Unlicenced Lawyer: Sonic's Buddies at 3:36 PM

Thanks, sonicthehedgehogbg, for this image. You forgot Fang the Sniper.

So, Sonic's been  a topic lately. What, with the whole 2 new Sonic games

announced.

But there's something I noticed on the trailer to Sonic Mania, the

throwbackies of throwbacks who couldn't  be more of a throwback if it

actually zapped us into 7 year olds all over again: The cast.

The trailer boasts 3 playable characters: Sonic(yeah, no duh), Tails and

Knuckles. Which, while seemingly an offhand remark about the nature of

this game, I interpret it another way.

You see, for the longest time there's been a consensus among many: That

Sonic sucks because there's just too many characters. Somewhere after

Sonic and Knuckles, Sega went overboard with Sonic's friends and

frenemies, when they should have stuck with Sonic.

To me, this is their way of saying "We learned."

However, I must say that that people, even if they don't realize it, don't

hate Sonic's friends at all.

How did we first play as Tails? Well let's take a look.

Did you notice it? The stage played exactly as the normal Sonic 2 stage,

but now you are Tails. You run from left to right, collect rings and fight

a boss. They later gave Tails the ability to fly.


Tails still collects rings while running from left of the screen to right,

but now has abilities that open different  gameplay options.

What about Knuckles? Well, Knuckles is the same. 

Knuckles can glide and

climb, but other wise it's still the same gameplay, same speed same

everything. In fact, playing as Sonic felt kind of vanilla, now.

Comparatively, this is the first time you played as Amy in a mainline

Sonic Series.
Amy's gameplay is kind of survival horror, but also not any damn good.

Even compared to the 3D Sonic action of the same game...


It's a departure. In a way, you kind of have to admire that Sega tried to

innovate on it's most popular franchise, but it...fucking blew up on their

face several times.

Here's our introduction to Big the Cat.

If such a thing  as an  opposite to "run really fast, avoid enemies and

collect rings" exists, it's probably "sit still and fish." Big could be played by Robert Downey Junior and you still wouldn't like him after that. Although...

Feel true fear.

So obviously by Sonic Heroes everybody "hated" Sonic's allies, and wanted

to clear them away. Who does the Sonic fandom like from those years,

though?


Meanwhile, in portable land, Sonic's supporting cast had new additions

like Blaze The Cat and Cream The Rabbit.

Eventually, Sega tried to put the thing by making Sonic The Hedgehog, a

reboot that focused exclusively on Sonic.

And...and Shadow, naturally.

And they had some left over telekinesis game engine, so they put in Silver

the Hedgehog from the same alternate dimension Blaze is.

Wow, way to miss the point of rebooting something. That's like if Batman Begins was nothing but Jim Carrey rubbing Batman's bat nipples.

So to recap: It is my belief that the hate for Sonic's friends is a

symptom of Sega's  failed gameplay experiments being used on new

characters. If Big The Cat had been playable in Sonic and Knuckles, maybe

they'd be boasting 4 characters instead of 3 in Sonic Mania. The same trouble with failed experimental gameplay also occurred with the older characters and Sonic himself, but nobody blamed the characters because we'd seen them work at some point.

I think Sega SHOULD give these characters a chance again in the future.

Not all of them at the same time, obviously.  I'm not even saying they aren't... well, hard to like. Just...if you can make a good

Sonic game and make their gameplay stick closely to...Sonic, I don't care

if you put in Bark The Polar Bear, Sticks the Badger, Rotor the Warlus, or Ray The Flying Squirrel.

AV Bishoujo Girl Fighting is a harder Strip Fighter 2 at 8:00 PM

Copyrights truly make the best games.

 Look, I never set out to make make Fighting Female July a month where I talk about sexualized fighting games, nor is it my belief  that such a topic having covered mostly that in it's 4 year's run  some kind of statement on women in fighting games in general. There is a lot of that, yes. A lot a lot a lot a lot. But it's not ALL of it.

In my case, at least, it's more to do with circumstance. This whole thing began when I played a few bad rounds of Seifuku Desetsu,  and before I knew it I was looking for female fighitng games of all types. I WANT to try the Melty Bloods and ?s of life, but so far I keep falling into the Variable Geos and Strip Fighters. What's a blogger to do?

