Mongo Nation

Awesome, seizure inducing fighting action that’s EVEN MORE Japanese than you’re already used to!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Of all the games I’ve ever thought I’d see for sale exclusively on the Nintendo Wii, a hardcore Capcom fighting game, imported from Japan, featuring a roster of characters most people here have never heard of was not chief among them.

It was with great interest, then, that I followed the story of Capcom Vs Tatsunoko: Ultimate All Stars, a game that may turn out to be exactly what the Wii needs for a number of reasons. The Wii is a hard system to develop for because you have two totally different audiences, the casual and the hardcore. Capcom Vs Tatsunoko appeals equally to both, thanks to a remarkably flexible control scheme. Veterans and purists will want to opt for a traditional joystick, or maybe even a classic Gamecube controller. Newcomers, on the other had, can use the wand and nunchuck for an experience that is less “Street Fighter” and more “Super Smash Bros.”.

When playing with the standard Wii controller, all of you basic attacks are mapped to the A button button. Likewise, all of your special attacks are mapped the Z button. All you have to do is move the control stick in the direction of the move you want to perform and pull the trigger, i.e. up for a vertical attack, back for a feint attack and so on and so forth. The question that this raises is, can you really play a fighting game with dumbed-down controls like this? Apparently, yes, you can, and yes, it’s also super fun.

I myself am a longtime fan of the Capcom fighter, and while I initially balked at the simplified controls, I soon found that it opened up a whole new level of fast and frustration-free gameplay. No longer reliant on quarter circle turns, that occasionally don’t register, I was free to focus on my combos, as were my less-experienced opponents. Essentially, the barrier for entry has been lowered for n00bs, wile still allowing hardcore players to flex their skills the old-fashioned way. And the more I think about it, the more I feel like I’ve done all the shoryken motions that I ever need to, and am totally fine with being able to pull off special moves without getting blisters on my thumbs. I’m over it.

Moving on from the controls, the most important aspect of a “Capcom Vs” is always the character selection. In case you’re wondering what a “Tatsunoko” is, it’s a Japanese animation company responsible for such beloved classics as Speed Racer, Robotech, Samurai Pizza Cats and Neon Genesis Evangelion… None of which are represented in the game due to licensing rights, I’m assuming. Instead, we get a bunch of unknown characters from the 70s wearing skintight jumpsuits. Thankfully, what the Tatsunoko side lacks in distinguishing features, they more than make up for in wildly disparate fighting styles. Yatterman-1, for instance, looks like Vince Noir from “The Mighty Boosh” and bounces all over the screen kicking the shit out of you with a ball-in-a-cup. Meanwhile, Casshern plays defensive while his dog, “Friender”, eats your face.

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I sure hope you like robots…

So Capcom unveiled the US cover art for Tatsunoko Vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars today. And I’m looking at it, and I’m thinking, “Wow, there are an awful lot of nearly identical robots, and dudes dressed like robots, nearly all of whom are white with red accents. Is this what 40 years of Japanese animation history looks like?” I would have at least tried not to showcase the sameness of the characters as much as this cover does. It’s a bit underwhelming.

My thumbs already have blisters

By Jeremy Azeved

For years, the only way to play Marvel Vs Capcom 2 has been in the arcade, on the Dreamcast (if anyone still has one of those) or as a crappy port on the original Xbox or PS2. As I’m sure you’re all well aware, those days are over now with the release of a nearly arcade-perfect version of MVC2 on Xbox Live.

The only thing that’s really been changed is that a visual filter has been applied to make the game look slightly better without drastically changing the art style. Don’t let the awful theme music (which is quite possibly the worst of all time) fool you. This is a game that everyone with even a passing interest in fighting games needs to own.

