Where The Hell Is A New Darkstalkers Game?

The 90s was some sort of a golden era for games. You had a SNES in almost every household. Mario was the king of games and Sonic was ever so quick on his heels to overthrow him. But most importantly quarters fell like rain in arcade shops. If it was one genre that thrived in the 90s, it was fighting games. It all started with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat took it to higher places and knocked the genre off a pit. If you could claim a king of fighting game hits it would be no other than Capcom. Street Fighter, Final Fight, X-Men vs. Street Fighter which was introduction to the Marvel vs Capcom series. All amazing hit games, but there was never a more interesting game than Darkstalkers.

     If you don't know what Darkstalkers was it was Street Fighter meets Halloween where you had fighters based off of iconic monsters. You had Vampires, Succubi, and a Frankenstein monster that attacks you with his butt. It was great, great enough to not only get video game sequels but an anime series and one cartoon that was not so great. But just like everything good in the 90s and Santa after mom and dad lost their job, we stopped getting games. Now this doesn't mean that we stop seeing Darkstalker characters altogether, the series had enough of a fanbase that Capcom featured a couple of Darkstalker characters here in there in other fighting games, most noticeably the Marvel vs. Capcom series. But why did they stop making Darkstalker games and most importantly what will get them to resurrect the series again?
     Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono has said at Comic Con 2010 that it would be his dream to revive the series and that is exactly what he has tried. At the following Comic-con even he told fans that the series is not dead and took pictures of people at the panel that wanted the series back in order to spark Capcom's interest. A couple of years later Capcom announced Darkstalkers: Resurrection which was met with positive reviews, but was a commercial flop. Nothing new about the series came after that.
     Capcom has announced that they are considering blowing the dust off of some of their more dormant titles. Darkstalkers should at least be in the considering. It was obvious that Resurrection was Capcom testing the waters to see if they can revive the series and again, despite it not selling well that shouldn't have been the main reason to not make more games. There could've been a lot of factors behind Resurrection not doing as well as it did most importantly how Capcom treated and promoted the game and people not wanting to by a full fledged fighting game than a compilation best of. Things have changed since then. With the recent re-interest in fighting games, reviving the Darkstalkers series would be the best plan for them to make. Also considering the recent success with Ultra Street Fighter II it would be a big why not for Capcom. It is time to act now while the iron is hot but not with another best of, but they should gamble more with an actual new game. It is something their still prominent fanbase would want. Plus it seems it will be better than Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite is looking right now.

Games We Probably Want to See in 2017

2017 is here and there are promises to be made. No, not that promise to lose weight and quit smoking? Promise game developers, and companies promised to give us great game this year! These are so games that we either would like to play or at least hear more of this year.

Yooka-Laylee

We we're suppose to get this game last year which was a bummer. If you didn't know about it or haven't heard about the game, Yooka-Laylee, made by Playtonic, is suppose to be a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie series that was on the N64. It is a 3D platformer that is pretty much its predecessor was and that make me really excited to finally get my hands on it. The reason it was delayed, again, was that they wanted it to be on the upcoming Nintendo Switch. Hopefully we will play this sometime this year, hopefully.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Another game we were supposed to get in 2016, Breath of the Wild is not your typical Zelda game. It is huge on the idea of scavenging and exploring the incredibly vast land of Hyrule to make food, and weapons that will help you on your quest to save it from Ganon. It is a huge call back to the original Zelda where things are not linear and it's all about you discovering secret trials and dungeons. We seem that we're going to get it soon when the Switch comes out. Let's hope that this is true.

Prey

The first Prey was pretty cool. This one is both a sequel and and an enhanced remake of the original. You are a character on a space station that, according to creative director Raphael Colantonio, every event that happens in the game is continuous instead of it being broken up in levels and missions. Instead of going to spirit form in the original, you will acquire the powers of various alien enemies giving a different spin to gameplay. I can't wait to see how this works out and how the whole thing plays and looks.


