White Man

This would be pretty cool, actually. The first NGBC wasn't a masterpiece, but I'd say it's among the most underrated fighters SNK has developed. Plus there are more than enough characters left for them to include in a sequel. I'd also be on board with SNK vs. Capcom 2. A crossover fighter NOT made by Capcom would be such a refreshing change of pace...

I want a console-version-only feature where activating DT triggers a sample of Tim Kitzrow saying "D-D-D-DANGER TIIIIIIME!" I'd be willing to pay for that if it was DLC.

Solid points. I think a huge part of the reason why BB seems to have lost its luster is that we've just been bombarded with so many new revisions since the series debuted. All joking aside, seven versions of a game in six years is insane. It became industry-wide jokes about how Street Fighter 2 and Guilty Gear XX were getting whored out with new versions, and neither of those games came anywhere close to what's happened with BB. When you've got new revisions coming out less than a year apart, it drains a lot of your motivation to keep playing because you know most of what you learn is going to be useless in ten months. Then of course there's the money issue... Also, as others have pointed out, the developers' tendency to take such wildly different approaches to character/system balance with each new version casts the impression they don't have a clue what they're doing. That probably isn't the case, but when every new set of patch notes makes half the community go "WTF?!" then something is wrong.

As much as I hate to fan the flames of an argument we could easily do without, I have to voice my support for the AC+ story mode. Most of the plotlines were absolutely ridiculous and wild and pure fun—in other words, the epitome of Guilty Gear. I'm sorry if anyone thought there weren't enough scenes with dudes waxing philosophic about what it means to be strong while meditating under waterfalls for fifteen minutes, but if you couldn't derive even the smallest amount of enjoyment from Chipp beating the shit out of people to get votes so he could become president, then you're playing the wrong game. Switch to BB if you want a fighter with a super melodramatic plot. Just make sure you come back to GG if you need some levity, because Robo-Ky's story alone was funnier than nearly all the BB gag reels combined. For god's sake, Slayer goes on a poignant farewell tour before deciding he'd rather stick around and recreate Project Mayhem from Fight Club. How can you not love that?! Edit: I know I know, story discussion in Zepp Meseum. I'm just saying.

That's just a common rule of business. When you're the boss, everything is your fault.

Everybody does insane damage off of everything, but I haven't seen anybody lose more than a sliver of health from guarding an entire block string against somebody in OD. I guess BlazBlue is Tekken now. Cool. EDIT: I guess chip damage is still there, if barely.

You're right, but I recall the models they created being fairly basic and unpolished, which would make sense since they were designed merely as aids to make producing the sprites easier and more cost-effective. If they wanted to use those models in the games, I imagine a fair amount of touch-up work would be required, maybe even partial remodeling. You could be on the money about this being a spin-off or some kind of side project, though. It could be anything, really. The job listings don't really give us enough to go off of beyond very broad speculation.

I don't even mind that the new character isn't "metal" enough or that she has Mori's sweaty fingerprints all over her or whatever; I mind that her design looks fucking stupid.

If this is the case, I might start playing BB again. I've never enjoyed fighters where the gameplay amounts to players taking turns juggling each other across the screen, with individual moves being virtually useless unless they combo into something else. I even stopped watching tournament footage for this game because 80% of every match was somebody in the corner with the other guy going through the same fifteen-second-long pressure string over and over again until they blocked wrong and got combo'd for a third of their HP.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems like it would be less work and require less money for them to make another five or six sprite-based characters than to retouch 30+ models and redesign their graphics engine from scratch. Or maybe not. I don't know... Either way, it's kind of weird for the company that recycled the same sprites in a new game every year for over a decade to turn around and ditch their infinitely nicer and more expensive sprites after 1.5 games (yes, I'm counting XII as half a game). Now that there's a new Guilty Gear coming out, Last Blade 3 has jumped to the top of my list for most-wanted fighting game sequels that I half expect will never be made.

"So many" brand new characters? Dude, so far we've gotten two out of a cast of fifteen. I'd argue the game doesn't have enough new characters. As others have said, I'm also hoping the PS3 version gets some sort of LE treatment. If you're going to do a multi-console release, then DO a multi-console release. Don't release the "real" version on one system and then offer a half-assed backup that people are expected to buy in disgrace for being too poor to get the latest console hardware.

