WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED
It was just brought to my attention this morning that there's an Arc System Works fighter called Battle Fantasia that just got released on PS3 and 360 in Japan. The game is over a year old and I knew nothing about it.
So I Googled the name and saw that the game is absolutely gorgeous. It's got a soft-focus fairy-tale setting with characters based on fantasy archetypes but mixed up enough to keep them fairly fresh. The game even has RPG trappings for even more nerd appeal - characters have 'HP' instead of just unmarked health gauges and have numerical damage indicators when taking hits.
The main reason this interests me is because the game is a 2D fighter with 3D characters and stages. I swear I imagined this concept a few years ago as a solution to some of the limitations of sprite art and I wondered who would do it first. This is pretty much the confirmation I needed that ArcSys is secretly probing my mind to produce fighting games designed exactly to my whims. As if I needed any further proof to prove this notion: one of the characters is a powerful wizard who also happens to be a tiny rabbit wearing a hat as big as he is. It's catering right to my secret weakness to cute characters who are secretly powerful or total badasses.
I hope this gets translated. ASW's Fist of the North Star was passed over for whatever reason but the more recent GG2 Overture got the go-ahead. Hopefully we're still at the point where publishers will release/translate anything slightly viable for the new-gen systems because they're trying to drive up the available software.
EDIT: It's come to my recollection that I would have seen Street Fighter 4, which also did the 2D characters, 3D environments presentation, before Battle Fantasia but I wasn't encouraged to remember SF4 since the game looked completely asstacular (I calls it as I sees it) and because Battle Fantasia still predates it by a year so my observation about it being the first that I know of to use that presentation still stands
So I Googled the name and saw that the game is absolutely gorgeous. It's got a soft-focus fairy-tale setting with characters based on fantasy archetypes but mixed up enough to keep them fairly fresh. The game even has RPG trappings for even more nerd appeal - characters have 'HP' instead of just unmarked health gauges and have numerical damage indicators when taking hits.
The main reason this interests me is because the game is a 2D fighter with 3D characters and stages. I swear I imagined this concept a few years ago as a solution to some of the limitations of sprite art and I wondered who would do it first. This is pretty much the confirmation I needed that ArcSys is secretly probing my mind to produce fighting games designed exactly to my whims. As if I needed any further proof to prove this notion: one of the characters is a powerful wizard who also happens to be a tiny rabbit wearing a hat as big as he is. It's catering right to my secret weakness to cute characters who are secretly powerful or total badasses.
I hope this gets translated. ASW's Fist of the North Star was passed over for whatever reason but the more recent GG2 Overture got the go-ahead. Hopefully we're still at the point where publishers will release/translate anything slightly viable for the new-gen systems because they're trying to drive up the available software.
EDIT: It's come to my recollection that I would have seen Street Fighter 4, which also did the 2D characters, 3D environments presentation, before Battle Fantasia but I wasn't encouraged to remember SF4 since the game looked completely asstacular (I calls it as I sees it) and because Battle Fantasia still predates it by a year so my observation about it being the first that I know of to use that presentation still stands