Gaming off the Beaten Path

It's time to talk about what may be the clone-iest of the Street Fighter Clones.  Released by Data East in 1993 and ported to the SNES the next year, Fighter's History is the first in a series of games from the early 90's. I can't say I've ever played the others, the second game was only ever released on the Neo Geo CD and the third game never left Japan. Honestly, it would probably be easier and cheaper to fly to Japan to pick up a copy of the third game than it would to find a working Neo Geo CD and a copy of the second. But the first game was relatively easy to acquire and became infamous for taking fighting games to a place they'd never been before...the courtroom. You see, I'm not the only one that who considers Fighter's History to be the most egregious Street Fighter ripoff. Capcom thought so too. They sued Data East for copyright infringement, claiming they had ripped everything from their characters to their combat straight from their more popul...

Don’t let the title fool you, I’m not going to start writing about movies any time soon. There are plenty of video game movies out there, most of them terrible.  There are probably even more video games about movies.  But what about video games about movies about video games?  I can only think of one. Street Fighter: The Movie is the fighting game you weren’t sure you needed, or even wanted.  I can’t imagine what was going through Capcom’s head when they green-lit this.  Think of it like this: imagine that someone decided to write a book called “Lord of the Rings,” but it was based on the movie, which is already based on a book.  It wouldn’t make much sense at all.  There would be some differences, sure.  But would it really be worth your time? While you think about it, let’s talk a little bit about the similarities between SF:TM and Super Street Fighter II.  It’s got all the same characters (Sans Fei Long, ...

Lets talk about video game crossovers. Nowadays, they are common.  You have Marvel Vs. Capcom, Mortal Kombat vs D.C., Mario and Sonic’s Olympic Games and dozens of others.  That’s to say nothing of Super Smash Brothers, which is arguably the greatest crossover game of all time.  Just look at all the characters in the latest version. They weren’t always as common as they are now, but gaming crossovers have always had a place in the medium.  For all the things developers mess up, they are also something that is usually done right.  In 1993, Tradewest probably figured “hey, our two biggest IPs are among the gaming world’s most popular beat em ups, lets mix them together!”  So, we got Battle Toads/Double Dragon on SNES/Genesis.  Anyone who owned an NES is probably very familiar with these two franchises (this game also came out on the NES, by the way). Both were two player co-op beat em’ ups where you moved to the right and pu...