Tag Archives: street fighter

Impressions: Street Fighter X Mega Man

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So, Capcom wasn’t kidding when they planned to publish a fan’s Street Fighter X Mega Man project as a free download for Mega’s 25th anniversary (the original Mega Man was released in Japan on this date way back in 1987, and the first Street Fighter’s 25th happened a bit earlier this year). Considering how much crap the Blue Bomber’s had to go through over the past two years (promising projects getting cancelled, mediocre iOS games taking their place, and that whole silliness with Street Fighter X Tekken), fans like myself were starting to wonder if there’d be any good Mega Man-related news.

Just before going to work, I hit the Capcom-Unity website to try it out. At about 34 MB, it’s not a terribly large file, but it took me several minutes to download (possibly because of high server load). It’s just like most of the standard games from the “Classic” series, but instead of the usual eight Robot Masters at the end, Mega Man takes on eight of the more popular characters from across the Street Fighter universe – Ryu, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, Blanka, Rose, Rolento, Urien, and Crimson Viper. The levels are modeled closely to look like each fighter’s stage (Ryu’s level takes place inside a mountain and is filled with fire-shooting enemies; Rolento’s takes place on a construction site and has lots of mechanical enemies, including the familiar helmet-wearing Metools, etc.), and the tunes are a mix of that fighter’s theme and one of the Robot Masters.

At the end of each stage, you face off against the fighter you selected as if it were a standard boss battle. Each fighter retains his/her own set of moves from their games, along with a super attack that triggers once their Revenge Gauge (shown right next to their life meter) is filled. Winning each fight, of course, nets you a move out of their arsenal, from the obvious (Ryu’s Hadoken, Chun-Li’s Lightning Kick, etc.) to the not-so-obvious (Blanka’s watermelon-based Tropical Hazard, which is used a lot like the Mega Ball from Mega Man 8). Evidently, each character is weak against a certain fighter’s attack, but I’ve yet to figure out which one is which, as I’ve only beaten four stages so far.

There is one big caveat, though: your progress through the game isn’t saved, so you’ll have to be good enough to finish the game in a single sitting (though you do still get unlimited continues). It’s something of a letdown, since every game from the second one onward at least had a way to let you pick up where you left off after a bit of a break. If you’re not dissuaded by that, then the decent challenge level and the great renditions of the Street Fighter stages and music should be enough to keep you coming back. Go ahead and download it…Mega Man needs all the support he can get these days.

When they said TooManyGames, they weren’t kidding!

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Today, my brother and I visited the TooManyGames convention at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Paks, PA. This was only my first con, but having read about events like the San Diego Comic-Con and the Penny Arcade Expo, I had a bit of an idea what to expect when I got there.

What I expected was what I got: games, and lots of them. Nearly every table had boxes full of video games from nearly every game console imaginable – NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Game Boy, Game Gear, PS1, PS2, Xbox, Gamecube – you name it, someone somewhere had a game for that system…and in some cases, even the consoles themselves (including those hybrid game consoles like the FC Twin). It was hard for me to choose a game to buy, but I think I got a pretty damn good deal when I bought Tobal No. 1 (an early PS1 fighting game) for $10…when copies on eBay are being sold for up to $100. I would have taken a few more NES games, but I’ll need to get my NES out of the garage and pray that it still works before I can even think about doing that.

A few tables, rather than selling games, were being watched over by a few independent game developers from the area. The two games I saw in action that intrigued me the most were Snake361 (an in-development sequel to yyrGames’ Xbox Indie Game Snake360) and Splice (a new and weird puzzle game from Cipher Prime Studios, makers of Fractal and Auditorium).

Tucked away in the far corner of the convention center floor was a cluster of arcade games – some of which I recognized by having played them on other consoles. In short, I still suck at R-Type, but am surprisingly good at Gorf and Solar Fox, and wished that those two games had made it onto one of the Midway Arcade Classics collections. I could see why Gorf didn’t make it, though – there are two stages modeled directly after Space Invaders and Galaxian (the Galaxian stage isn’t on the Atari 2600 port), which are owned by Taito and Namco, respectively, so there would have been a bit of legal wrangling necessary to make it work.

