The first woman in fighting games at 10:45 AM

Yeah...hopefully you won't have to avenge your father many more times.

Folks, they say history is written by the victors, and it's mostly true. Sometimes history is written by the victor's bitter enemies, though.

But it's true in the sense that, if someone spearheads something that becomes really popular, people are way more likely to study them instead of checking if benchmarks they made had already been made, therefore attributing them to  the more popular one.

In fighting game terms, Street Fighter, specifically Street Fighter 2 is the trendsetter, the first, the freshmaker. Sure, a little research will show fighting games existed before Street Fighter 2 made them a genre, such ar Yie Ar Kung Fu and Karateka, but generally, we accept that the genre was shaped by Ryu and Ken's shenanigans.

However, I will have to take away at least one of Capcom's most prestigious awards: The first woman in fighting games. Sure enough, most of us recognize Chun Li as the first. Games like Yie Ar Kung Fu could hardly bother letting you choose character, let alone putting a woman in there as a playable. However, Chun Li is not the first woman in fighting games

The first woman is, in fact, Gaea, from Konami's 26 Year old Galactic Warriors.

Pink. Of course.

If you've been following me, you should recognize the title. It is a 1 player, robot vs robot game. Like Cyberbots but...really sad. On of Konami's many, many failed attempts at fighting games. Gaea is merely 1 of 3 playable characters. But is she better than Chun Li? Well, It's a matter of opinion, but I guess it depends on how much you like breasts as projectiles. That's usually the dividing line.

At least Chun Li is still the first LADY of Fighting games. Haruumph!

Sure, we could split hairs on whether a robot shaped like a woman counts as a woman. But that would be (even more) pointless. The guys at Konami put breasts and hips  an d high heels on a robot so we could identify it as female.  I'd say she's as much a woman as a videogame can let a school of sprites be.

The first woman in fighting games at 10:45 AM

Yeah...hopefully you won't have to avenge your father many more times.

Folks, they say history is written by the victors, and it's mostly true. Sometimes history is written by the victor's bitter enemies, though.

But it's true in the sense that, if someone spearheads something that becomes really popular, people are way more likely to study them instead of checking if benchmarks they made had already been made, therefore attributing them to  the more popular one.

In fighting game terms, Street Fighter, specifically Street Fighter 2 is the trendsetter, the first, the freshmaker. Sure, a little research will show fighting games existed before Street Fighter 2 made them a genre, such ar Yie Ar Kung Fu and Karateka, but generally, we accept that the genre was shaped by Ryu and Ken's shenanigans.

However, I will have to take away at least one of Capcom's most prestigious awards: The first woman in fighting games. Sure enough, most of us recognize Chun Li as the first. Games like Yie Ar Kung Fu could hardly bother letting you choose character, let alone putting a woman in there as a playable. However, Chun Li is not the first woman in fighting games

The first woman is, in fact, Gaea, from Konami's 26 Year old Galactic Warriors.

Pink. Of course.

If you've been following me, you should recognize the title. It is a 1 player, robot vs robot game. Like Cyberbots but...really sad. On of Konami's many, many failed attempts at fighting games. Gaea is merely 1 of 3 playable characters. But is she better than Chun Li? Well, It's a matter of opinion, but I guess it depends on how much you like breasts as projectiles. That's usually the dividing line.

At least Chun Li is still the first LADY of Fighting games. Haruumph!

Sure, we could split hairs on whether a robot shaped like a woman counts as a woman. But that would be (even more) pointless. The guys at Konami put breasts and hips  an d high heels on a robot so we could identify it as female.  I'd say she's as much a woman as a videogame can let a school of sprites be.

Fighting Female July: Strip Fighter IV is less bad than you'd think(but not morally) at 6:40 AM

Your name will be inscribed in the pages of fighting's nudie mag. 

..

Of all the franchises  that  could have come back to cash in on the return of Street Fighter a few years back, Strip Fighter is probably the least likely. An obscure PC Engine fighter from the olden days that featured an all girl cast with dignity baring special attacks, it's certainly less popular than Variable Geo and less recent than Battle Raper (oh, yes, that's a real thing.). But now 2010's Super Strip Fighter 4 joins those two in how far it is willing to take the whole "Porn fighter" thing.