So, moving forward. AV Bishojo Girl Fighting is an NES pirate game by the same team who made the old NES Pirate Street Fighter 4 and Kart Fighter. That right there could be it's own review, if you know at least a couple of the things I mentioned. NES wasn't the ideal home for fighting games, and there's a reason there's so very few of them on the system outside of illegal pirate games.

So the gimmick on this one is: girls from completely unrelated franchises, with their names mangled or completely changed, all fight for supremacy. Chun Li made it mostly unscathed. Ranma from Ranma 1/2 becomes Ramma. Sailor Mercury from Sailor Moon is now Sugico.  Tracy/Bunny from SF4 now have a 3rd Playboy Cat/Rabbit in Marry, which makes her a clone of a clone as they all come from Erina Goldsmith of Variable Geo fame.

Look, I don't know much about Ranma 1/2, but I'm pretty sure there's no Vivians there.

But that's not all that crosses over from that, a handful of stages from that made it into this, including the Royal Navy Battleship and the  Factory. Horribly enough, Marry's stage IS her old stage, Circus Car Show, but it's now switched musics with Jungle bridge stage, too. Some of these SEEM like they should be on SF4, too, such as New York(Sailor Sugico's stage, somehow)  and Taj Mahal.

Sailor Overpriced Housing!

 Characters LOOK like they're from disparate franchises, with  inconsistent sprite sizes that make some characters  look ridiculously taller than the others.

Maybe they should have called this one Capcom Fighting Jam 4.

So you got a very basic set of punches, kicks and specials. The specials can be pretty hard to pull off, and sometimes fail to actually connect, which means that you should focus on the first thing.

So you go toe to toe with these girls, and if the other girl loses a round, you generally see an image of a girl having a wardrobe malfunction, and after  the final round you will see her all naked and stuff. Pretty sure there was one where it happened backwards, though. Of note that the girls are never actually the girl you're fighting. Not even slightly.

Although, let's be fair here: neither do the vs screens most of the time.

So, as you see, this is exactly the same as Strip Fighter 2, which forces us to confront a reality in which not only did someone play SF2...but then they said "that has some good ideas, let's put them in  a NES bootleg game". It even also ends by running you through all the pics of girls you'd previously seen. Thankfully the ingame game doesn't try to be sexy, other than tarting up Chun Li and Ranma Ramma a bit. I wonder when GameS Studios is going to get on this one's case.

But then again, maybe their vision was of a ditsy drunk tourist called Jean who hangs around the Taj Mahal fighting people.

The AI of this game, though...damn. Some enemies are manageable, but my run as Shmailor Fercury had me run into some relentless characters. Playing defensive against this guys is a fool's errand. Blocking is hit and miss, specials sometimes to less damage than normals...it's pretty messy. So when the AI gets cheap the only thing you can reliably count on is constantly spamming one of the punch/kick buttons, or jumping back, and trying to hit the enemy as he/she approaches. If you get your timing right you can get their health down pretty good like this, but watch out, as after a couple of hits they get dizzy. Your first instinct is going to be to rush in and get a free hit, but don't. They ALWAYS end their dizzy state before you get there.


In terms of play, there's no multiplayer,  and the only option in options is difficulty, and even then cranked at maximum. Humorously enough, the continue screen doesn't let you continue OR quit, and you can't get out of the ending either. Oh, and if you want to get the low color hentai images, you better play the hard dificulty, too.

Vivian was later sacrificed for killing and eating Chun Li.

So basically this game is like a harder, more glitchy Strip FIghter 2. Completists might get a bit of a kick, and you may get a bit of a rise out of how bootleggy the whole thing is.(The start menu music is from Sailor Moon, and when you pick something a jingle from Sonic plays, I'm kind of surprised the New York Stage isn't ripped off from the NES TMNT Tournament fighter's better New York stage). However the game is too broken, too buggy, and too brutal to be any decent amount of fun. It also doesn't have multiplayer, so basically...no, don't play AV Bishojo. Instead, get the  version of this characters for Mugen, get in their files and change their names, and put them all in one game, and browse Hentai Foundry while  playing it. It's bound to be more balanced, have better A.I., and the porn will be better, too.

