FIVE HALLOWE'EN-Y FIGHTING GAME CHARACTERS

Killing Zone, eh? What a clusterfuck of terrible gameplay, broken game modes and graphics that were blockier than the inside of a Lego factory that was. Still, I like the idea of playing as horror-themed characters in beat-em-ups, so I though I'd take a look at some of the most Hallowe'en-appropriate fighting game characters. Then I remembered about Darkstalkers, so I went and played that for a bit, and that went a long way to getting Killing Zone's rancid flavour out of my mouth. As spooky as all the characters in Capcom's premier monster-based fighting series undoubtedly are, everyone knows about them already. Not wanting this list to be too obvious, I've decided to cast my net a little a little wider. This hopefully means there'll be some characters included that you've never seen before - however, it also means I'll have to call this article Five Particularly Hallowe'en-y Fighting Game Characters That Aren't From the Darkstalkers Series. Bit of a mouthful, that. Anyway, who's first?

Alice, Asura Blade.

Our first fighter appears in Fuuki's 1998 arcade title Asura Blade. Alice looks like a nice girl, doesn't she? A little stern perhaps, but I'm sure she's respectful to her elders, does well in school and doesn't spend her Sunday evenings performing dark sacrifices to the dread lord Baal.

See, she's even carrying a book with her as she fights. How very studious. Of course, this is a Japanese fighting game, so Alice here has almost no chance of turning out to be a normal little girl. Plus, this'd be a pretty shitty entry on the "Hallowe'en Fighters" countdown if she was just a kid who liked reading. So, what's her freakish power?

Skeletons! Alice is quite the young necromancer, and all her attacks revolve around animating the bones of long-dead warriors with her eldritch magicks. If there was one power I could take from a videogame character, it would be Alice's skeleton-summoning skills. Not only would it be incredibly handy around the house, you'd never need to worry about people stealing your seat on the train ever again. The 3:28 to Leeds will be a much more pleasurable experience if you can always guarantee yourself a table seat, and as a bonus you'll have someone to play I-Spy with on the longer trips. Here's a tip: if they say it begins with "B", it's probably bones.

Tessa / Tabasa, Red Earth / Warzard.

Capcom's Red Earth is a strange beast, a technically solid fighter with some RPG elements that's hampered by only having four playable characters. Happily, one of those characters is a witch - if her magic powers didn't clue you in, Tessa's giant pointy hat gives it away. The hat serves another purpose, too; it distracts you from the fact she's wearing trousers of such mammoth volume and gargantuan puffiness that even MC Hammer would be taken aback to see them.

When talking about horror-themed fighting games, the conversation always ends up back at Darkstalkers, and that's sort of the reason I've included Tessa on this list. Here's my half-baked and completely unverified theory: Tessa was originally designed for Darkstalkers but never made it into that series, instead pitching up in Red Earth.

The reason I say this is that the Darkstalkers series doesn't include a witch amongst its menagerie of freaks. Each of the other Hallowe'en mainstays, even the gill-monster, gets a character based on them (the other exception might be the skeleton, but as someone pointed out in the comments for Killing Zone, Zabel is pretty much there) but the witch is a notable absentee. So, maybe Capcom did try to design a witch, but for some reason she was rejected. If that is the case, I'm going to presume that the reason she was rejected is because she's not scantily-clad enough - and after Felicia, getting her scantily-clad enough without giving the game a XXX rating is a difficult task indeed.
So, that's my baseless theory: Tessa is a leftover Darkstalkers character. And even if she isn't, she deserves her place here because she's a witch. That hat's a real giveaway.

Marco, Kaiser Knuckle

Taito's entry into the crowded field of Street Fighter II clones was actually a fairly decent effort, the basic gameplay being enlivened by some nice graphics, destructible arenas and interesting characters: the most interesting, and my personal favourite, is the bandage-shrouded Frankenstein's Monster Marco. I've always liked the mysterious bandaged look, although I'm not sure the off-the-shoulder top is really working for him.

