Every game should have an equivalent of The Document of MGS2 - literally everything and everything you could ever want pertaining to MGS2 is here. Things you'd expect like an extensive model viewer, concept art, and music test but it goes much deeper than that like a cutscene viewer with noclip enabled, full technical breakdowns of the game systems, the complete english script(!), Kojima's original game plan in Japanese(!!), all of the trailers including internal use test footage dating back to 1999(!!!), extensive staff interviews(!!!!), and much more, all presented in a slick package. If you like MGS2 or even just diving behind the scenes of game development you need to spend an afternoon with this.

Anime licensed games in general get kind of a bad rap. There will always be a prevailing notion that they're somewhat less of a game because they aren't originally from this medium. However, I can't actually say almost any anime game I've played is an entirely frivolous, soulless game. Even weird ones that shouldn't even exist like Ravemaster on GameCube.

People following these kinds of games maybe know about the history of a game like Shrek SuperSlam. The gist is that they were given a really tight deadline to produce a game that was divisive among their team-- But soon they got a second wind and decided to make it something. Heavily inspired by competitive Melee at the time, they ended up making the game a lot more hardcore than what a Shrek game should be. Extremely expressive movement, with Power Stone inspired environmental mechanics. While at the top level the game devolved into something very awful; The attempt was both prescient and ostensible.

I bring up the Shrek anecdote not because One Piece Grand Battle 3 has any sort of documented design history that led to a cult following-- it's mainly to illustrate that these are still games with ideas in them. I do think these games tend to suffer from massive design clutter just because of the odds they're given though. Typically not even given a full year to complete these games-- They have to fit in as many callbacks to the source material as possible, which doesn't always translate well to game mechanics.

The Grand Battle series is kinda unique in that it's entire presentation and style are I'd say, on brand. But no other game or related media actually does what they do or look like how they do. You hear a lot of people decry anime arena fighters nowadays because there are too many of them; But each of these games are genuinely very unique. The sequel to this game, Grand Battle Rush is one of the best looking games ever created in my opinion. Insane texture work, with really cool shadow masking techniques. The way it handles character outlines is cool too, it's a combination of many different blend modes which made the outlines not always super graphic. Something that you'd think would break art direction, but it's accounted for everywhere.

So, I'm writing for One Piece Grand Battle 3 mainly because there's one design element in this game that really stuck out to me and best embodies my thesis here. The fact that these are really games worth looking at. In this game, Hina is a playable character. Any One Piece fan might be surprised to hear this. In the series she only ever did one thing and basically never came back. But because she was relevant in 2003 she's here now! She has the ability to make her body into shackles that detach after latching onto a target. In game, she has a move that adds up to two stocks of charge, and with 2 charges her shackles ensnare the opponent for the longest duration. The first guess is that you use this in tandem with one of her other moves, just a straight lunge that applies the shackles. As a sort of way of just catching someone, or maybe it's like a command grab. But this move isn't unblockable, and it's slow and terrible.

You'd think there was no use of charging her stocks, but there actually is one. At the end of her horizontal auto combo (There are 3 combo trees. Horizontal, Vertical, and Guard Break. There are two enders unique to the Horizontal and Vertical path. Either continue forward, or end with the other button. Example being A->A->X as a horizontal string with a vertical ender.) the vertical ender will whiff its final hit if the combos motion went over unlevel terrain. The hit right before applies the stock shackle effect. The interplay here is monumentally interesting to me. Because in a more modern game, these moves would be scripted. But there's an emergent quality here. All of her strings end with her ensnaring the opponent, just to automatically break it with the followup. It's one move, and yet. Whiffing it this way grants you an entirely new combo extension.

Interactions like this are kinda why I always look at these games. There's, a lot. And also, I just love One Piece.

Most of the time when I bring up Rakugaki Showtime to people, they think it's this game, or that RS is an N64 game. Both games are very obscure, extremely stylish doodle games that came out around the same time and use like every old cartoon sound effect. This is RakugaKids though!

This game is very interesting. Of course there's the fact that it even exists at all. It's a very bizarre concept-- A 2D cartoon fighting game for the N64, a platform that didn't really do many fighting games outside of a few. It's also a game they ran out of time on. There's 2 characters they didn't get to finish, and some ideas were ostensibly left a bit half-baked. The final game did come out great though.