Fighter, Female, Black #13 at 9:32 AM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Laura Matsuda

Game
Street Fighter 5

Bio
She's Sean's Sister. And Sean's like...Ryu's son? Or Akuma's? I don't know, it was a pretty boring anime.

How Black is she?
She's Half Black Half Japanese, but instead of representing Japan in a beauty contest(man is THAT gonna be old when this is posted...), she's representing Brazil in Street Fighter.

Prominence
I'm writing this in November 2015 and haven't even decided WHEN it'll launch. You tell ME if Laura is now the most important Street Fighter character in the world.

Fight examples

Flaws

The SF guys always struggled with how to properly stereotype Brazil. But after 20 years, they finally figured it out: Wrap a Batucada girl in the Flag of Brazil.

Like, this chick obviously has had more surgery than Poison, has both long flowing locks AND cornrows,  and probably shoots Favelas out of her butt for all I know.

Pros

Instead of being yet another wiggle warrior, she was actually given a rough moveset including lots of grapple moves. That counts for something, right?

Honorable mentions go to the 2-3 females in Capoeira Fighter, a chick I'm pretty sure was Black in Bloody Roar, and any others I may have missed. There's a lot of fighting games out there, and when I think I've seen them all, I run into more. The point of this was never to say that representation is a non-issue, but that you don't need to dismiss what you already have to ask for more.

Next Month, 13 female fighting game Puerto Ricans. Oh, there are none? Well, 13 Puerto Rican playable females in all of videogames. Neither, huh? Uh...13 Puerto Rican playable characters? 13 Puerto Rican at all characters?

Fuck.

Black, Female, Fighter #12 at 9:11 AM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Grace


Game
Fighting Vipers

Bio

Uh...

How Black is she?

Black.

Prominence

She's a Fighting Vipers series character. A lady had to book a flight to Japan just to burn of her Fighting Viper's 2 fever.

Fight examples

Flaws

She's kind of the ditz of the series and looks like Barbie's Black friend.

Also McDuffie's first law of Negroes on Skates.

Pros

Being a black skater ditz is pretty fucking original, I think.  Kudos,AM2.

Democracy is dead, the bad guys won, buy my shirts at 7:18 PM

No hay mar. No hay sol.

So...how about that Fiscal Control Board, huh?  It passed through and the president signed it and everything, and people who  expressed themselves against it such as Lin Manuel Marin Miranda and our Governor, suddenly decided it was the only choice.

Funny, I was reading about the Japanese Internment Camps, you know, when they rounded all the Japanese into shitty desert camp prisons because of fear they might sabotage stuff. Obviously there was a strong sense then that there was an emergency and that measures  had to be taken.

It's not good that they did that, but it's not surprising. What is surprising is that even today you see some people saying, that we had to. Despite evidence only piling up for the fact that we did it, they describe ambiguous consequences if we hadn't gone with it.

We had to. We had to violate the human rights of an entire group of people to ease our fears. We had to use nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We had to hold those McCarthy hearings. We had to intervene in Vietnam and Korea. We had to install dictators in various countries. We had to arm insurgents in Afghanistan. We had to invade Afghanistan. And Iraq. We had to create the Patriot Act. We had to torture people for information. We had to collect information on everyday American Citizens. We have to use Drones to kill people in other countries. Or is it only in other countries?

The phrase "necessary evil" operates from a view point where you regret evil done. You actually HAD to  do it, as the consequences showed themselves far greater than inaction. But when all evils are necessary and there's no line, that's another thing.


I don't believe that P.R.O.M.E.S.A. was "The ONLY WAY" anymore than putting  Japanese folks into inhuman camps during the 1940s was "THE ONLY WAY" to keep Japanese saboteurs from wreaking havoc and costing U.S. the war, installing dictators and accusing random folks  was "THE ONLY WAY" America could beat back the Soviets, and the same way collecting your information and blowing up foreigners with unaccountable death-machines is "THE ONLY WAY"  to keep the specter of terrorism at bay.

But it doesn't matter what I believe. The President doesn't have to listen to me: they don't let us vote for President. Congress doesn't have to listen to me, I don't have representation in there. One day the full truth will come out and we will truly see if we actually HAD to, or if we just WANTED TO.