While he plays like the slow-yet-powerful fighter that I'm sure you assumed he was, Marco also has a few tricks up his sleeve. He can throw his head at his opponents, for one thing. It regrows instantaneously, so if the scientist who created Marco hasn't already been brutally slain by a mob of angry villagers already then he's in line for a Nobel Prize. Marco can also stretch his limbs to attack opponent from afar, much like Dhalsim: unlike Dhalsim, Marco does it by ripping his own limbs apart.

It may look painful, but the pain is worth it if it means you can punch your doppelganger in the dick from across the room.

Ickybod Clay, Clayfighter

Want a spooky character, but can't decide if a ghost or a pumpkin most effectively conveys the right terrifying message? Slap a pumpkin on top of ghost! Job done, everyone gets a raise.

His bio may make him sound like a goth, but I love Ickybod because he's so... Hallowe'en-y. It's just a shame he appears in a game as sub-par as Clayfighter: if he appeared in a title that was even half-decent I'd play it constantly just to be close to my mallowy pumpkin hero, but as it stands Clayfighter is so bad not even Ickybod the Wonder Squash can redeem it. So, he remains trapped in his claymation prison, patiently waiting for someone to buy his rights and make a game starring him that doesn't make the player want to renounce fighting games forever.

He certainly does - my heart, that is! Oh ho ho, we do love to joke. And kill.

Skullomania, Street Fighter EX

As much as I love Ickybod, I love Skullomania just that little bit more. Created by Arika for Street Fighter EX, an early attempt at a polygon-based SF game, Skullomania has an obvious Hallowe'en connection in that he's dressed as a ruddy skeleton. I like skeletons, and I appreciate the opportunity to punch M. Bison in the face while playing as one. However, the main reason I like Skullomania so much, and the reason that I feel he's particularly appropriate for this Hallowe'en list, is his backstory.

Once a normal salaryman struggling with his shitty job, Saburo Nishikoyama dresses as a skeleton-based superhero during a promotion at the department store where he works. Then he goes fucking insane. He decides that the life of a salaryman isn't enough for him, and he dedicates himself to fighting evil as a costumed superhero, presumably with no training, martial arts skills, gadgetry or any clue what the hell he's doing. It's a terrifying story, really - a man is crushed beneath his weight of his miserable career, suffers a complete mental collapse and takes to running around in a spandex Hallowe'en costume and beating people up. Magical, simply magical.
If you'd like a clearer indication of the wonder that is Skullo's madness, here's a compilation video showcasing his signature move: the "Skullo Dream".

Punch, kick, drink some tea, kick, sexy pose, punch, punch, laser beam. Forget the Shun Goku Satsu, the Skullo Dream is the greatest move in the whole of the SF canon.
While the SFEX series wasn't bad, I think the only thing that came out of it that I would love to see again is Skullomania. Sadly, I don't think Capcom own the rights to ol' Skullo: that honour goes to SFEX co-developers Arika. Still, no matter how much of a dream beyond a dream it is I'll continue to hold my lonely vigil, waiting for the magical day when Skullomania returns to us in playable form. Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 DLC? If only.

There you go, then - a quick look at five phantasmagorical fighting game characters. I can only pray that when I suffer my inevitable metal collapse, I come out the other side dressed as a skeleton.

Recently on VGJUNK:
Punch a zombie in half in the excellent Night Slashers!
Jiang Shi and Mr. Vampire in Phantom Fighter!
Part Two of this year's Hallowe'en VGM Playlist!

FIGHTERS OF THE WORLD: BRAZIL

When I think of Brazil, I think of football, Pelé and the less terrifying kind of carnivals, the ones with the girls and the feathered headdresses and less clowns. When videogame developers of the nineties thought of Brazil, they apparently thought of a race of feral, jungle-dwelling beastmen. Yes, it's time for Fighters of the World: Brazil!

