we wrap up, I do want to give shout outs
to to two others, specifically to Takuchi Kawano, who is
best known for doing a lot of work for Namco

(01:29:33):
on Soul Caliber and Oh Yeah tech In specifically They
are another artist that I feel it's like they only
get better because I like loved Soul Caliber six artwork,
so they're like going back to like Soul Caliber one,
yeah or two.

Speaker 3 (01:29:53):
So Caliber six was supposed to go back to spiritual
Soul Caliber one. So Meetsugi and like Knight and say
freedom stuff. They look close to one.

Speaker 1 (01:30:01):
And they they also did the Namco x capcom. Yes, yes,
I that's some of like my favorite art. I think.

Speaker 2 (01:30:09):
Did I link to the picture because they're chun Lee
from that shot? Yeah, their chun Lee looks so fucking awesome,
Like it's another person that's like, oh God, I get
to draw on Lee.

Speaker 3 (01:30:21):
I still have the the Tech and four art book
that came with the pre order of the game when
it came out, and it's just full of their art.
Like it's amazing because they did illustrations for every single character.
It's like, oh my god, this is so sick dude.

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
And they they they are another artist that's blessed with
like being able to do really sketchy, casual, like unfinished
looking things of teching characters just lounging around and like
a chair, but then can do the really polished, perfect
like yeah exactly, like and and up till like five
and six and everything, and like they're they're they're almost

(01:30:55):
like kind of underrated. Even though they basically handled most
of Namco's modern fighting games like this, their stuff just
looks kind of again timingless.

Speaker 1 (01:31:05):
Yeah, just because whenever a teching game comes out, of course,
they're like key R promotional arts like the three D renders.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
Yeah, so so it gets kind of a little bit
lost there. And also this this is kind of an aside,
but Casa Tarata has done lots of artwork for you know,
tons of things, animes and things. Their art is so
detailed and you can feel emotion in it. It's like
that doesn't really work with Virtual Fighter or Virtual Fighter

(01:31:35):
just you know virtual fighters.

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
I love this ship Virtual Fighter remixed Japan Japan art.

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):
Yeah, exactly exactly. But it's like when you pick pick
a character Virtual Fighter one like art game and there
their polygon model just does its goofy smile. But if
you got remix, they would at least change the textures
to be a bit more updated, but you'd see their artwork,
Tarata's artwork for them. But they had these like huge
hugually emotional like Wolf is the most rendered virginal wolf ever.

(01:32:04):
He's got like dark bags under his eyes and Jeffrey's
super fist, and it's like this feels like for a
game that has tons of story and character development, h
and it just it just doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:32:16):
That style is so like like late eighties early nineties
manga as well. It's so like indicative of what things
look like, like almost like dragonballish at many times, you know,
or like.

Speaker 2 (01:32:28):
Lay mentioned before, like a fist of the north Star
or like that type of thing, which is such a
funny but amazing contrast against Virtual Fighter that you know,
as as two and especially three came off like fuck artwork,
just show the renders of the characters.

Speaker 3 (01:32:45):
Because great, so that's all we ever saw.

Speaker 1 (01:32:48):
Yeah, sell CDs of just pictures of the characters exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:32:52):
Exactly so, and because you know, that was that this
is what the game looks like. We don't you know,
have to do anything else, Like we're selling it just
based on that alone versus Pixelar, which is you know,
small and you want to blow that up. But for
Virtual Fighter, and I'm just always happy that tech and
like kind of almost want the opposite route where it's like, no,
let's just have let's just pay this artist, uh uh,

(01:33:15):
you know, to show all these characters doing just doing
a cool illustrated pose.

Speaker 3 (01:33:20):
And now, now the nice part about it is that
all these artists, because most of the game's characters now
are renders or just here's the in game model. Because
it's they're so expensive, these artists so come back to
do different things. Like street Fighter six, as example, it's
just littered with artwork in the backgrounds, in the s
and the arcade modes and all that stuff, unlockable pieces
of art just throughout the whole game from Shinkiro. Rock

(01:33:42):
Howard's in Street Fighter six drawn by Shinkiro. It's like,
this is so cool, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:33:47):
And it's kind of an in contrast, like because in
Street Fighter four, it's like, now here's in game cut
scenes of the models talking.

Speaker 3 (01:33:55):
And here's an animated clips.

Speaker 2 (01:33:57):
Here's that we hired some company to make.

Speaker 3 (01:34:01):
For c.

Speaker 2 (01:34:03):
H for c Celsius. I forget the animation company that
they did hire that stuff, But that was when it
was like, oh, I guess we're just doing that from
now on.

Speaker 3 (01:34:11):
Yeah, it didn't feel great.

