Skullomania should be in ALL the video games.
Re-releasing old successes for new money is Capcom’s favorite thing, so we suggest six characters we’d gladly pay for.
Capcom have outraged gamers by selling Street Fighter X Tekken for eighty dollars: sixty for the disc, and twenty more for another twelve characters on the same disc. We shouldn’t be suprised: Capcom invented cash-grabbing downloadable content (DLC) decades before it even existed. When Street Fighter II became the best-selling fighting game in the world, they spent the next few years selling minor options settings as entire games. “Super Hyper Turbo Champion” editions cost just as much as the original despite featuring smaller adjustments than the average patch. They’ve taken more money with slight variations on the exact same thing than Ocean’s Eleven.
This is where Capcom made huge scientific advancements in asshatology: even though we know the characters are already on the disc, and that we’re going to do what they want us to anyway, they’re making us wait to even be allowed to do what we’re told. That’s the exact same technique they use in dog-training schools. Players aren’t even allowed to give Capcom money until the PlayStation Vita is launched in this fall, then wait another while after that, just so the Vita can have the characters first. Console games being made to wait for a Sony handheld is like Concorde being delayed in case dodos want to land.
The worst part? The kidnapped characters aren’t amazing new fighters, because Capcom stopped making those four years ago. You’re being made to wait for characters you already played at least twice, and a Tekken without Bryan Fury is how you call an arcade machine a wuss in Japanese.
That’s why we’re prepared to make a compromise. We’ll pay for extra DLC if Capcom makes some that’s actually downloadable, instead of hacking out as much of the game we’ve already bought as they think we’ll suffer. We’ll even choose characters they’ve already made, to help them stay in their comfort zone. Behold, six Street Fighters who should be made for Street Fighter X Tekken!
This...this is what video games should be
Skullomania (Street Fighter EX)
Skullomania was an underperforming salesman forced to wear the outfit for a sales conference, and immediately became a vigilante crime fighter. Nothing else! No tragedy, radiation, or advanced training, just a regular guy dressing up as Skullomania, deciding “THIS KICKS ASS” and proceeding to be extremely and literally right.
His origin was changed to being a mysterious defector from an unknown army, a story so generically uninteresting it’s practically invisible.
This, kicking ass.
What the sequel got right is the Skullo Dream: the ultimate combo. It opens with a “child running while pretending to be Superman” punch and only gets funner from there: a swimwear pose, sharing tea together, crotch-stomp, obscured grappling, swinging them around by the legs and then a flying kick before the heavens rain down on them. Never mind special moves, that’s my dating strategy. And it’s still less physically impossible than the other character’s special moves.
This character was absolutely insane and should probably be in everything, never mind Street Fighter. And since most people take Street Fighter EX about as seriously as Street Fighter On Ice, in a real game he’d technically counts as a new character!
Did someone call for a 19th Century railroad engineer?
Eagle (Street Fighter, Street Fighter Alpha [portable versions])
Eagle first appeared in Street Fighter. No prefixes, suffixes, numbers, editions, adjectives or anything. It was quite a long time ago. He also appeared in Capcom vs SNK 2, but so did everyone, and returned in Street Fighter Alpha 3 so hard he punctured the Capcom continuum. His ending for the game altered history by single-handedly ending Shadoloo, destroying Bison’s Psycho Drive, rescuing Charlie and chilling Guile and Chun-Li the hell out. This guy kicks ass so hard Capcom had to erase him from reality, because when he exists the universe no langer has bad guys or a reason to fight.
World peace through violent assault.
He’s also the exemplar of dapper. He dresses up in silk shirts and bow ties when the other plebians are turning up in pajamas and swimwear, and is even smoother than Dudley because fighters obviously based on Freddie Mercury automatically win any draws. He’s also a master of singlestick, the classiest way to beat people around the head with blunt instruments. (The only other singlesticker you’ll have heard of is Sherlock Holmes.) And yes, he does use two singlesticks. He kicks 200% of normal amounts of ass. In game canon he’s been hired by MI6. Understand: a world of ultra-powered lunatics have been beating each other to a pulp for twenty years, but the agency who hires James Bond looked at Eagle and said “That one.”