It's not a very hardcore game, but it does feel like an Actual Fighting Game in every measure. Characters tend to have a chain system like in the Marvel vs Capcom games, but where characters are able to end their chains vary just as much. Cat Kit can chain together basically whatever he wants, and can link a heavy into a light. Marsa can only chain 2 normals max, and just light into light or light into medium. RakugaKids has 3 punch buttons, and 3 kick buttons. You can do some really difficult links, most links from a heavy tend to be 1 framers. And there's some really funny, classic old game stuff. Like Mamezo's bowling infinite or Darkness' unblockables. There's actually quite a bit to unpack here mechanics wise. But it's also a very approachable, modest game.

It doesn't have superjumps like Marvel does. The main combo structure is a ground chain into launcher, then followed with a jump-- into one air normal, double jump canceled into a air throw. Combos aren't very long aside from the infinites. But characters deal a considerable amount of damage on hits. The hitbox design in this game is also very classical. A lot of normals are meant mainly to be thrown out in neutral rather than combo fodder like MVC.

Of course the main thing to talk about here is how this game looks. This game's visuals are beautiful and impressive. All projectiles in this game cause heavy slowdown and it's kind of obvious why extra elements would do that when looking at how characters animate. Every character has a million things going on in their secondary action. From Astronots floating just off the ground cuz he's a zero gravity Spaceman, bumping up and down- to Mamezo's dastardly finger wiggling. There's also a line boil here. With everything together, characters look like they're animated at 60FPS. It's a game I'd never grow tired of looking at. The voices are very funny too, and have amazing one liners.

So, I mentioned that bit about Rakugaki Showtime because I made that mistake a very long time ago too. Except, in reverse. I knew about RS before this game, but this game was on certain ROM sites a lot earlier than RS was. So this is the game I played first heh. It ended up being just as cool!

Japanese rayman is epic !

i bloody loved my time with astal, it was bealtiful, it was whimsical, simplistic story yet fairy tale-like, felt like an adventure through and through even if it got a big unfair at the end there, but i can forgive that because i emulate and also because you can suplex every enemy in the game, even the last boss, you can MGS raiden suplex the last boss punch !!
there is something about these fantastic worlds that get to me on a emotional level, i loved astal too much, the music is worth ripping out and listening to itself alone

its not without flaws however, movement feels a little floaty, there are about 5 frames of input delay in every emulator you try, but from hardware recording it seems the same on physical as well, and the game also uses limited continues, now i am fine with a life count but a limited continue that sends you straight to the main menu is just an excuse to pad short games. still i can't complain because its not that hard of a game (the game actually tries to make a narrative of how OP astal actually is, i definelly recomend for people who love bealtiful artsy games with a fairy tale style, it might sound childish but its adorable for me.

on another note : what in tarnation is this american box art ? they turned my cute smol boy into a beetle chimpanzee ? why do old american box arts used to butch japanese artstyles so harshly ?

Uhhh this kind of rules?

Look, I have no delusions about being cool. When I was a kid, my dad was getting his PhD until I was like 9 years old, so I often found myself killing time in empty classrooms on Oklahoma University campus. That meant 30-60 minutes of just me and some chalkboards. For most kids, I assume that would mean a whole bunch of doodling. But for this radical 90s youth, it meant coming up with the most complicated long division problems I could and seeing how fast I could solve them.

I think basic math is fun! Sue me! My wife and I often watch 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and compete with each other for points throughout the episode. The 2-player mode of DK Jr. Math gave me the same vibes, but with some NES jank thrown in, and being limited to using single-digit numbers for each step of your equation. I had a great time!

The single-player mode was extremely anxiety-inducing at first while I tried to figure out if I remembered how to do this kind of math without being able to write down remainders, but once I got the hang of it, I knew this was exactly the kind of edutainment that little Alex would have loved. This is absolutely not for everyone, but tiny geeks and nerds (both currently and formerly tiny) will have a blast.

Cool game and all, but funny how they waited a month to reveal the microtransaction Tekken shop instead of announcing it at launch. Surely they didn't hide it to bump up review scores, right?
(But genuinely whyyy did they do this, they have much better pricing than SF6 and MK1 and would have been fine if they were up front about it, its the fact that they hid it that's so scummy to me.)

Edit: Lol, lmao
They did the street fighter thing where costumes cost $4 in the shop but you can only buy the premium currency at $5. Also they have single use items (ie fireworks) that cost real money too, arguably worse than what MK1 and SF6 are doing somehow. Not to mention still not fixing one of the games biggest issues - rage quitting - despite pretty much every other fighting game having solved it?

Edit: They're also charging for a battle pass that, just like SF6, has basically nothing worth the cost on it. I'm not surprised but I am disappointed. Plugging problems have not been fixed, recent patches have been widely maligned by players that actually know jack about high level Tekken, so I'm inclined to believe that those arguments are valid.