Speaker 2 (01:34:12):
It's a little rough, but didn't feel great. But yeah,
I guess that's everything I have on the on on
the listener, but there's still like maybe a couple more
S and K. Yeah we didn't mean, for example, falcon falcons.

Speaker 3 (01:34:27):
Oh yeah the Falcon.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
No, no, so Falcon for me, Like that's someone I
really didn't appreciate at all, and I kind of like
blamed him, like you made everyone ugly, you know, like
later on a big nose with like maximum impact. He
designed all those new characters and like yeah, but like
then I like I look back and I kind of
like admire him in a way because I mean he

(01:34:51):
got hired on as like a fan. He just drew
a bunch of doje and stuff, and S and K
hired him on, so like his like path of like
being a fan drawing fan art. I control everything. Now
I'm gonna make Eori look weird as hell. It's like
something I kind of like respect. And also he did
all the artwork for the card Fighters class games, which
I think is like he drew all of that really yeah,

(01:35:12):
really that's him. That was like his first like big
thing at S and K was like he he did
all of that art before like obviously turned into pixel
art and stuff. So I mean, yeah, he drew some
of the most like iconic what would become pixelart ever
to me, So gotta respect that. And I also want
to throw in Heataki, who now he does stuff with

(01:35:33):
Capcom and stuff, but he was like to me, what
made I mean, Shinkiro was cool, but he made kof cool.
He did like two thousand and two, you know, the
iconic like Kdash poster, he did the Bodiki one art.
So to me, he's like responsible of like making like

(01:35:53):
S and k Edgy.

Speaker 3 (01:35:55):
Oh yeah, ninety, I see exactly what you're talking about,
like the Kdash era all this stuff. Yeah, dude, So.

Speaker 1 (01:36:01):
Yeah, to me, like I when I think of kof R,
I think of his art before Shankiro because I think
of like when I think of S and k R,
I think it's Shakiro, if that makes sense. But when
I think it's kof I think of like K Dash
Hierocki art.

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):
So yeah, there's like Nona as well that you know,
uh if if you played SBC chos recently or even
a you know, a game like that or or even
uh hew tamn t Cross Justice League, you can see
their art yeah as well. So that's super cool. I
definitely think this is the topic we can we can
probably revisit down the line, UH, because there's even like

(01:36:38):
you know, like a series that Shinkiro didn't even touch
at S and K, like World Heroes or something like that,
or like you know, get get down the line until later,
Mortal Kombats and things. How even a lot of the
UH artwork in k I twenty thirteen. I really wish
they had continue that fan book, that fan book that
they had for the the Collector's Edition or whatever. They

(01:37:01):
they only did that for season one, so there was
never any art book released for season two or three,
And I'd love to have seen that stuff too, because
that's like, you know, it's an other beasts all together.
But who do we want to say for each of us?
I like, like, still Bengus for for you both.

Speaker 3 (01:37:18):
Number one. I think, upon revisiting my thoughts in this conversation,
I think I think it's Bengus for me personally, with
like a close second place to actually eat an I
think I think the times DNS has approached street fighter
characters are usually some of my favorites, but you know,
Bengus is mister Marvel versus capcom He created one of
the one of the best visual styles to the X

(01:37:39):
Men that you have ever seen, you know, m hmm,
I think yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37:43):
Anion just like cemented the canon of what street Fighter
characters look in the modern era, like forever, like you know,
fifty years from now, we're still probably going to be
drawing you know, re you and stuff like the way.

Speaker 3 (01:37:58):
So but.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
Nineties Vengus is of course always gonna be my favorite.
But then nish Mura is too. Good night behind that
combo just unbeatable.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
So for me, yeah, Nishimura, Eddie on Bengus. Then Kevin
Bayless for the orchid Ben Yeah cleaning mccarbon.

Speaker 3 (01:38:19):
Kevin Kevin Bayless for the raw Janet Jackson Orchid cleaning
a like a Ferrari.

Speaker 2 (01:38:26):
Uh mister gole Wind quote, Laton, where can the people
at home find you on the internets?

Speaker 1 (01:38:31):
Gile Wind quote? On YouTube? I will have a new
video soon covering what I think are.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
The bloody Roar bloody Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38:41):
Yeah, I'm covering what I think are the worst street Fighters.
So this is gonna be a bizarro. There's gonna be
a Guyle loose quote video. That's why people on Twitter
are calling it.

Speaker 3 (01:38:50):
Oh. I was about to say, we have to we
have to manipulate gyle wind quote to do something with
Street Fighter EX so we can get an EX collection.
And I'm wondering if this is gonna be it

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):
Stands, stops, stand s,

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Fighting Game Artwork! ft. GuileWinQuote! | Triple K.O. #84

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