What would you like from an NES fighting game?

There are a few discussions on this forum about the technical difficulties of creating a fighting game like "Street Fighter II", "Fatal Fury" or "Mortal Kombat" on the NES.

But in this thread, I'd rather talk about game contents themselves.

So, while we should keep the NES limitations in mind (i.e. a fighting game where four full-size fighter are on screen at once is pretty unlikely), the technical side should be secondary, i.e. it should not become a discussion about programming tricks to circumvent hardware limitations etc.

So, let's say someone programmed a new fighting game. (An original intellectual property, i.e. not a port of an existing game. And a straight, regular fighting game like the ones mentioned above. Not something like "Super Smash Bros." or "Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu".)
What would you want from that fighting game?

What kinds of gameplay mechanism would you like to have included?

Would you prefer larger sprites and occasional flicker or would you say that smaller sprites (like in the Game Boy Takara fighting games) are better, so that the sprites don't flicker that much?

What kind of atmosphere, background story, character style and art design would you like?

This is a good video of a lot of common general and UI annoyances people have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpXganAM_qA

Not a lot besides the net stuff that wouldn't matter on NES.

Have a good input buffer. Have consistent hitboxes during idle and hitstun. I tend to prefer games with air blocking, and chain based rather than link based games. Actively think about preventing infinites and unblockables or you're dead in the water. Make standing overheads reactable in practice and not just theory. No 1 frame lows. Defensive options besides blocking: Throw techs! Look up parries/push blocking.

I don't care that much about atmosphere and background story and style.

Oh god, reading your post reminded me of how crazy hard Skullgirls is. Once you try to play against someone other than the AI, all bets are off, and you're dead in the water.

Skullgirls is mechanic/reset heavy, yes. But is there any good fighting game where you have a chance against someone competent after only playing AI?

I'd say Street Fighter 2. On the opposite end of the spectrum (for fun) I'd say Super Smash Bros., if you're counting that as a fighting game.

To be honest, this is a bit too technical for me. For most of these terms, I don't even know what they mean.

When I asked what people would like in an NES fighting game, I was thinking more of general features. Things that a regular player recognizes and understand as well, not the highly technical engine details that are only really known to fighting game experts.

(I guess everybody knows what air blocking is, but I doubt that the random player who has "Street Fighter II" on the Super Nintendo next to "Super Mario World" and "F-Zero" knows what chain based vs. link based is about.)

So, any further opinions? If a fighting game got made for the NES, what would you want it to be like?

A chain has links, and according to Zelda Wiki and SmashWiki, Link has a chain.

According to an answer by CloudyMusic on Arqade, a "chain" means each attack in a sequence ends with a period during which the attack can be "canceled", or shortened to start the next attack in the sequence immediately. For example, in the NES beat-em-up platformer Haunted: Halloween '85, the last frame of animation in each punch combo is extra long so that it can be canceled into the next when the player presses B again. This behavior is the same in the forthcoming sequel The Curse of Possum Hollow.

A "link", on the other hand, relies on hitstun. After one attack completes, you can input another attack while the opponent is still in hitstun. This usually requires much stricter timing, but many games make links easier by adding a buffer. Instead of advancing immediately to the next frame when the player presses the attack button, a buffer registers that the player wants to perform an attack, and then the attack begins at the end of a particular frame. For example, HH85 had a problem with not recognizing jumps while going down a staircase or slope. We've changed it in Curse to buffer A presses performed just above the ground, so that when Donny lands on the next step, he immediately jumps.

Sooo, after me saying that I don't know much about these technical details and that the intention of this thread was more about general, easily-recognizable features of an NES fighting game, instead of delving into these really specific game engine details that only hardcore players really care about, you felt the need to write a post in this thread to explain said specifc game engine details?

Really?

I was getting the explanation out of the way in case someone else were to happen upon this topic.

So to re-rail, what aspects of "What would you like" did you want to know about?

Not really relevant for fighting games, but I was wondering about this when coding my own platform movement. I wanted a short jump buffer because I always felt that platformers that have that just tend to feel a little more "smooth". Some platformers go all the way and allow you to buffer the next jump all the way during the previous (I most recently found this in the latest Shantae game), which I think makes the game feel too bouncy.

However, I tried looking into whether any NES games ever did the jump buffer, and I can't seem to find any examples of this. So I decided not to do it, as I'm worried that it might ruin the "purist" feel of the classic NES action platformer which is what I'm going for, and some people might appreciate the concept of putting at least some effort into chaining tight jumps.

Is it a bad choice? Should I give up the "old school" feeling for the more modern approach on this subject?

O.k., but you do realize that this might include the possibility that the discussion drifts into this totally different territory of detailed gameplay mechanics, as you can already see in the post below your last post. And that's totally not what this thread is supposed to be about.