I’m sure that there are people that could pick out minor discrepancies that I am missing, but so far as I can tell, this is the game that I kicked the shit out of my friends on a regular basis at all through college. For the uninitiated, Marvel Vs Capcom 2 is a hyper fast, slightly dumbed-down version of the classic Street Fighter franchise. MVC2 replaces some of the overly technical aspects of its parent title with an ass-ton of fun characters, button mash-ier gameplay and screen filling super-combos that will put epileptics into a coma faster than an army of Pokemons. This is not to say that the game lacks depth, but rather that the barrier of entry is a little lower than, say, Street Fighter 3 Third Strike (which requires a PHD in Street Fighting to play worth a damn). Almost anyone with limited fighting game experience can, at the very least, put up a decent fight right off the bat.

I was initially a little surprised to find how rusty I was. I used to know every special move for each of the 56 characters (sad, I know), but here I found myself in total darkness with most of the cast. I tried playing through the single player campaign with one of my favorite teams (Cable, War Machine and Ryu) to get back into the swing of things. Once I was more or less blowing through the computer opponents without too much trouble, I hit the (virtual) arcade in search of human challengers.

The lobby for matchmaking is kind of weird. I must have played thirty matches and I still couldn’t tell you how I came into any of them. There’s no on-screen indication that you are queued up or about to fight someone, or even what their skill level is really. (At least not that I could figure out.) I actually don’t play online very much so I’m no expert, but I did certainly find myself in some pretty even matches. Early on, I was getting mopped up like a sucker. One guy kicked the crap out of me with Amingo, the lamest character in the game. Totally humiliating. Read the rest of this entry →

We drink the “White Lotus” with Chun-Li in Chinatown!

Last week we attended the release party for the Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li DVD at the Mountain Bar in Chinatown, LA. In a bid to attract fans from all over the city, the “Shadowloo Bar” (as they were calling it that night) was inviting anyone and everyone to come in, have a few drinks, and watch a handful of super-human Street Fighter dorks compete for a giant pile of cash under the watchful eye of ½ dozen sexy Chun-Lis (who were themselves under the watchful eye of 100 or so horny fanboys). Plus: tacos!

Here’s a few pics from the event:

Two of the very foxy Chun-Li clones present at the event

A couple of the athletes engaged in mortal combat Street Fighter IV!

This dude’s sausage fingers were ON FIRE!

This was the last thing I saw after telling them that one joke about the Chun-Li, the water bed and the hungry buffalo
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The Top 10 Lamest Street Fighter Combatants of All Time

By Karate Champ Chimp

When you think of Street Fighter, the first thing that usually comes to mind is all of the great, classic characters like Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and Guile…

This is why it was wise of Capcom to bring the original cast back for Street Fighter IV, as opposed to Street Fighter III’s weird cast of random degenerates. If we wanted to play as a bunch of freaks and genericos, there’s “Guilty Gear” and “King of Fighters” for that, respectively.

Well, their wisdom has paid off, as they’ve already shipped over 2 million copies of SFIV worldwide in less than a month. But what about all those lame characters from previous games? What are they going to do while they wait around for another “Capcom Vs. SNK” or “Card Fighter Clash” game to drag them back out of obscurity? Who are we talking about here, exactly? In order to answer these questions, we looked deep into the rich history of Street Fighter and dug up the 10 absolute weirdest Street Fighters of all time:

Exhibit A: R Mika
1st Appearance: Street Fighter Alpha 3

R Mika looks like a combination of a rabbit, a French maid, Hulk Hogan and a stripper at Crazy Horse. So essentially playing as her is like playing as Brooke Hogan. It’s just too confusing… You just don’t know whether to be aroused or disgusted.

Where is she now: Currently lives/works in a truck stop restroom in Fresno.

Exhibit B: Oro
1st Appearance: Street Fighter III

Oro is a creepy old dude dressed in filthy rags that fights with one arm tied behind his back so as not to accidentally kill someone. This is on account of it being made out of knife-wielding laser snakes or something like that. Unfortunately, all of these things combine to make him kinda sucky and unappealing. Unless you really have a thing for elderly amputees, I guess. Hey, I’m not here to judge.

Where is he now: In a park somewhere, contemplating whether to eat his own turtle or his friend’s dog first. Read the rest of this entry →