Everyone has a fighting chance
With Halloween getting closer and closer, spookiness levels are at maximum. With its cast of eldritch horrors disguised as nuns, tortured orphans with fractured senses of reality, headless catwomen and more, Skullgirls is perfect to play in this season of ghouls and ghosts.
To match the seasons’ creepings, here’s a suitably spooky Skullgirls CMV for your viewing pleasure. This features a lot of unorthodox Fukua combos and conversions, as well as an unsettling song to jam to.
Source: ThanksVolvo
King of Fighters is enjoying the spotlight and center stage in the FGC right now. After a successful launch and an expansive roster, combined with the community really pushing to make it big, it’s no wonder that the game is experiencing growth and content galore.
Today we have another character guide from Ra3bones, this time covering the tiny martial arts master. He covers her normals and specials, what moves are special cancellable, as well as the appropriate uses of said specials and super moves.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, be sure to check out his other videos. He has been whittling down the cast one by one, and at this point has a pretty impressive library of tutorial videos.
Source: Ra3bones
One of the most important parts of a fighting game–or any video game really–is the voice acting, as a good voice can make or break a moment. Bad voice lines usually go down in infamy and are enjoyed ironically, but for those fighting games where players will hear the same voice lines over and over again while in Training Mode or online, we want our characters to sound good. There really is no comparison to having the perfect voice actor shout “Shoryuken” or “Get Over Here” just right. The sheer number of voice lines that need to be recorded, between attacks, getting hit, super move dialogue, victory quotes, loss voices, and various grunts we hear every match–never mind when games have fully voice acted story modes–mean that we should care about our voice actors a lot.
As you may or may not have heard, there has been some major movement going on in the voice acting community. SAG-AFTRA–a union representing voice actors, as well as many other professionals in the entertainment industry–has been trying to get the companies they work with to create a better environment for voice actors for nearly two years, since February of 2015. The main demands of working voice actors are for safer work conditions, with limits on vocally stressful sessions being requested as well as stunt safety coordinators to be required on set. These voice actors work on a lot more than just video games, but since fighting games specifically require voice actors to scream in agony for hours, especially for gory fighters like Mortal Kombat, you can imagine the strain on the voice after a long session. Other requests from the union include increased secondary pay upon a game reaching 2 million units sold, and every other 2 million up to a max of 8 million. To put this request in pay increase into perspective, Mortal Kombat X sold 5 million units as of October last year.
If this doesn’t quite seem like that big an issue, just click here what voice talent Steve Blum had to say on the matter. Steve Blum, one of the most recognizable voices in the business, also voices Sub-Zero, Reptile, and Bo’ Rai Cho in Mortal Kombat X. Voice actors having serious injuries after stressful vocal sessions, like the ones common in fighting games, is a serious issue that gets relatively little attention. Click here for further perspective into this by voice talent Wil Wheaton.
Negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and publishers have yet to reach clear compromise. The union received a 96.55% vote from their members to authorize them to enact a strike which, after one final negotiation last week, was put into effect with a strike that went into effect October 21st.
As far as fighting games are concerned, Warner Bros. is one of the companies that SAG-AFTRA is set against, which could have huge implications for the next titles that they are putting out. These titles include Injustice 2, as well as any Mortal Kombat content that may potentially be down the line. That includes new characters–and Ed Boon has been hinting at a third Kombat Pack in recent times. This strike could also have had a part in the decision of Aksys to remove English voice acting from BlazBlue Central Fiction. In addition to this, better conditions for voice actors in stressful vocal sessions could directly improve the quality of content we have in every fighting game, not just Mortal Kombat.
Sources: SAG-AFTRA; gameactorsforall; Ξ; Wil Wheaton
Skullgirls has been pretty active this year, both on the developer’s and the community side of things. The developers are hard at work refining the final patch for the game, as well as an upcoming physical release. As far as community efforts go, this year has had some of the biggest tournaments in the game’s history, and has enjoyed all around growth and activity. As part of their campaign to collectively attend a series of events, the community has been doing its part supporting events on the list. The next event on the list is Game Underground Tournament Spectacular 4, or GUTS4 for short. Below is a trailer for that event for you to enjoy.