Everything that a normal player would talk about.

For example, if somebody asked what people want in a new "Super Mario Bros." game, they would probably talk about what kind of items they want, if the levels are linear or not, the general setting etc. They probably wouldn't talk about how many frames Mario should need from standing still until running at full speed. Or after how many pixels you can cancel a jump.

In the same way, I would imagine a talk about a hypothetical fighting game:

Do you want flashy special moves like fireballs and spinning piledrivers or would you prefer a "realistic" attempt where the moves are based only on stuff that really exists?

What art style would you prefer? "Street Fighter II"-like, "Mortal Kombat"-like or straight anime?

Would you like the sprites to appear super big, which would produce flickering?
Or, if you want them smaller to reduce flickering, would you want the style to be like the Game Boy versions of "Street Fighter Alpha" (realistic body proportions, but not really highly recognizable faces) or "Battle Arena Toshinden" (chibi style) or "King of Fighters" (non-chibi, but still with distinct heads and faces)?

About gameplay-related things (as long as it's just the basics and doesn't become too technical and detailed): How should reglar moves work with an NES controller? Tapping a button for a light attack and holding it for a hard one? Or like in "Mortal Kombat" where you move the d-pad along with the button to perform different attacks (A = regular kick, back + A = foot sweeper, forward + A = roundhouse kick)? Or something different?
How about special moves? Circle motions or forward, forward, A? Or something else?

What about story and setting?

Or characters? Do you prefer characters that look all like regular human fighters like in "Street Fighter I"? Or do you want your occasional freak of nature or evil overlord among the normal fighters like in "Street Fighter II"? Or maybe different time zones, like in "Eternal Champions"? Or do you want characters that are completely out of this world, like aliens or demons or the like?

What other features would you like to see in the game? Any special stuff in the stages? Anything in the game modes?


Something like this. A discussion where you can imagine what fighting games other people would have in mind, without discussing technical NES stuff like scanline counters and mappers and without discussing the academic fighting game stuff like frame counts and input buffer.

You should do what you think makes the best game, not what you think best duplicates the mistakes of the past.

Check Rad Gravity? It might. I know it used unorthodox controls, but haven't touched it in a while.

Sorzz


On-topic. Your game is more of a brawler (ie. one person vs. several oncoming enemies) rather than a 1-on-1 versus game, right? Or is this a completely different game? To start out with I think the difference between these two makes a huge difference in what people want to see, so you should make that clear. One usually has a single player (or co-op) focus, while the other is almost entirely geared towards 2-player matches. I could come up with a lot of things I want to see in an 8-bit fighter, but I'd need to know what kind it is before I start scraping my brain.

On the subject of art style, I think the NES lends itself most to the "anime"-style cartoonish figures with large heads, exaggerated features, etc. There's a limit to HOW big you can make the sprites, and with only three colors per hardware sprite you need to make the most of it - and with different characters, the differences between them need to be immediately apparent.
By extension, I also feel more comical and characteristic fighters work better than realistic human characters. It makes them instantly memorable. Don't be afraid to put in cliché characters (but be wary of racial stereotypes), subhumans or the occasional magic guy/girl.

I'm also on the Street Fighter style special inputs. Sticking to the tested and tried quarter circles, shoryukens, etc. is a safe way to go, and usually the first thing people will try when playing the game.

Big issue here is - was it really a mistake? A lot of people also feel that video games having lives is a relic at best...

My game that I actually programmed (with the character that you can see in my avatar on the left) is neither. It's a jump n run with a close ranged weapon.

The game that I want to talk about here isn't a game that actually exists. I just want to talk about hypothetical NES fighting games. And in this case, I want to talk about 1 on 1 fighting games like "Street Fighter II", "Fatal Fury", "Mortal Kombat" etc., not the "Double Dragon"/"Final Fight"-like brawlers.


Yeah, exaggerated heads etc. are one way. But it's not the only way to make them distinguishable.
Apart from using large characters like in "Turtles Tournament Fighters" (and having to come up with creative ways to reduce flickering), I've seen different styles in fighting games that use smaller characters:


Besides, you can have six colors per character since the other sprite palettes aren't really needed for anything else. (You just need to be careful when you actually overlay two sprites Mega Man-like, instead of separating the two palettes between top and bottom, like Amy in my avatar. Because this way, you run into the the eight sprites limit earlier.)

I agree there are other ways, and you can make them work, I just don't personally find them preferable. I think more distinct "comical" characters adds more flavor to the game, I'm even seeing that in much more advanced games such as Super Dodgeball on the Neo Geo.