Like most female video game characters, she muddles the lines between clown, ballerina, and sex worker
Rainbow Mika (Street Fighter Alpha 3)
The only female grappler in the series should have returned in IV, which had more impressive throwing mechanics than a WWE Trebuchet match. But she’s even more desperately needed in Street Fighter X Tekken. Her “I wanna be a wrestler!” is the perfect antidote for Tekken’s ridiculous belief that it actually has a plot. Mika singlehandedly cancels The Incarnation Of Hot Topic Emo, Jin Kazama. Her “turnbuckle out of nowhere” move alone makes up for his black feathered wings.
This is what was happening in John Lennon's head for about seven years.
Jin usually sounds like he’s writing a blog about pretending to cut himself, not dominating the world. No-one has misunderstood badass so badly since someone rented Big Bad Asses Being Pounded, thinking it was an action movie.
As a fast-moving technical grappler Mika is a fun variation on Street Fighter throwers. Far better than the previous attempt, T. Hawk, whose design meeting must have been “How about we clone the slow powerful guy, but make him capable of rising dragon punch-headbutts and flight? And give him a machine gun?” Unfortunately the playtester only had one veto.
Somewhere, a 15-year-old Twilight fan is mooning over this dark angel
She even fits in after Abel, whose dashing variable-height special moves complement Mika’s “Move fast and capitalize” technique,and Zangief’s “You failed to kill me before I got this close, YOU DIE NOW.”
You look at him, and know there's no way he doesn't fight like a bitch
Remy (Street Fighter III: Third Strike)
Remy embodies the attitude difference between Street Fighter and Tekken. His near-terminal case of Being Emo forced Capcom to keep him off the active roster, but compared to Tekken’s “dark rage from daddy issues” he’s a My Little Pony.
(The brightly colored hair and legs help.)
He’s fun to play as an alternate charge-based character, and fun to fight because his complaining face was specifically designed for punching. His motivation is hatred for a his father who abandoned his family to fight and a complete lack of understanding of irony. In his victory credits he actually overcomes his daddy issues and moves on with his life, making him infinity times better than the Mishima family. He’s also the highest ranked male character on Capcom’s popularity poll who hasn’t already returned.
Besides, we need another zoning character to show those Tekken ponces what happens when you try to punch people who can fire energy blasts.
Sometimes we think Japan just picks names at random
Area (Street Figher EX)
Anyone who steams into a Street Fight on jut-powered roller skates with a rocket-launcher on her arm isn’t cheating, she’s awesome. A brilliant opposite to C. Viper’s sneaky enhancement suit, Area glories in blatant mechanical amplification. Though there’s a small risk that a Street Fighter based on skintight lycra, steampunk level armor, glasses and pigtails might cause cosplayers to actually explode with excitement. A blonde with an arm-cannon is also as close as we can get to Samus Aran in Street Fighter until Capcom get off their asses and make their Smash Brothers.
Even other Street Fighters realised that she had the coolest gear, with Cammy donning the rocket-skates and arm cannons for the little-known Cannon Spike, aka “Smash TV meets Capcom characters”, aka “the greatest goddamn shooting game which hasn’t been re-released on anything except the Dreamcast because Capcom hates money that hasn’t been tainted by their customers’ frustration.”
Somebody replaced Sid's heroin with synthol!
Birdie (Street Figher, Street Fighter Alpha)
He’s been around since the beginning and was voted joint last with eight other characters in Capcom’s own poll of character popularity. Then they put him at the bottom of the list even though he was alphabetically near the top, making him 85 in a field of 85. He has been roundly mocked by every Street Fighter character article ever written. So they should put him in just to be hilarious, show the players who’s boss (even more than the DLC already does), and because he’d still be a better character than Akuma.
Luke McKinney knows booze & video games, and therefore why you’d have to be drunk to think Kickstarter will change mainstream gaming. Follow him on Tumblr.
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