Despite the title, Super Strip Fighter 4 is the second in a series. There's not even a vanilla Strip Fighter 4. I guess if your game has  female penile tentacled succubus as a final boss, you don't worry if people think you're trying to ride Capcom's coattails. The game actually is quite a bit above the  prequel in terms of both graphics and design, as you'd expect. Every character from the old game has been revamped, redesigned, or reworked. Notably, eagle hat enthusiast Bella has gone from this...

A woman in her Twilight years...

...to this...

"D"? She deserves at least a B in terms of "Offense".

And Clown Afro sporting Prowrestler Amanda's change was pretty big too.

The only fat woman in a fighting game ever and it ends up being porn... 

...Breasts, breasts, breasts, FIELD, Breasts...

The changes  a decade or two  can have, huh? The graphics, while featuring bland backgrounds and flashly looking sprites, are not bad at all to look at. And for a 2d game that has  the capacity to strip fighters of their clothing, the animation is fluid enough.

The cast is pretty big too. Highlights include "Snakes count as clothing, right?"-minded Medusa, civil clothed Ninja Sayaka and two male characters. For the ladies, I guess.

Most of the new characters seem way better designed than the old returning characters. I don't know, I think they went overboard trying to make the old cast sexier by making their breasts big.  That's just part of it, guys.

What the...this isn't Takein or King of Fuckers, guys. It's not even Cockcom vs SNGay. It's Strip Fighter.

The fighting concerns 3 buttons: light, medium and strong. You can fill up a hyper-bar and launch a super attack. You can also fill up the letters to strip by getting knocked down  or letting yourself open with a specific move. This is the only way to activate the Strip Hyper. This move, when it finishes off the opponent, leads to her clothes (if there where any in the first place.) to break apart and fall, and lets the girl at your mercy. That's when you can ravage  her.

Yes, there is rape in Strip Fighter 4.

Tonight: A very special surprise guest appearance by penis. 

By activating a particular combo or grab during  your opponent's clothesless misery, you can just get in there and have your way with them against their will. In the case of the final boss Succubus,  fat Japanese fanboy Jin, musclebound MMAer S  and token hermaphrodite Ai it's some kind of obvious penetration thing that lasts as long as you want to watch it. Other characters like SnM blond Nina, onion themed waitress Iku and super oily, supernaked Rana have dry humping hypers, specials and grabs that could be also construed as sexual harassment when used against females but when used against males become graphic(yet obnoxiously censored) sex And most of the old cast  hangs on to their nudifying special moves albeit in hyper form. One character's  Strip Hyper  seems to be having sex with the camera.  

 Yet, there are characters that have yet to show evidence of being able to initiate graphic scenes with either sex. I for one, believe this is total bullshit. All the males and phalus enabled women  can rape women, and some of the women can rape men. Why not the others?  Why not make them some of them rape the girls? That makes half the cast just rape victims, Not enough Lesbian Rape, man. What are you waiting for, the tournament edition?

I mean, I don't want to throw a bitch fit over this, but it's like having Mortal Kombat, and having half of the characters not have Fatalities. Why should I bother with Mari or Ran if they don't have the goods? What are they even here for? What, couldn't you come up  anything a girl can do to another girl? No scissoring? No ice dick for Yuki? No fingering? No prehensile hair penetration by Medusa? I accuse this porn game of being sexist!

You know, this mask isn't helping your dandruff problem at all. 

Since even if you wanted to, you can't play with anyone most of the time (on account of awful slowdown you get sometimes. Also, it's a porn game),  story mode is pretty much the only choice. Now, I don't know Japanese, so I guess the story is about how the evil Succubus has organized a tournament  between  girls so she can rape them. You have a an intro textwall for each character.You fight a handful of people, then face your rival. Succubus rapes your rival in a cutscene, and then you fight her. Text ending and credits.  All Japanese. Here, let me help.

My Japanese is a little spotty, though. Or as they say in Japan: "Kawasaki Ninja, Hey! El Mundo conquistaras!"

Except it's not over.  You get to fight everyone else on a harder difficulty, until you tire or beat them all.  Or beat it. I mean, no one wants to be defeated...

Besides Story you have VS mode and practice. They're pretty much the same, except training starts P1 at lower health. You don't even have options ingame. It's a pretty barebones experience.