Aside from the actual video games being sold and displayed, some booths had game-themed T-shirts, posters, buttons, and other assorted artwork. I got a half-dozen Player Pins from The World Ends with You (one of which I gave to my sister), and some Mega Man bead art, which I’ll use to decorate my room once I get a hanger or two.

My brother and I hung around for about three hours, listening to music and enjoying the sights and sounds, though there weren’t as many cosplayers in attendance as I had expected – one guy in a full Sub-Zero outfit, and another pair dressed up as Jedi holding a mock lightsaber duel were the only standouts. I hear that brentalfloss and the X-Hunters put on some good shows, but it was so dark in the band room that I really couldn’t see either of them. I just bobbed my head to some of the tunes while I took a beating playing Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (just barely avoiding a thorough humiliation by pulling out a surprise win as Juri in the second round of my match).

Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to attend any of the panels – my old high school buddy Will at 8bitX held a panel on podcasting, and we left a little while before James Rolfe (a.k.a. The Angry Video Game Nerd) and Mike Matei of Cinemassacre were going to have a panel on their favorite moments from eight years of AVGN episodes. I would love to have been in the room to hear some of his fans try to prod him into dropping some F-bombs.

Of course, I had a helluva good time again, despite only hanging around for the middle parts of the show. I’d have no trouble coming back here again next year. My brother was pretty satisfied, too, even though he didn’t come away with anything tangible.

It’s a good thing I brought my 3DS along for the ride – I think I got over two dozen StreetPass tags! Problem is, only the first ten of those are registered in my Mii StreetPass Park…but at least I still get assorted bonuses for my Mario Kart 7, Kid Icarus: Uprising and Dead or Alive: Dimensions games. Tomorrow, I’ll have to play those as much as possible. Then, and only then, will my trip to Oaks have been truly complete.

I posted some of the photos I took on Facebook. Go ahead and take a look!

Because your wishlist can never be too long

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Lovely (and I mean this in the least sarcastic way possible)…now I get to add The Last Story to my ever-growing list of games that I want to play (preferably before the end of this summer). That list now includes:

  • Atelier Meruru
  • Atelier Totori
  • Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising (already preordered it)
  • The King of Fighters XIII
  • Mario Kart 7
  • Street Fighter X Tekken (recent Capcom dickery aside, their crossover games usually produce good results)
  • Super Mario 3D Land
  • Xenoblade Chronicales (damn right I preordered it)

Rhythm Heaven Fever was on this list, but I went out and bought it today since my sister already owns the original (and because I wanted to add something new to the ol’ library after I finished Sonic Colors on Monday night).

See you when the summer’s through?

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If I had to pick my two favorite games from this year’s Summer of Arcade and PlayStation Play campaigns, I’d pick Bastion on Xbox Live Arcade, and Renegade Ops on PlayStation Network, with Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (XBLA) and Street Fighter III: Online Edition (PSN) coming in closely behind. Shame on me for not actually dedicating enough time to playing all of them all the way through – I’ve only beaten one-and-a-half of them (full point for Bastion, and only half-a-point for SF3OE because I’ve only beaten it with one characters).

I think this year I played way more downloadable games on my consoles than I did with disc-based games, mainly because I rent from GameFly now instead of buying most of my games at Best Buy or GameStop. Catherine is probably the only other “summer game” I can say I really enjoyed. I’d also count Child of Eden, but that was released maybe a week or two before the start of summer.

I kinda wish that there were more WiiWare games to talk about so that I could have something to say about all three downloadable services, but it looks like MotoHeroz may be the best one to come out of that camp this summer (if you’re curious, it’s made by RedLynx, the same developer who made Trials HD on PC and Xbox 360). Unusually for a WiiWare game, it costs 1500 Wii Points (or, to put it in simple dollars-and-cents terms, $15), so I’ve been cautious about buying it until I’ve heard enough about it to justify the price. Maybe I should pick it up before summer officially ends tomorrow.