Allison Road

When we heard their was going to be a Silent Hills Game made by Guiellermo Del Toro we were excited. When we heard it was canceled we were devastated. Luckily we had P.T. which wowed us. Allison is considered to be an homage to P.T. and is basically have similar gameplay. It was quickly cancelled for a while and it is now back in production. So even though we might not gotten Silent Hills, but it is nice that we get to have something that came from it and hopefully it comes out some time this year.

Red Dead Redemption 2

We haven't gotten much news or saw anything about Red Dead 2 other than a teaser image of some guys in a sunset.  The series is basically the wild west version Grand Theft Auto. Hopefully we see something soon because the other games in the series were amazing. Especially if they still want to cash in on the Westworld hype that is still going on.

Sonic Mania

Sonic Mania is a much waited return to the classic 2D Sonic games. This is a real throwback. Not a enhanced version like Sonic 4 or some anniversary thing like Sonic Generations. A back to basics thing that is chock full of nostalgia and tons of easter eggs from the series. Sonic games have been pretty hit and miss, mostly miss but this looks very promising.

God of War

What do you do when you killed all the Greek gods? Kill the Norse ones. That is not the only new thing as they redone the gameplay completely from the ground up. There are more RPG elements as you build more knowledge points for weapons meaning that you'll be more skilled at using them as well a a newly revamped rage ability. We saw this at E3 last year we were blown away. We want more.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

We love the Mass Effect series so another installment is something good. The concept of Andromeda seems to be to give the players more meaning that you get to explore a more vast open world than the past Mass Effect games and have the player create characters with a complete free reign of skills to obtain.


Friday the 13th: The Game

We've seen the beta of this and everything looks wonderful. You can play as probably horny but terrible acting teen counselors of Camp Crystal Lake try to survive or Jason himself and hunt down everybody in a not so senseless blood bath, because they did neglect and drown you were were a kid while they were trying to bone. Anyway this looks great so it will be nice to see what the finished game will look.

Resident Evil 7

It seems that we have a lot of games that are going back to the basics on this list along with Resident Evil 7. This time around Capcom is scaling back with the action-horror elements and is doing pure survival horror with 7. You're roaming around a large mansion solving puzzles much like the original Resident Evil. While their might not be zombies there are monsters and the Baker Family you will need to fight off. The demos look promising so hopefully it delivers.

Kingdom Hearts 3

We haven't heard anything about this in a couple of years, but we've gotten multiple remixes and 2.5s and 1.8s and whatever. Square, just hurry up and release it. We're waiting for this and we are impatient.

Any games on this list that I missed and you can't wait to see or play?

The (Recent) Delaying of Mighty No. 9: Should We Delay The Outrage?

     Mighty No 9 is a 2D platformer where you are an Android who's mission is to save the world by stopping a number or robots who have been corrupted by a computer virus and find out who is the villain behind all of this. If this sounds like a Mega-Man game it must only be due to the guy who is making this game was also responsible for making the Mega-Man series, Kenji Inafune and his company he founded after leaving Capcom, Comcept. According to Inafune, Mighty No. 9 is a spiritual successor to the Mega-Man games as it mirrors them in terms of story, gameplay, and up until a few early sketches the main character himself.
     With the Mega-Man series being in the state it is now with Mega only making guest appearances in other games and the only news of a new Mega-Man game being made is of Capcom cancelling it, people have been clamoring to play this game. It shows when by how much money people have been throwing money at this game. Since 2013, the game has been funded by the fans and public on Kickstarter not only once, but a few times. The first time it met its $900,000 goal in two days back in 2013. With further stretch goals and donations from Paypal, over $4 million have been donated to the game to be made. It seems undeniable the people are highly anticipating the final production of the game and can't wait to play it, except that they will. It has recently been announced that the game has been delayed and will probably come out in 2016. The delay seems to be based on how to exactly release a proper demo of the game. This is a statement from their website:

"Although the demo had been finished and was ready to go, we ran into some very last-minute and unexpected complications with distributing the demo exclusively to all our backers through Steam. We’ve also been listening to your feedback about preferring to have a demo that is not time-limited. Given the complications with giving you the demo, we came to the conclusion that it would be better to make the demo DRM-free without any time restrictions.