So...I'm making some T-Shirts.  They show a darkened Puerto Rican flag, flagrantly  riding the coattails of this thing that's been making news rounds. There's a lot of dissatisfaction... and I want to turn it into di$$ati$faction.

"Hey, our flag is going into people's asses and being stepped on as we speak, but it's the correct colors as it happens!

Get your darkened  Monoestrellada shirts for men and women and show everyone that you are sad about Puerto Rico...Or Cuba. Once you remove the colors it could go either way, really.

I will  update as I make even more designs. And...please don't vote for Donald Trump. As long as we're gonna have a tyrannical colonial dictatorship, it might as well not be chosen by the Guy from Celebrity Apprentice. You guys are killing us over here.

Black, Female, Fighter #11 at 9:04 AM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)
Thermia

Game
Catfight

Bio

The ending doesn't explain anything beyond "good" and "ice powers"

How Black is she?
Yes. She's pretty black. I think so.

Prominence
CATFIGHT

Fight examples

Flaws

Being in Catfight. Blue Lipstick looks weird.

Pros

Ice Powers and Black people together for the first time. FINALLY.

Black, Female, Fighter #10 at 8:43 AM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Tanya

Game
Mortal Kombats 4, Deception, Armageddon, and X

Bio

She's a traitor to team good. In fact, for a while, betrayal was about her only characterization. Due to the fact that she only exists because the MK team realize "Oh, shit, we haven't added any new characters yet" and made quick changes to Kano, Noob Saibot, and in her case, Kitana, to make them "new".

How Black is she?

Like Jade, her mocha skin doesn't betray the fact she's basically an alien

Prominence

Let's put it this way: MKX's first DLC characters, where a monster from an 80's movie, a minor character from a largely reviled spinoff game and her, and the minor character is the one people where expecting more besides the monster.

Tanya's the poor man's Jade.

Fight examples

Flaws

The same way Jade is mostly just a goon, Tanya's just a goon.

Pros

Those Special moves tho. I mean, Jade's moveset is pretty much my favorite thing about her.

Black, Female, Fighter #9 at 8:34 AM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Kimala

Game

Catfight

Bio

None. But from the ending it's implied they thought she was just a sorceress, when it turns out she was a demon.

How Black is she?

Well, she's obviously dark skinned, and seems to have some kind of connection to witchery.

Prominence

IT'S CATFIGHT. The game's endings are online because I put them there.

Fight examples

Flaws
 It'S CATFIGHT. It's ALL flaws

Pros

FUCK CATFIGHT.

Black, Female, Fighter #8 at 8:37 AM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)
How Black is she?

Elena

Game
Street Fighter

Bio

How Black is she?

Well, she's certainly from Africa, but she's never been displayed as having strong african features. Compared to Birdie and  Balrog, anyway. But Birdie wasn't always Black. ANYWAY...

Prominence

Elena's an on again off again character. She was in SF3, skipped 4, went to Tekken vs Street Fighter, then had her assets reused in a later version of SF4.

Fight examples

Flaws
If you wanted more out of your black characters than a dance fighter, or if you wanted more out of your African characters than just "girl in loincloth" then you're shet outta luck.

Pros

Still Better than T.Hawk.

Also, her lanky and tall build and leg only moveset make her unique, even among dance-fighters. She's not a bombshell like Christie and Adrianna. You can take her seriously even if being naked all the time is her M.O.

Black, Female, Fighter #7 at 1:42 PM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Christie Monteiro

Game

Tekken

Bio

How Black is she?

Quite Black. She's, again, Brazilian, so...

Prominence

While Tekken has more characters than the Bible, now, I would point out of the few that made it into the Tekken movie, Christie is one of them. Sure, they White Washed her, but uh, she sure was more on the film than  some characters that have been there since the begging, and that's amazing considering she was always meant to be a moveset swap with Eddie Gordo, who I think didn't even appear on that.

Fight examples

Flaws

No two ways about it, Christie is a sexy character. If that bothers you, Christie isn't your character.

Pros

But at least you're supposed to get that she has a loose and free spirited personality. Not like Taki from SC, who  we're supposed to take straightfaced as a tormented ass renegade shinobi demon hunter even as her breasts baloon out of control.

The sensuality and cadence are a part of the character, yet are not entirely the character.