I was talking about future revisions that might add more characters, implying the balance isn't likely to get much worse than it already is. It could still get worse, yeah, but it's not like they achieved this excellent gameplay stability that a new revision could potentially upset. The 1.1 patch did remarkably little to fix the game's most glaring issues. I've gone on the record as saying that the ideal number of characters for a 1-on-1 fighter is anywhere between 25 and 30, so I agree the cast for BB is quickly nearing the point of being bloated. Still, CT and CS2 are proof that the number of characters doesn't directly impact how balanced the roster is.

I might actually die laughing if this turns out to be another pachinko game.

Are you really going to say that in the wake of Kokonoegate?

Jubei is easily the most requested character in the entire franchise; there's no way they'd waste their trump card on a minimum-effort cash-in designed to keep the FG scene interested in BB for another year. He'll show up in the next major installment in the series, when they really need to sell copies.

EX characters are like a director's commentary track on a Blu-ray release: some people think it adds another layer to the experience, others have no interest and would rather just watch the movie. Either way, it's an optional bonus feature. The movie itself isn't somehow worse without a commentary track, while saying it shouldn't even be on the disc because it "wasn't in theaters" is the most nonsensical argument ever.

EX characters are a cool bonus feature, but their inclusion shouldn't be a priority--that is to say, something that eats up resources that could be used to develop more original content. If given the option, I'd definitely choose to have a 16th new character added to Xrd over EX movesets for the existing 15 characters.

I think Warp just KO'd this debate. Excellent points, very well said. Concerning my train wreck of a post from earlier... Sorry about that. I started off being facetious with the arcade nostalgia (I never actually saw anybody get punched, though there was an understanding that abusing obvious glitches got you a disgusted look at the end of a match) then kind of got sidetracked into a rant about the FGC that had next to nothing to do with the topic being discussed. Sorry again. The only other thing I'll say concerning that whole mess is that if anybody thinks being really good at a fighter is comparable to being a concert violinist or a master painter, they've officially lost all touch with reality.

What do you guys want to bet gold colors will be paid DLC?

The prevalence of stuff like this is proof that the fighting game community has lost its collective cojones. Back in the glory days of the thriving American arcade, a braindead one-button infinite wouldn't have been an issue because anybody who used it to stall out the timer would've gotten their teeth knocked down their throat. Sure you got thrown out for punching somebody, maybe even banned from the arcade, but you went out to a chorus of cheers from everybody who had their quarters stolen by the d-bag that stood there mashing a single button round after round then had the nerve to brag about his "epic" win streak. That was an unwritten rule of fighting game etiquette: You pull stupid, broken crap like that, you get a fist in your face. Nowadays, online play ensures anybody can be as much of a glitch-exploiting dick as they want without fear of repercussions. And every in-person encounter is dictated by this Neo Sirlinist philosophy that anything goes no matter what, and merely suggesting something might have been unsportsmanlike makes you a scrub. It's the opposite of real life. If we find out a player in the NFL used steroids, they get kicked out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and their team is disgraced. If somebody sweeps a FG tournament and takes a $5,000 prize pot by abusing an obvious glitch, we applaud their creativity and skill in breaking the game. Because effort is for scrubs. If the official motto of the community is "blame the game", then cool, I can play by those rules. But if we're going to reduce ourselves to the level of somebody cheating at Monopoly because of some ambiguous wording in the rulebook, then let's be adults and admit these games are nothing but silly toys where success amounts to finding the most useful bugs before everybody else. And if we go route, let's maybe not try to elevate events like EVO to the same tier as the Olympics and stop treating every tournament player like they were a pro athlete deserving of endorsement deals and a manga series chronicling their rise to YouTube fame. It's starting to get embarrassing.

There's also the fact that color pack DLC is pretty much a given. Those are literally free money for ASW.

I can deal with a lot of the hate MK9 gets, but that game probably had the best story mode of any fighting game I've ever played. Messy or not, at least it was interesting. The whole VN thing is agonizingly dull, and dull is the one thing a fighter should NEVER be under any circumstances. You pretty much just described the story routes from Accent Core Plus. How well a story is told has very little to do with the mode of its presentation.

Doesn't Under Night use different sprites for characters depending on which side of the screen they're on? Or am I not remembering that correctly?

These are funny jokes y'all posting.

To the best of my recollection, ASW has never released a new version of a game in arcades without rebalancing it. So I'd say folks with CT mains will likely be able to enjoy relearning their characters for a 7th time, yes.