And no, I don't mean Divekick - Divekick was actually good and it deserved to be played way more. I'm talking about a game that's entirely based around a terrible, awful gimmick. And this is a gameplay gimmick that I'm talking about, not just a marketing gimmick. I'm not talking about remaking Street Fighter only with dinosaurs or weird blobby things or fucking hamsters or waifus or whatever. What's the gimmick, you ask? Well, consider this scenario. It's midway through a major tournament and you, a stream warrior, have just returned from some unavoidable distraction - acquiring food, helping your kid with their homework, pretending to do your job, whatever. You hit the stream and the first thing you see is this:
And you think to yourself, Welp, too bad he doesn't have any V-meter to reversal with, I guess he's just gonna have to hold that pressure. But then you look again and, whoops, that's wrong:
This happens all the time: you look at the screen, you see a character on the 1P side, and you instinctively assume that the character on the 1P side has the health and meter that are also on the 1P side. It happens to viewers, it happens to commentators, and it even happens to players. This isn't a problem with the game or anything like that. As we say in the software biz, this is a case of PEBKAC. But what if our instincts were right? What if the meters on the left ALWAYS belonged to the character on the left and the meters on the right ALWAYS belonged to the character on the right? Follow me, friends, into the humbling and terrifying (and, for now, purely hypothetical) world of Super Side Fighter.
In Super Side Fighter, characters wouldn't have health or meter or stun. Instead, SIDES would have health and meter and stun - if you're on the left side of the screen and the leftmost meter is full, you've got super. But then if you switch sides and the rightmost meter is empty, you've got jack shit. Same for health and everything else: your resources depend entirely on WHERE you are, not WHO you are.
Is this a tremendously awful idea? Of course! Look at the fucking title of this post! But could it make for some superbly entertaining bullshit? It couldn't possibly be worse than Street Fighter X Tekken! I say let's give it a try!
I mean, think about it: no longer could you just sit on a lead. Doing damage is hard, but switching sides is super fucking easy. We could finally dispense with X-factor and rage and V-trigger and all the other asinine comeback mechanics that are never properly balanced, because Super Side Fighter would BE a comeback mechanic.
You'd also have a whole new set of mindgame options. We all know that the side-switch is one of the best tools for generating offense in fighting games, but in Super Side Fighter you'd have to balance the reward of crossing your opponent up against the potential risk of getting caught with less life or bar. For the same reason, everybody would have to learn bread-and-butter combos that switch sides and also ones that stay on the same side, which would give the game more depth and force players to think all the time instead of going into brain-dead training-mode combos.
Plus, imagine all the fun ways you could screw with your opponent. If they're trying to mount a big comeback and they're on the side that has a ton of meter, you could intentionally switch sides, blow the meter, and then switch back, leaving them with nothing. Or instead of fighting to get out of the corner, you might fight to stay in it. The stupid, amazing possibilities are endless!
The only downside of this whole thing is that I have shit for coding skills, so unless someone gets inspired and decides to make this happen, Super Side Fighter will forever remain a weird, slightly fucked-up dream. But who doesn't like to dream every now and then?
And you think to yourself, Welp, too bad he doesn't have any V-meter to reversal with, I guess he's just gonna have to hold that pressure. But then you look again and, whoops, that's wrong:
This happens all the time: you look at the screen, you see a character on the 1P side, and you instinctively assume that the character on the 1P side has the health and meter that are also on the 1P side. It happens to viewers, it happens to commentators, and it even happens to players. This isn't a problem with the game or anything like that. As we say in the software biz, this is a case of PEBKAC. But what if our instincts were right? What if the meters on the left ALWAYS belonged to the character on the left and the meters on the right ALWAYS belonged to the character on the right? Follow me, friends, into the humbling and terrifying (and, for now, purely hypothetical) world of Super Side Fighter.
In Super Side Fighter, characters wouldn't have health or meter or stun. Instead, SIDES would have health and meter and stun - if you're on the left side of the screen and the leftmost meter is full, you've got super. But then if you switch sides and the rightmost meter is empty, you've got jack shit. Same for health and everything else: your resources depend entirely on WHERE you are, not WHO you are.
Is this a tremendously awful idea? Of course! Look at the fucking title of this post! But could it make for some superbly entertaining bullshit? It couldn't possibly be worse than Street Fighter X Tekken! I say let's give it a try!
I mean, think about it: no longer could you just sit on a lead. Doing damage is hard, but switching sides is super fucking easy. We could finally dispense with X-factor and rage and V-trigger and all the other asinine comeback mechanics that are never properly balanced, because Super Side Fighter would BE a comeback mechanic.
You'd also have a whole new set of mindgame options. We all know that the side-switch is one of the best tools for generating offense in fighting games, but in Super Side Fighter you'd have to balance the reward of crossing your opponent up against the potential risk of getting caught with less life or bar. For the same reason, everybody would have to learn bread-and-butter combos that switch sides and also ones that stay on the same side, which would give the game more depth and force players to think all the time instead of going into brain-dead training-mode combos.
Plus, imagine all the fun ways you could screw with your opponent. If they're trying to mount a big comeback and they're on the side that has a ton of meter, you could intentionally switch sides, blow the meter, and then switch back, leaving them with nothing. Or instead of fighting to get out of the corner, you might fight to stay in it. The stupid, amazing possibilities are endless!
The only downside of this whole thing is that I have shit for coding skills, so unless someone gets inspired and decides to make this happen, Super Side Fighter will forever remain a weird, slightly fucked-up dream. But who doesn't like to dream every now and then?
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