Back In The Day, were you team Mortal Kombat or team Street Fighter?
Personally, I was an MK kid. I loved the gore (maybe a little too much), and I've never been patient enough for the precision required to be even passable at Street Fighter. Lord, to this day I can hardly even do a hadouken. I've been playing a bit of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 lately and the results are embarrassing.
Either way, though, when you think about it, that fighting brand rivalry was nearly as big as Mario-versus-Sonic (I was Sonic Team, in case you're wondering). But the genre in general largely fell off over the years with the decline of arcades, and except for a couple good brands -- Soulcalibur and possibly Virtua Fighter, essentially* -- the arcade-fighter heyday seemed basically over.
Now a few things have happened that stand to change that. Connected consoles mean we no longer need arcades to square off. And now that Warner Bros. has bought up Midway primarily for Mortal Kombat, it's a good bet we could see "Fatality" return to the common lexicon once more.
Of course, Capcom brought it in style with Street Fighter IV last year, and the publisher has up til now faced few, if any obstacles in the way of cornering the traditional fighting game market in the West. I wondered how the company would feel about the return of Mortal Kombat, and so I asked 'em.
Turns out they're more than ready for MK to bring it on. Capcom's Chris Kramer talked to me about the evolution and dynamics of arcade fighting franchises over the years, and he says a return to the rivalries and richness we remember from our arcade-fueled younger days would be a good thing for the genre, the industry and gamers alike. Check out the article!
Not included in the story, but cute: Kramer says that when Capcom developers and staff attend EVO tournament finals, they're often encouraged by fans and attendees to show off their skills at Street Fighter -- having developed it, they ought to know its ins and outs well enough to give the tournament fighters a run for their money, right? Not so.
"You dont generally see Capcom staff playing in public," Kramer told me (he was trying to make me feel better for my admitted barely-remedial SF skillz). "Everyone's like 'where's Seth [Killian]? I don't want to make this game look bad.'"
[*there's always gonna be that guy who leaves a comment about HOW CAN I NEGLECT all the AMAZING LAST-GEN FIGHTERS blah blah. i'd like to tell that guy to cool his jets for today.]