Okay, so maybe that's a little unfair: as we will see, Brazilian fighters seem to be split into two categories, only one of which is "feral, jungle-dwelling beastmen". So, why Brazil? Because a far higher proportion of beat-em-up characters than you might think hail from Brazil. In fact, I'm fairly certain there're more Brazilian fighters than fighters from the rest of South America put together. I reckon there are three main reasons for this: one, Brazil has certain attributes that are more easily recognised than those of other South American countries; things like the rainforests and carnivals that seem to be associated much more with Brazil than with, say, Argentina. Secondly, they have their own specifically Brazilian martial art in capoiera, which is always a selling point in a videogame about clobbering people. Thirdly, there's a long (and interesting, if you're into that kind of thing) history of immigration between Japan and Brazil, which must have left an impression on the developers of the almost-exclusively Japanese game shown here. Sorry, Venuzuela, but you just don't have that kind of clout.
Let's begin with Brazilian gaming's most famous son...

Blanka, Street Fighter II

Well, he's Blanka, isn't he? What more can you say? Possibly the most famous Brazilian who isn't a world-class footballer, Blanka sets the standard for Brazilian fighters, as well as being the main inspiration for all the subsequent beastman-type characters from the Amazon basin. Sure, he's a wild man from out of the rainforest, but he wasn't always that way: he was once a young man called Jimmy whose plane crashed into the jungle. Now, we all know Blanka has the power of electricity, but how did he gain this power?
Well, one explanation given is that the electrical storm that caused his plane to crash also gave him the power of a thousand Duracells. YAWN. This is an incredibly dull explanation, something you might expect to see in any given Hollywood blockbuster about some guy who gets electrocuted and gains super powers. Like Short Circuit, but with a lingering smell of burning hair. BORING. No, you should all stick to the story as it is given in the Street Fighter II instruction manual: after crashing in the jungle, Blanka was raised by electric eels. As a child, he received parental care from a creature that shows no signs of affection, could not possibly provide food or shelter and lives underwater. Blanka not only survived all that but also somehow learned how to shoot electricity from his skin. I don't know what he's doing entering the World Warrior tournament in the first place: he's already shown that he's is the most colossal of badasses. What do you have left to prove, Blanka? Nothing, that's what.
In the end, it all works out nicely for Blanka, as his SFII ending shows him reunited with his mother:

Aww. His mother recognises him by the anklet she gave him as a child, which he's still wearing to this day. That shows some real foresight from Momma Blanka, buying her son an anklet that will still fit him when he's a fully-grown, mutated beastman. And they all lived happily ever after, with Blanka even becoming good friends with Dan Hibiki and turning out to be the best character in Super Street Fighter IV (prove me wrong!). God speed you, you big green freak.

Liza, Kaiser Knuckle

No, not Minelli, but another jungle warrior. This one's from Taito's 1994 fighter Kaiser Knuckle, and true to her jungle heritage she has a monkey and a parrot. A parrot wearing a feathered headdress, which seems a little redundant. Well, I say her jungle heritage, but maybe not:

She's looking rather masculine there, I must say, but living in the jungle probably affords you very little opportunity for self-beautification. It's hard to find time to exfoliate when you're being chased by a jaguar.

It doesn't matter what gender Liza is, though, because she can throw a parrot or a monkey at you as a special attack. I can't think of many things worse than an enraged parrot being thrown into my face, apart from an enraged monkey being thrown into my groin.

Not a problem you've ever had, huh Liza?

Rila, Breakers

From Visco's surprisingly good 1996 fighter Breakers, Rila is another wild woman with terrible rending claws and the hair of glam metal guitarist. As with several Brazilian characters, she's like a disturbing "sexy" version of Blanka:


Creepy. Actually, she plays a lot differently than Blanka, and is probably my favourite characters in Breakers. Breakers also contains a French pirate who attacks by throwing roses, so being my favourite in that line-up is high praise indeed, Rila.

It's true: I tried living in the forest once. Drinking your own piss isn't nearly as easy as Bear Grylls makes it look.

Golrio, Fight Fever

Up next is Golrio from Viccom's terrible 1994 offering Fight Fever (my recommendation would be to take two aspirins and lie down in a darkened room). He looks like he's from one of Brazil's indigenous tribes, albeit a tribe that founded its society on a brief glimpse of someone playing Street Fighter II. In the vast morass of one-on-one fighters that appeared trying to ape SFII's success, Fight Fever is both one of the worst, gameplay-wise, and one of the ones that ripped SFII off the most. How much did it rip off from Capcom's magnum opus? Well, here's Blanka's jumping medium kick:

And here's Golrio's.