Black, Female, Fighter #6 at 1:33 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Jackie Briggs

Game

Mortal Kombat X

Bio

How Black is she?

She's the daughter of Blaxploitation Dude Jaxx and has cornrows.


Prominence
Well, she's fairly recent, but as the daughter of an important character, she's bound to be somewhat important. Also, since the story has a focus on the Special Forces characters of the game, of which she is, well that's what makes her beautiful. Whoa-oh-oh...

Fight examples

Flaws

Have you ever noticed how black characters always get stuck with scifi and military stuff in mixed fantasy settings? Like, Black guys aren't getting bitten by radioactive spiders or getting magic alien rings.

Tha's not to take anything away from Jackie. It's just an issue I have with fiction overall, sometimes.

Point is, Jackie being a Special Forces member is boring to me, personally. Wouldn't she be a little wild, growing up without her dad because he got killed by Syndel in the last game? Why is she the Murtaugh to Cassandra Cage's Riggs?

Pros

She's not a dance-fighter, she's wearing clothes most of the time, and she's just a boring and uncharacteristic Special Forces type character.

Progress.

Black, Female, Fighter #5 at 8:12 PM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Adrianna


Game

Fighter's Destiny 2

Bio

NONE.

How Black is she?

She's Black, because Brazilians are stereotypically always assumed to be Black. Or Green.

Weirdly enough her alt costume includes a Native American Feather Headdress(remember to look up that thing's name later). Maybe it's a carnival thing I don't know, but even as I try to keep an open mind about this kinds of things, I don't assume Fighter's Destiny is a serious source for information about the people of Brazil.

Prominence

Statistically speaking, you have not played Fighter's Destiny or it's sequel. And The game's cover boy is a Ryu Knock Off, so no.

Fight examples

 Flaws

You know, I've come to find that there's a valid reason why Brazil gets featured so much in fighting games. They've got a couple of fighting styles (Vale Tudo, Capoeira,  Brazilian Jiu Jitsu).

However, since tradition states fighting game rosters are filled with crude national stereotypes  when all else fails, I guess they decided there wasn't a Batucada Dancer in a game yet.

I mean, that design...they aren't even trying.

Pros

Fighter's Destiny fuckin' sucks.

Black, Female, Fighter #4 at 8:07 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Jade

Game

Mortal Kombat

Bio

How Black is she?

Jade was originally a palette swap of an actress who played both Kitana and Millena. Those are White. This one is not. She was drawn with dark skin since the beginning, and has mostly been consistently been shown as tan skinned at least. However, as an extradimensional being, she carries no actual Earth Ethnicity.


Prominence

Jade has never been the most important Mortal Kombat character. In further games, her being Kitana's bodyguard meant that she was mostly a goon. A good goon, but a goon nontheless. She's currently super fucking dead, but that happens in Mortal Kombat.

She appeared in the second movie, as an Asian, and she was not to be found in the cartoon at all.

Fight examples

 Flaws

Jade's skin color has fluctuated wildly, and it's still a point of contention whether she's supposed to be Black or Middle Eastern-ish tan.

Pros

As a support character, she's remained pretty consistent in at least her characterization.

Fighting Female July : Gal Fighters is quite good for a portable fighter at 2:29 PM

Fighting games are games of precision and skill, which is why the mostly stayed away from anything under 16 bits. It's not so much that it's impossible to make  a fighting game for the original gameboy and nes. But to make it any good at all takes so much skill, it's practically not worth it.

So when I approached Gal Fighter, an original female only SNK fighting game based on it's King of Fighter series for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, I wasn't expecting much. However, the game managed to deliver above my expectations.

The overarching plot is that there's a  wish granting talisman, a tournament to get it, and various characters who want it. Not exactly Homer's The Illiad there, but it'll do. You've got a handful of characters you may recognize from King of FIghters such as Mai, Athena and  Leona.  I recognized them more from having been depantsed for Mugen years ago, but whatever.
 
The fighting is surprisingly fluid. Pulling off specials and hypers is easy, and I ran into the odd combo now and then. To influence the fight, you can collect items which affect you and your opponent. Or at least I think it is, the descriptions are mired in bad translations that, while hilarious, kind of obscure the purpose of the object.