Source: SkullgirlsTV
There are a handful of elements that can be loosely used to identify if a color palette is good or not. The first thing a good color palette should do, before anything else, is distinguish itself from the default palette choice. After that, distinguishing itself from other alternate colors is a huge plus (color 2 being different from color 1 doesn’t matter if it’s virtually the same as colors 4, 5, and 8). Another important factor for a color palette is the feeling of an actual alteration, not simply “x-character wearing a blue shirt instead of a red one.” This effect can be obtained quite easily, by altering things like skin pigmentation, eye color, makeup color, hair color, SFX colors, and overall tone of the outfit (dark scary colors instead of bright happy colors).
Those are the most important aspects, but there are subtler elements that make palettes good. We went over some of this in my last color palette article, breaking down why the layering of Balrog’s main and accent colors created excellent themes for his outfit in Street Fighter V. The main and accent colors play an important role in the feel of a palette, as do minor details and skin/hair tone. Proper use of these sections allow an outfit to highlight or hide specific aspects of an attire to create a unique visual feel. If you’ve ever picked a different character color and noticed something that you hadn’t seen before picking that color, you’ve experienced first-hand the importance of highlighting and building colors around key details, no matter how small.
When it comes to The King of Fighters XIV, I’m appalled at the fact that there are only four colors per fighter. Even in today’s age of DLC colors and costumes, such a bare start is unbelievable. Other than games that focus on costumes over palettes (NRS games, Soul Calibur, Tekken), very few popular games have had so few color options since 2002, and I can’t think of a single other game that has taken such a step back from a previous installment. KOF XIII had at least ten colors per character, though some had twenty, as well as the color editing mode which exponentially increased palette variance. That was the most recent installment, so clearly KOF XIV’s starting four colors per character (200 across the entire roster) leaves something to be desired. This didn’t immediately doom the game’s palette selection, though; if done correctly, four very good and distinct colors could be enough variance with such a large roster to choose from.
We would be here for hours if I talked about each character individually, so I’ll consider problems that are recurring in the general selection and pick out some of the worst offenders.
The first big problem that you notice is that there is very rarely any significant variance in hair or skin color. The only characters that have a serious alteration in skin tone are King of Dinosaurs and Antonov, and most hair color adjustments feel almost an afterthought to make it different. This is flat out ridiculous, especially in cases where the majority of a character’s palette is their skin and hair, like Gang-il, Alice, Angel, Mui Mui, and Joe Higashi. Using Joe as an example, skin makes up the vast majority his outfit. That being the case, it’s very odd that his skin is altered to a darker variant just once. His hair also uses the same dark tones that make clearly discerning it from other palettes difficult. Simply compare these colors to his KOF XIII colors, and you instantly feel the difference in quality.
The next issue that commonly appears in KOF XIV palettes is colors that feel bland and washed out. There are certain characters this is really prevalent with, making those characters seem like there’s no real change from color to color because each one is the same similar-toned amalgamation of vague colors. This is particularly bad for characters like Kukri , K’, Luong, and Ralf, but one of the best examples for this is Leona Heidern. Leona very clearly has a purple, a blue, and an orange color, but these colors are really muddied. There is a lot of gray/white/black on her pants that make the dark tone suffer, and the same is true of her hair. Again, the best way to visually see just how bland this is would be to just look at her palette choices from the previous installment. They weren’t particularly phenomenal, but they were very clear and decisive about what they were.
The last consistent problem that I can talk about being shared among large swaths of palette choices is the tendency to change only one or two colors in a palette, leaving the rest of both minor and major details unchanged. This comes off as lazy, to be frank. Some of the characters guilty of this are Chang, Goro Daimon, Kyo, and Geese Howard, but the worst perpetrator of this is Kula Diamond. Kula has two colors that change between all four models; her main jacket/pants color and her zipper (which is either gold or black). She isn’t lacking for elements that could be changed, as she has her hair, her skin, the gold and black on her gloves/boots, her arm band, and the two inside colors of her jacket/pants (the white and black). She also had the potential for her jacket and her pants to be different colors, as well as the potential of breaking up her jacket/pants into a main color and an accent color to help it be visually interesting. All of these flaws leave this palette selection with some of the least meaningful differences in the entire game, making her easily the best example of this game’s shortcomings in palette decisions.
Between the low count of palettes and these problems plaguing most of the cast, it’s hard to think highly of the game’s palettes. Now, despite the issues I described, all of the colors in KOF XIV aren’t terrible. There are some very good colors in this game, so instead of ending on a sour note I’ll end with a sample of the colors I believe this game handled well. These are strong because they’re aesthetically pleasing and make a serious effort to give a different feel from one another. My personal favorite selection is Robert and Love Heart.