Some of the examples you bring up are more limited in their options, too, since they are ports of 16-bit titles, and in the case of Turtles also have to adhere to a standard based on the license. Even then, the two GB examples you posted (and almost every other GB fighter) have to do the thing I suggest, where the characters' features become more exaggerated, as you'd never be able to tell KoF characters apart on a lo-res monochrome screen without doing that.

You could have characters like your Amy character, too, which would be very typical of early NES games, but I feel that in a game where you need to have multiple characters to choose from, it wouldn't take a lot of them before they start getting somewhat samey. With three or maybe four characters it could work fine though.

Generally, I don't feel it's a good idea to try making a fully fledged Street Fighter II style game on the NES. You'd just feel limited way too soon, and it's no fun playing a game that's constantly trying to work itself around its limitations, rather than one that just works well with what it CAN do. As such I feel that a NES vs-fighter should focus more on the movements and placements of your characters, than the individual moves. I know you aren't thinking of Smash Bros. style games, but I think it's possible to do a decent "hybrid" with more focus on the fighting, and less on the "party".

The "King of Fighters" example is actually the one that I would prefer if I cannot find a way around the flickering when using large characters.
The characters in "Street Fighter Alpha" are a bit too faceless for me. But "Battle Arena Toshinden" looks too cutesy. "King of Fighters" is a good middle way, though: The heads are recognizable, but the characters don't look too chibi-like and still communicate a serious vibe.


Yeah, this game was designed as a 1985-era game, but for a fighting game, I would definitely use another style, so that it looks more like post-1991 (i.e. the year when SF2 came out).


What limitations do you have in mind?

Apart from the eight sprite rule and only two action buttons, I don't see anything gameplay-related from the famous 1991-1995 fighting games that you couldn't replicate on the NES.
I mean, the Game Boy managed to pull off a decent port of "Mortal Kombat II" that plays pretty close to the real version. They said "Killer Instinct" is equally fine. And the above mentioned "Battle Arena Toshinden" and "King of Fighters" play nice as well.

With punch and kick alone, you are already able to do three different standing punches and three different standing kicks, so your possible attacks aren't that limited either.

What other limitations do you have in mind that could be problematic for a fighting game on the NES?


Well, the idea is to do a straight, regular fighting game. The very genre that only got really one representative on the NES ("Turtles Tournament Fighters"), and that game was rather mediocre.

"Smash Bros."-like would be a possibility, but I see this more as a completely new idea instead of one aspect for a planned fighting game. Because it would defy my very first intention: To have a real fighting game on the NES. Not some alternate genre that matches the NES better, but a fighting game in the same sense as the countless fighting games for the Super Nintendo and Game Boy, so that "Turtles Tournament Fighters" is not the only one anymore.

I can see one technical limit (apart from flicker) and one business limit.

The technical limit: Not all of both characters' frames will fit in video memory visible to the PPU at once. This means bank switching. And when a character throws a fireball, the sprite data for the fireball must remain available to the PPU until the fireball disappears. This might complicate bank switching scheme: you need to either switch the fireball separately from its owner or put the fireball in all banks. And I doubt that even a 32K CHR RAM is enough to hold a background plus all moves for both characters. You may end up need to go with either MMC3 + CHR ROM or some predictive double buffering scheme that adds lag if the player does something unpredictable.

The business limit: Are we doing this for a hobby or for money? If for a hobby, it'll be difficult to draw around 1,000 frames of animation, 80 for each of 12 characters, and difficult to balance the characters so as not to have "god tier" and "waste of CHR ROM tier" characters. If for money, I was under the impression that the market for new NES software wasn't nearly as big as, say, the market for Steam or 3DS or Wii U games.

I don't know much about the details of mappers yet, but yes, I assumed that I would use MMC3 for this kind of game, simply because "Turtles Tournament Fighters" uses it as well, as does "Fighting Road". I'm aware that this wouldn't be an NROM game, but I thought it wouldn't be that problematic because "Turtles Tournament Fighters" pulled it off as well.


If this ever gets made, then it would be a mix of both: I would sell it on cartridges and not simply put the ROM online for download, but it would still be a hobby project and not something that I try to get rich with.

Yes, I'm aware that this would require a lot of graphics, although I don't think it requires 80 frames per character. Ryu in the two Game Boy "Street Fighter" games has around 45-50 frames. And I would probably start with eight fighters.
I hope that my current music artist or two of my colleagues at work could help out with this.

As I said, if this ever gets made. In the moment, I'm not even writing any code for it. This is all just a thought in my head and nothing else. And this current thread is just to see what people would generally want in such a game.

Steam, 3DS or Wii U doesn't interest me. So, if the NES was not an option, I would probably not do a fighting game at all.