The difficulty is seemingly easy. I had no trouble beating all the opponents, and only got beat by the final boss, Miss X(Iori Yagami in drag), once, which I resolved by taking one of those famous items.

Black, Female, Fighter #3 at 8:01 PM

 (According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Amanda

Game

Strip Fighter 2, 4

Bio

There are no Bios I could read in Strip Fighter. From what we can tell she's a pro-wrestler from Brazil.

How Black is she?

Well, her Character Select Portrait portrays her as being very black, but her ingame sprites and cover art betray the idea. She's also definitively not black in Strip Fighter 4, which might not even be a "real" Strip Fighter game because they keep straight up ripping characters from other games all willy nilly.

Prominence

Strip Fighter is an obscure mail in porn game for the PC Engine, known for being super bad, and  Amanda is the GRAPPLER in that. Nope, not a lot of prominence, there.


Fight




Not a lot of Amanda action around. Huh. Hoping this will get you covered. NSFW probably

 Flaws

This is Strip Fighter, and Amanda has an attack where she hits you with her enormous breasts. I think everyone can make their choices from that point and move on.

Pros

If playable "Black and Female" is rare in gaming, playable "Female and Fat" is ULTRA Rare,. And despite the fact they didn't have to because this is a stupid smut game, Strip Fighter 2 got there before Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter,  Star Gladiator, Dead or Alive,  Soul Calibur, Tekken,  King of Fighters, World Heroes, Psychic Force, Smash Brothers, Darkstalkers, Battle Arena Toshinden...

Hell, pretty much only Playstation Battle Royal and Clayfighter got there at all, and I don't want to be the asshole who says "Ya see, you ARE represented...by a stereotypical opera fat lady and a character with "Fat" in her name." But, tittilation aside, Amanda's as good as it gets, so far.

Black, Female, Fighter #2 at 7:26 PM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Vanessa Lewis

Game

Virtua Fighter

Bio

She was being trained to be a child soldier, but then was rescued by a guy and stuff. And also she's got amnesia and doesn't remember sex with Stryker.


How Black is she?

Well, the intent that she's an African American is pretty clear, although her white hair (and brows) certainly aren't a naturally ocurring happenstance. Unless I´m wrong about that, IDK.

Prominence

She was in 2 Virtua Fighters out of 5 that are ever going to be made(although they said the same thing about Dreams. And they only mostly kept to their word, so...)

Fight examples

Flaws

If women feel offput by "sexy" female bodies, I don't know how they'll feel about "amazonian" female bodies. I mean, she isn't all that extreme, or anything, but I don't think this is what they mean with "strong female characters."

Vanessa then double ups on that by having the kind of attire a "traditional beauty" fighter would have, so it might be the worst of both worlds.

Pros

Other than the attire, Vanessa mostly subverts expectations of traditional femeninity, which is what most women who play games want to see (Citation Needed)

Also, you can custom her appearance, so, if she makes you uncomfortable, it's probably your own fault.

Black, Female, Fighter #1 at 7:13 PM

(According to an article made last year there have only ever 13 playable female characters. The list doesn't include fighting game characters for reasons I don't agree with. As such, I have decided to put a spotlight on 14 of these characters, to see what is being dismissed here. There are MORE than that, but I admit, not MUCH more.)

Come on, Lisa, you're tearing Hayate apart

Lisa Hamilton/La Mariposa

Game

Dead or Alive 4 and 5, Extreme Beach Volleyball.

Bio

How Black is she?

Could be blacker. While she's got some obvious stars and stripes costumes and she's noticeably dark skinned, she has the same soft features of all the other girls in this series.

Prominence

Lisa started out as the default partner, and tutorial voice, for Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. However, Lisa eventually made it into the series proper under the really very badly hidden secret identity of La Mariposa, a highly kinetic masked pro wrestler.

As far as being an important character, she's not quite that important. The heroines of this story ARE the feuding high schooler ninja chicks. They're the cover girls. However, Lisa's role as a  scientist in DOATech ensured she even had a lot of serious play in the story.

Fight examples

Flaws

There isn't a lot of depth to her. She's a scientist good guy who moonlights as a wrestler. She dabbles in superscience that  ninjas often have to fight, but she doesn't stop because science. That's above and beyond the call of duty for a fighting game backstory, but if you want a deeper black female character I guess Home is out on Home video.