Because this demo is exclusively for you, our backers, we still needed to have a way to get the demo to each of you individually and we’ve been looking into all the options. We’re currently working with our partners at Humble Bundle to prepare the demo for delivery through their service.

Unfortunately this change in our plans means that the release of the demo is going to be slightly delayed as we are currently working on retooling the demo for a DRM-free release. Comcept and all of our partners are working hard to get the demo ready and in our backers’ hands as soon as possible. We sincerely apologize for this delay, but we hope you’ll like the resulting changes!"

     As expected the fans and backers are angry about this sudden news and you can't blame them. They have invested money, literally millions, in this game and so far they really haven't gotten to see the result of their money. They will have to wait even long to play this game that they put their hard earned dollars in. Should they be mad? Again,it is justifiable they should be a bit upset waiting longer to play Mighty No. 9, but in a sense they should expect this.
     It takes a lot of time to make a game. Not just hours but months and even years to not only make it, but to perfect it. People need to realize that there is a lot going into this game with little resources. It takes longer when you don't necessarily have the proper resources to make something and you're doing it with no support from a major company, especially the most important one: money. Other than the donations on Kickstarter, Inafune had almost no support when coming up with the idea to make this game. He understands the admiration people had for the Mega Man series and the wants of playing games like that. That is the reason why he went on Kickstarter to make this game. The fact that Inafune and the production company has to go on Kickstarter in order to fund the game speaks volumes on how passionate they are on making this game. Overall, we need to be patient. We know it's going to be good in the end, hopefully.

What are your thoughts?

Too Many Spiritual Successors, Not Enough Predecessors

Once Upon a time, in the last post, I talked about Yooka-Laylee and how it was officially the spiritual successor to the popular Banjo-Kazooie series. I talked about how in the short time its Kickstarter was opened it met its goal in just under 40 minutes and continued to raise over 2 million dollars USD in the short time the Kickstarter page was created. Along with Yooka-Laylee, another spiritual successor has come out of the woodworks. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night the spiritual successor to Castlevania and created by the series' former producer Koji Igarashi has, just like Yooka-Laylee, reached its goal and then some. Just like Yooka-Laylee, it has also made over two million since its Kickstarter page was created in almost the same time period.
     2015 is starting to be the year of Spiritual successors. We have the work on Yooka-Laylee and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night starting off to extremely well starts and we even have another spiritual successor on the way. Mighty No. 9 was a game made by Mega-Man creator Keiji Inafune which is suppose to be the successor to the Mega-Man franchise. It has met the same fate as the two previous games mentioned earlier. While this is all great and exciting, the question is what about these games' predecessors? What will happen to them?
     As much as it is nice to see these games, Yooka-Laylee and Mighty No. 9, being made it's almost bittersweet that we haven't gotten anything new from their predecessors. People are still clamoring for another Mega-Man game and people are still waiting for a true Banjo-Threeie.With the demand from fans, why isn't studios and developers trying to make new games from these franchises?
    What's the problem as to why most if these games haven't had anything new is that the studios and development teams have moved on and don't want to take a chance on these old franchises. After what happened with Nuts & Bolts, Rare just seems like it wants nothing to do with another full-fledged Banjo-Kazooie game. Mega-Man hasn't fared well either. Capcom has tried to make some Mega-Man games in the past but were met with poor sales. Capcom has tried to take the series in new directions, but they have yet to figure out what direction to put the series in and has cancelled project after project.
     What could be done to get studios to try to revive these franchises and start making games for these franchises again? What do you think needs to be done in order to see new games again?

