Ideas and Thoughts: Side-Scrolling Fighters

18-Oct-97

Side-scrolling fighters... a genre virtually untouched on the N64, if you dismiss MKM: Sub-Zero, which is different. The N64 needs at least a few great games in all genres (as do all systems), and this genre is no exception...

First things first: Must be 4-player! Most for the NES/SNES were 2-player, but this is the N64! Second of all: More kinds of enemies. I'm not asking for every single one to be unique, but you all know you've wondered before why everyone in the enemy group conforms to 1 of 10 looks, though they did manage to get different dyes for their clothes, and sometimes hair. So if they can just make the occurences less frequent, that'd help... a good way they could do this would be to have various parts. I mean, maybe you'd still see a lot of generic bodies, but if each one had several varieties of heads or something...

Now I'm going to list various games of the genre, telling perhaps a bit of what should/shouldn't be kept from these games... maybe some semi-new ideas...

Final Fight 64. Obvious choice. What, there were 3 of these for SNES? 4 if you count Final Fight Guy (basically the original except with Guy replacing Cody, released only in Japan). Also, this series already has enough characters for it to have 4 people all using a different character, and then some.

Double Dragon 64. Older than Final Fight, smaller sprites... well, that's about it. :) Well, it did have at least one thing I can recall that wasn't in FF (no, not Final Fantasy, Fatal Fury, or Fighting Force): once you'd punch them a few times, you could launch 'em right off the ground... and sometimes off the side of a cliff. While the 2-button controls weren't the best, with A hitting/kicking to the right and B to the left, it did allow for you to somewhat easily take care of people in front and back of you at the same time...

Rivery City Ransom 64. I will tell you this straight out: River City Ransom is my favorite NES game ever!!! The game had everything! Side-scrolling fighting, super-deformed big-head small-body characters (yes, I prefer them in most cases), sushi, enemies shouting things such as "Momma!!!" and more! This game actually has a lot of adventure elements. While you don't gain levels, you can earn money, and with that buy foods, books (for learning new techniques), etc. to improve your moves/stats, it had some catchy music, a nice story (for a SSF, that is), etc. There was one really bad thing about the game, though: the password! You could get a password which would keep track of all your stats, techniques learned, etc. but it's... well, I played it earlier while babysitting my cousins, and have mine written down. It speaks for itself: oh, for those of you wanting to use this, it has the first 3 techniques you can get from a book, and the first capital A and B have the ' on them, but I can't quite fit them in the same letter space here, but anyways, here goes:

pRAvrB5zRTw

ptj4ldvWcft

rgjk0rkvlrz

While that didn't take too long for me to type on the computer, imagine getting this all with a controller! But this can now easily be avoided, with use of a controller pak. If they released the game on the N64 today, with that being the only change (and heck, even without it), I'd probably buy it, since I can never seem to find a non-buggy NES at my house, and I don't have the game... sorry if I've ranted on here, but suffice it to say: I wish more games were like this!

Street Fighter: SSF. Wow, lots of S's and F's in that title. Anyways, I'm thinking Capcom could do something sort of akin to MK Mythologies, in that they could take their fighting game characters and put them into a side-scrolling format. But what I'm thinking of is more like just taking them and putting them into Final Fight. It'd be nice to have all the niceties of SF combat against the minions...

Battle Ciruit 64. I don't know too much about this arcade game, but I do know it's 4-player. :) That's the first thing. Also, it allows for customization of people, which would go with controller paks. And it's fairly recent...

Golden Axe 64. Yeah, I know Sega makes the game, so it wouldn't come to N64, but something like it... it's different, as in it people always use weapons. That is, except when they get onto one of the creatures they can control! One of the best things is that it's in a medieval-type setting. It's a nice change from the "You're in a gang-filled city, and you have to beat 'em up!" storyline. Sort of analogous to Hexen in the first-person shooter genre, I guess... I used to play this one a lot when my uncle used to have his Genesis... and now play it sometimes with my bro and his Nomad... now that I think about it, this game also had a one-on-one fighting thing... not as great as SF or anything but... say, that would work well with my thoughts on SF:SSF, wouldn't it?

As I seem to be obsessed with River City Ransom, I decided you needed to at least see a few pics of what it's all about. I gathered these within just a few minutes, trying to get a bit of variety in the shots...

River City RansomRiver City RansomRiver City RansomRiver City RansomRiver City Ransom

I do have one more quick thought on this subject before I end... one thing that not many SSF games have had is computer controlled allies... I guess it's not that big of a deal, but if you get rid of all the little deals, you're not left with a lot, are you?