I rest my case. Other than that, the odd thing about Golrio is that he fights like a sumo wrestler. I guess to try and save time the just crammed E. Honda and Blanka into the same rip-off character. Golrio, you suck and I hate you.

Claudia Silva, Knuckle Heads

In that situation - you know, standing in a ceaseless, raging inferno - that kind of costume seems appropriate for the first time ever.
I'm sure you can see a pattern forming here: she's a bit of a wild woman, fighting with claws to protect the rainforest she calls home. She looks a little like a Fist of the North Star character, but the way her sprite is standing makes her look more like a T-Rex that needs its fingernails cutting.

Claudia's goal is to win the Knuckle Heads tournament and claim the prize money. But what can she spend her vast fortune on?

She buys the entire Amazon rainforest. That must have been some cash prize: the logging rights alone must run into billions of dollars! Oh, I get it now; you're going to hang onto the rainforest until the rest of the Earth's natural resources have been depleted and then sell it off for a vastly increased sum. You're a crafty one Claudia.
Oh, I've just noticed the pun in her name. Claudia. Clawdia. Claws. Well played, Namco, well played.

Eddie Gordo, Tekken

At the start of the article I said that there are two types of fighter from Brazil. Well, I've covered the beastman types, and they're by far the most interesting fighters. I find it's hard to remain uninterested when an angry green man is trying to electrocute me.
The other set of fighters from Brazil are the capoeria masters. The most famous capoeira fighter in videogames is probably (sigh) Eddie goddamn Gordo.
What can I say about this button-masher's dream that hasn't been said already. I hate you, Eddie, I hate your tumbling, cartwheeling bullshit. I know what you're thinking, if you can't beat a button-mashing Eddie player, then you're just shit at Tekken. Well, you got me. I am shit at Tekken. There! I admit it. My brain just can't handle the extra dimension, and I hate juggling, but most of all I hate you, Eddie, you festering pustule of a man. I was happy when you got replaced by Christie! HAPPY!

Richard Meyer, Fatal Fury

Here's a capoeira fighter who's much better than Eddie: Richard Meyer from Fatal Fury. Richard has the distinction of being the first character in a fighting game to use capoeira, although a fat lot of good it did him as after Fatal Fury he had to wait until KoF Maximum Impact 2 for another playable role.

My favourite thing about Meyer is that he received a name change in the Portuguese version, from Richard Meyer to Ricardo Maia. I'd like to have been at the meeting for that one. "So this guy's Brazilian? And they called him... Richard Meyer? He sounds like an English bank manager. Tell you what, we'll just change it to Ricardo Maia". Honestly though, I think it's a nice solution.

Khushnood Butt / Marco Rodriguez, Garou: Mark of the Wolves.

Yes yes, his name is Butt. That's only because it was changed from the more normal-sounding (and much more Brazilian-sounding) Marco Rodriguez, apparently to avoid confusion with mixed martial artist Ricco Rodriguez.
Khushnood is the odd-one-out in this list: neither a beastman nor a capoeira fighter, he practices Kyokugenryu Karate, most famously used by Ryo and Robert from Fatal Fury. So congratulations to Butt for breaking out of the Brazilian stereotype and overcoming his deepy unfortunate name. I just wish I was as cool as this guy.

So, Brazil, then. Feral, jungle-dwelling beastmen? Sure, there are plenty of those, along with capoeira fighters and the occasional karate badass. Frankly, it's a more diverse bunch than the previous countries I've looked at, so congratulations to Brazil for being less easily pigeonholed than France and Russia. Now I'm off to create my own Brazilian character based on British stereotypes of Brazil. She's going to be a passionate, thong-wearing, beach volleyball-playing supermodel, and her game will sell millions.

Previously in the Fighters of the World Series:
Russia!
France!