“Super Street Fighter Carnival 2017” marches on! SSFC2017 is the currently-ongoing Japanese tournament series at Mikado Arcade for a wide variety of classic (and sometimes, obscure) arcade titles. If you missed the first few tournaments from SSFC2017, there’s a lot to catch up on!
Mikado’s most recent SSFC2017 challenge is one of my favorite gems: the surprisingly competitive (and fantastically busted) Kinnikuman Muscle Grand Prix 2.
Based off the wrestling-themed Manga series Kinnikuman, this AKI Corporation (now known as Syn Sophia) fighter was published by Namco and played quite differently from anything else on the market at the time. It’s a guard-button based 3D fighter with no crouching state, instead opting for high/mid/low crush states similar to Pokkén Tournament.
It also has a Rock/Paper/Scissor system between Attacks/Throws/Parries, but Parries work quite differently from you might expect: instead of guaranteeing a free hit, they simply halt your opponent’s string. That’s more important then you might think: positioning is huge in this game, because if your opponent forces you to block an attack that pushes you into the ropes, they get a guaranteed corner combo. This is important, because there’s a lot of absurd high damage and potential infinites in the game, even for seemingly low tier characters.
The most important thing to pick up while watching KMGP2 is meter-use — nearly every throw and special move in the game costs meter, and there’s three different types of meter in the game. Depending upon what meter the player chooses, they get access to a once-per-round burst that grants different effects for a limited amount of time: Custom Combos, Super Armor, or Infinite Specials.
Enjoying SSFC2017? You can follow the action by subscribing to Mikado’s official YouTube channel, or you can even try to catch Mikado Arcade when they livestream!
Source: Mikado