Nope. Still not the Sailor Moon fighting game.

And I don't want to bandy around terms like "lazy", but the reusage of animation gets pretty bad. It's one thing that Hypers are often just flashier versions of special moves but  even the warning animations for hypers? Here's a note, geniuses:  characters in fighting games do special poses before hypers specifically so people know what is about to happen.

So what can I say? This game makes you work for the smut, but the engine is nice enough that it's not too much of a chore. Sure, if you  really must watch Japanese stereotypes rape each other, you don't need a videogame for it. And there's way better fighting to be found elsewhere. But If your curious and a pervert and a fighter fan, it's probably worth your time.

Fighting Female July: Strip Fighter IV is less bad than you'd think(but not morally) at 6:40 AM

Skullgirl-Gate: my take at 10:58 AM

In case it is too long and you falied to read.

I know this is overly late, but this being Fighting Female July, I want to write about the controversy regarding weirdo fighter Skullgirls.



See, apparently, someone accused the maker of the female centric head-to-head fighting game of making a sexist game. What, on account of all the cleavage, and pantyshots, and how none of the alumni look like Jaime Lee Curtis at all. And his attempts at sort of defending his design aesthetic, which include that a woman designed them and that no women have shown disapproval, have earned him no amount of credit.



My first thought is that I guess it's true that the rope always breaks through the thinnest part. Think of all the fighting game series that have any importance today. Are they equally sexist, more sexist, or less sexist? Is any of them free of thongs, bikinis, panty shots, bouncy mammary globes, etc? I think if any (popular, mainstream) series today can block against the accusation of exploiting the female form it's maybe Virtua Fighter.



I mean, it's easy to come in now, after the millions of pages dedicated to naked Cammy we've made, millions of Ryona Seung Mina videos, after we've made the Dead or Alive series thrive on mostly sex appeal to the point where they made a game that was just girls lounging on the beach, now that fighting games are building on other fighting games that are built on other fighitng games, to try and decide that women in fighting games should be fully dressed and tactful just for this one new game/potential franchise. What! Panty-shots? The (out)RAGE!







Compare these two characters' popularity as relative to the importance of the games they where in.


But I guess nobody wants to show up to Project Soul and be the guy who says maybe Ivy and Taki's breasts should stop growing at some point. Nobody wants to go to Ono-San and say that they are bothered by a nymphomaniac fighter. Nobody wants to say that a woman taking off her top after a fight is pandering. Suddenly, when it's an independent title whose creator speaks English, we care. Will somebody think of the children?



Thing is, nobody fucking cares. Nobody gives any props to Virtual Fighter for not having panty-shots, bouncing breasts and exaggerated cleavage or things like that. Nobody cared when Mortal Kombat or Soul Calibur added fully clothed women after many years of skimpiness(and in SCs case, after 3 lolis. 3!). When someone finally steps in and asks if one game is sexist, we all jump in and try to decide if that game is sexist, and we don't stop to think if we've let the whole industry become sexist. We become bothered by what we have been supporting.



Though the Soul series gets no props for having a naked man in all of it's games, either.






And yes, that is "we" as in "us". The games-buying crowd "us".



If you get asked if making a product with scantily clad women is sexist, I guess there isn't a right answer. If you say that nobody's complained, they say you should have thought about it. If you say women worked on it, they get even more offended. If you say you just want to make some money, they say you are exploiting women for profit. What do you fuckers want to hear? "Oh, I'm sorry that my game could be perceived as sexist. I'll cancel it right away, good sir!"



The truth is, creative design doesn't happen in a vacuum and Skullgirl's influences are as obvious as anything. Skullgirls could be that game where old angry lesbians and morbidly obese working women fight. And while that wouldn't be bad for the industry, that wouldn't negate that someone made another game in which sexy caricatures of women fight each other. Some of us do enjoy the female form. Maybe if I call it a sexual preference, you have to tolerate it, huh?

Make it look like this.

You aren't gonna get a fighting game that's not sexist by berating games that are sexist. You are gonna have to make it. That's just the truth. Not to prove anything, though. If you can even get it halfway done , you're already better than me. If you can get it to sell in today's crowded market, you're some kind of deity. Get the funding and get it made. Then come back here so I can tell you that it's racist. Ha.

