Picture this for a moment: you’re sitting comfortably, with a nice drink and a little snack, and one of your favorite anime comes on the screen. Isn’t that life? It doesn’t matter your age, this genre is comforting to say the least.
The colors, the flashes, and the characters all connect with the viewer one way or another. As the anime and video game industry boomed in parallel to one another during the 90s, Japan decided to capitalize by combining them, putting the player in the front row of their favorite worlds.
This was a massive success. Animation and development studios quickly realized it was one of the biggest wins of their respective industries. Merch lets you wear your shows, and video games let you live them. It was a vicious cycle.
You watch the show, you want to play the game. You play the game, and you want to watch the show. The only difficult member of said feedback was the parents who had to keep up with different installments of the same franchise, a practice that quickly oversaturated the market.
Eventually, anime fighting games became more about fighting games than anime. Just recently, with releases like Hunter X Hunter Nen Impact, My Hero Ultra Rumble, and One Piece Bounty Rush, we see how the audience gets a fun iteration of the world they know and love, but they all miss the very thing that made us play the games in the first place: the story.
I remember vividly booting up Dragon Ball Z: Budokai or Naruto: Rise of Ninja and rejoicing in its story mode. A carbon copy of the episodes we replayed on the network before streaming, the arcs we talked about for hours on end with friends.
.webp?width=700)
Nowadays, these games have our favorite characters going mano-a-mano with little to no substance, very few “stakes”. You lose, you replay the fight. Gone are the days of simulated open worlds, quick-time events, rendered cutscenes, etc.
These entries rely entirely on your experience with the original material instead of becoming an extension of it. You don’t get to play your favorite show’s story; you play a carcass of a fighting game with your favorites’ skins.
Yeah, the moves are similar, and familiar voices repeat the familiar lines we hear on these shows. But the immersion is gone, and the only way to get it back is to return to storytelling. Not even new ones at that, just the story we were told that convinced us we wanted more.
My Hero Ultra Rumble could get a boss or mini-boss tournament with the show’s most important battles. Hunter X Hunter Nen Impact could have manga-panel animation to resemble cutscenes and a cute traversal mini-map to advance the plot.
It’s in the details that make or break a story mode. Whilst open world might not be possible for all genres or installments, adding atmosphere makes the player suspend their disbelief, really adopting these digital worlds as headcanon even if you’re adapting filler content.
This same format, however, has tired out Dragon Ball Z fans, as almost every entry is story-based, taking away development resources from balancing and enhancing the fighting part of these games. (Must be nice.)
While some franchises may have overdone it, other series that do not get to release as often or at all need to capitalize on every title and catering exclusively to the FGC, and not your own community, will create zero hype for a new season, let alone a video game sequel.
For more like this, stick with us here at Gfinityesports.com, the best website for gaming features and opinions.