LGBT Couples in Video Games

Valentine's Day is here! In celebration of today (and since I have no plans for the day because I'm single T_T), I decided to do a post about the romantic couples in video games. I could've done the usual. I could've done Link and Zelda, Mario and Peach, and Sonic and Amy, but that would've been normal, and boring. Instead I decided to do a post about LGBT couples in video games. As a gay person who plays video games, it's nice as well as important to not only see me being represented in video games, but to see LGBT couples in games as well. It almost helps spread that message that says that my love is no different than your love and counteracts homophobia that some people have in not only in the gaming community, but in society as well. With no further due, here are the LGBT couples in gaming.

Birdo and Yoshi


Let's get started with the most famous: Birdo and Yoshi. Yoshi, even though is considered to be gender neutral, is mostly associated as a male. Birdo's gender has been controversial from the very start. According to the instruction booklet of Super Mario Bros. 2 (Super Mario USA in Japan), Birdo, or Catherine, is described as a boy who think he is a girl. This is further confirmed with not only the Japanese commercial for Super Mario Bros. 2, but in Captain Rainbow for the Nintendo Gamecube. Birdo and Yoshi have been a couple and have had great chemistry in most of the Mario Spin-offs like Mario Party 7 and Mario Tennis. Mario Kart: Double Dash's japanese website has jokingly stated: "Catherine appears to be Yoshi's girlfriend... or does that mean boyfriend!?" (「ヨッシーの彼女に見えて実は彼氏!?」).

Rudolph Gartheimer and Damian Shade


Rudolph and Damian both hail as the Fighting genre's first openly gay couple. Groove on Fight was released by Atlus in 1997. While not as popular as the Street Fighter series or SNK, Groove on Fight was a cult classic in Japan. Damien (17) is an orphan and was adopted by Rudolph (45). They are polar opposites as Rudolph is considered to be a very aggressive while Damian is a pacifist. They seem to be very protective of each other, Rudolph being more protective as when playing as Rudolph, Damian is usually seen in the back watching the fight when playing as Rudolph.

Venom and Zato-1


Zato and Venom are both characters from the Guilty Gear series. Venom was an orphan that was was about to be kill when Zato-1 saved Venom's life. Ever since then Venom has dedicated his life to Zato. Venom is fiercely loyal to Zato. Most of his action in the series is either doing what Zato says or looking for his master. Even when Zato-1 died, Venom was devoted to tracking down his killer, Millia Rage, and killing her. Sadly the love isn't really returned as Zato has a thing for Millia, who he also hates.

Crystal and Amber Bailey from Dead Rising

Crystal and Amber are twin sisters that both work as hostesses of the show Terror is Reality in Dead Rising 2. They also work as Tyrone King's bodyguards. Both of the twins are very flirtatious saying innuendos throughout the game and even flirting with you during the boss fight. Amber also gropes Rebecca. These two are close. Very close. The cutscene when you kill the one of the twins does say that there is something more to them just being twins.

Ellie and Riley


Ellie and Riley are two characters from The Last of Us. Their relationship pretty much plays like a romantic comedy in a zombie apocalypse. They both meet during a zombie epidemic and mostly everyone is dead and they form a friendship where they pretty much have each others back. Throughout the game, their friendship does blossom into something serious and touching. The creator, Neil Druckmann, has talked about their relationship and confirmed that both Ellie and Riley do both have feeling for each other.

Dragon Age: Inquisition: Your avatar and Iron Bull, Josephine, Sera, and Dorian

When Dragon Age: Inquisition came it, it came with the possibility of your character being able to not only have a relationship with a person in the game, but with a select few people regardless of gender. You can have opposite and same sex relationships. This isn't new. Inquisition isn't the only game in the Dragon Age series to have this option. Origins had the option to marry someone of the same sex. You can pick from four out of the eight characters in the game: Iron Bull, Josephine, Sera, Dorian. Here's how to can court them.

Are there any couples I missed? If so, please let me know in the comments section. Also, Happy Valentine's Day to you all.