That’s all the discussion I have for today. Look out for the next color article; I may revisit Street Fighter V, or I may find another game to cover. If you enjoyed this discussion please leave a comment, and feel free to check out a related article I did for our friends over at Kick-Punch-Block. That article focuses on Angel specifically, who suffers from some of the problems I mentioned in the above article. As has been done on KPB before, new palettes are created to help illustrate new avenues of color.
Sources: caddie.smeenet.org; KPB
Good color palettes are the cornerstones of meaningful visual differentiation between us, and other people who use the same character we do. As players, we usually rely on the company that publishes the game to ensure that the colors provided are good colors. Occasionally, those games will allow us to edit our own colors, like Street Fighter X Tekken or King of Fighters XIII did, but it happens so rarely.
In today’s PC age, players are more likely to be able to themselves edit the game’s files and create their own palettes. That’s what Under Night In-Birth player RisforRowanism set out to do, and ended up with an online palette editing tool. Using this tool, players can create custom palettes for themselves, download the file for the palette they made, and then upload that file into their own Steam copy of UNIEL.
Currently, there is a community contest going on using the above tool. The contest is seeing fans submit their palettes, with the 12 best palettes being compressed into a community mod and given out for free. These colors will access hidden palette slots in the game, meaning that these colors will be usable in addition to the game’s existing 20 for each character. Below is a small sample of some of the colors being created so far.
If you are interested in submitting palettes or voting on palettes, follow this link for the contest instructions.
Source: RisforRowanism
Looking for something with a little more class than the common fighters can offer? Look no further than this Skullgirls combo video. These three are some of the most dignified ladies in any fighting game, coming from royalty and positions of power. As such, they exude this nobility in-game in the way they beat down their opponents. Watch as they graciously lay the smack down on their enemies in these co-operative team combos.
NanoNEVERMIND is the creator of this video, and is hard at work constantly pumping out Skullgirls content. Check out their channel for a treasure trove of similar videos.
Source: NanoNEVERMiND
It’s been almost a week since keninblack earned a Critical Reaction sponsorship after his showing at CEOtaku, and he is very serious about improving and reaching new heights. With the help of fellow community member KPB|McPeanuts, a kumite was set up where he fought a series of FT5 sets against 10 other players. The event was held online, but Skullgirls–which uses GGPO–has some of the best netcode around to make such endeavors feasible, like when the community held a USA vs. JPN exhibition.
As for this kumite, 10 FT5 sets is quite the ordeal for anyone, and cR|keninblack ends up playing over 70 matches through this, testing his skill and adapting to new opponents. It’s definitely worth a watch if you’re interested in high level Skullgirls play!
Source: KPB|McPeanuts
Maxima is an interesting character in King of Fighters XIV, being the most aesthetically-overhauled returning character. He seemingly got the Guilty Gear Xrd Potemkin treatment, with vast technological additions. This visually imposing machine man is capable of heavy damage–as he should be–and we are given a taste of exactly how damaging he can be in the below video.
If you enjoyed this, check out Dark Chaotix other videos. As a member of the Orochinagi fansite for KOF, he’s got some excellent content on his channel.
Source: ON | Dark Chaotix
Ever since Japanese fans got their hands on a physical release of Skullgirls for PS4 and PS Vita, fans all over the world have been excited about getting their hands on one too. Lab Zero Games has been hinting at a limited physical edition of Skullgirls 2nd Encore for PS4 and PS Vita for a while and this physical run is coming soon, through collaboration with Limited Run Games, a company that specializes in such releases.
The edition will be coming with lobbies, a long awaited feature on consoles, as well as the final patch that has been under heavy testing in the PC Skullgirls Beta since August. Pre-orders are starting next Monday, October 31st. As an extra bonus, most likely due to the poll Lab Zero held recently, this was also announced;
As an added bonus, if we get at least 10,000 pre-orders we'll patch Japanese voices into the US and EU PS4, Vita and Steam releases!
— Skullgirls (@Skullgirls) October 24, 2016
This is huge for fans of the Japanese voice overs, which are amazing. Pre-orders will also be shipping to the EU with a flat $15 charge for shipping, with no other charges at customs.
Sources: Skullgirls; Limited Run Games