Skullgirl-Gate: my take at 10:58 AM

In case it is too long and you falied to read.

I know this is overly late, but this being Fighting Female July, I want to write about the controversy regarding weirdo fighter Skullgirls.



See, apparently, someone accused the maker of the female centric head-to-head fighting game of making a sexist game. What, on account of all the cleavage, and pantyshots, and how none of the alumni look like Jaime Lee Curtis at all. And his attempts at sort of defending his design aesthetic, which include that a woman designed them and that no women have shown disapproval, have earned him no amount of credit.



My first thought is that I guess it's true that the rope always breaks through the thinnest part. Think of all the fighting game series that have any importance today. Are they equally sexist, more sexist, or less sexist? Is any of them free of thongs, bikinis, panty shots, bouncy mammary globes, etc? I think if any (popular, mainstream) series today can block against the accusation of exploiting the female form it's maybe Virtua Fighter.



I mean, it's easy to come in now, after the millions of pages dedicated to naked Cammy we've made, millions of Ryona Seung Mina videos, after we've made the Dead or Alive series thrive on mostly sex appeal to the point where they made a game that was just girls lounging on the beach, now that fighting games are building on other fighting games that are built on other fighitng games, to try and decide that women in fighting games should be fully dressed and tactful just for this one new game/potential franchise. What! Panty-shots? The (out)RAGE!







Compare these two characters' popularity as relative to the importance of the games they where in.



Fighting Female July: Seifuku Desetsu thinks it's sexy at 8:26 AM

Stephanie's bid to make it outside of Lazy Town took a dark turn indeed.

As a big fan of female characters in fighting games, you'd think a fighting game with only female characters would be right up my alley. I mean, if we could just put some breasts on DOA's Zack and Bayman, instead of writing this, I'd be over there and playing that shit, right?

No. Turns out most of the ladies only fighting games are either too Japanese, too porn or more likely too terrible for me to like. True, most of anything is terrible(or Japanese), but when it's something like this that I've actively tried to pursue, I tend to look a little deeper than that.

I mean, I don't think it's the concept. Rumble Roses is a fine game. I guess it's something about appealing to demographics. So I will dedicate this month to  the most notable...or most obscure fighting games featuring women centric casts.

A fighting game tends to try and have different characters for different tastes. In your core Street Fighter ripoff you'd find a Karateka, a swift female, a brash blond guy etc. However, when only working with the fair gender, you want to settle either in base male appeal(by using those things that stick out of females chests to arouse and bring attention to the product) or base female appeal(by having different and colorful designs that appeal to women's cerebraniums). Today's study subject tried to land somewhere in the first camp, only to become terrible in the process.

Seifuku Desentsu Pretty Fighter is a Japan only release for the Super NES. While I don't have the lowdown on the deep plot, I'm pretty sure it involves a fighting tournament among whores. No, really. That's what Seifuku means, right? Hakufu? Oh, damn!

 The game features a what's what of what are considered sexy professions in Japan, including nurse, flight attendant , geisha and rich bitch. They even threw in  a schoolgirl as a final boss.

You WISH this was the Sailor Moon fighting game

Now, years ago, when I got this game, I did not find it sexy. I mean, sure, everyone's legs are exposed, so what? Then it dawned on me. This slop mess actually thinks it's sexy. You have provocative posturing and revealing clothes...

Upskirts...

 spanking...

flying butt presses

whatever this is...

kissing

banana eating...

 However, this game is mistaken about how sexy it is. I mean, even if I could look past the fact that it plays terrible, or that the designs are terribly pedestrian. It's all in the presentation.

Oh, the gameplay, you say? It's a barebones game that I would expect to precede Street Fighter 2, not follow after it. That's about it.

 See, somewhere along the line, you have to choose whether you want to be either Melty Blood or Strip Fighter.  But I guess this game kinda straddled the line, fell slightly to  the exploitative side, forgot the gameplay, and went with it anyway. Go home, Seifuku Desetsu. Get some gameplay or get some bigger tits. 

I guess I shouldn't be too harsh with it. It's just one of the many attempts at establishing a fighting fame franchises that ended after just one try. After all, this is just a group of cheap, cobbled together sprites, right? What's that? Anime? What? Sequel for Playstation you say? I will have to comeback to this later.