Street Fighter EX was first published as a coin-operated arcade game for the Sony ZN hardware in 1996. It is notable for being the first game in the Street Fighter franchise to feature 3D graphics, and was a spin-off of the Street Fighter series published by Capcom and designed by Japanese video game developer/publisher Arika. Sounds like a familiar situation doesn't it?
The game differentiates itself from SMRPG in that it was released on multiple consoles and received 2 sequels the last of which was Street Fighter EX3 released for the PS2 in 2000. The series remains what could be considered a cult favorite among Street Fighter fans mainly due to its soundtrack (which is amazing and you should check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VQ8Q9eq83A&list=PLE4B2BD2F4DF31136) and also the new characters that were created for that series that for legal reasons have never again appeared in a Street Fighter game. I've heard rumors over the years that there ended up being some bad blood between Arika and Capcom in a very similar way to what Nintendo and Square had going on for decades before now.
Now, I'm going to take a bit of a detour and focus on one of these EX specific characters in particular: Skullomania. What is a Skullomania you ask?
This is Skullomania.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1cTFSvD57s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEeZRcKYKK8
Per the Street Fighter wiki: "Skullomania was once an average salesman called Saburo Nishikoyama. His superiors were not pleased with his results as a salesman. Down on his luck and constantly under pressure for results, he was forced to act in a hero show at the department store which employed him. During the performance, he felt an indescribable passion awaken within him, and decided to become a vigilante crime-fighter, swearing to protect the world from evil. As a result, he began to compete against top-ranked martial artists, fighting them on an even playing field. "
So yeah, basically he's awesome. And when comparing them outside of their games he actually has a lot of similarities to Geno. He's an otherwise obscure side-game character that despite rare appearances in things here and there hadn't been playable in a game until 2018 (so he has one thing on Geno). But even though he should have faded into obscurity before his comeback in 2018 he actually remained very popular among the Street Fighter fanbase:
https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2016...troduced-series-canon-who-would-you-most-see/
As you can see here on Eventhubs he received the most votes on a poll among users for EX characters to be introduced to the main SF series by a wide margin. Out of 19 total characters and 626 total votes he received a whopping 170. Now you may be saying "Big deal, idiot. Who cares if he's the most popular character in an obscure side-series?" Well, Genoamigo, I invite you to look at the results of the official 2017 global popularity poll for all Street Fighter characters:
https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/vote?lang=en
16. Of all 109 Street Fighter characters this obscure-ass character who hadn't been in a game in almost 2 decades got 16th place and beat out series mainstays like Guile, Zangeif, Dan Hibiki, and E. Honda. So yeah, it'd be pretty fair to say Skullomania is the Geno of Street Fighter. The downside to being very much like Geno is that for as many people that love the character and want him back in the series there are also a good amount of people who just.... Don't get it. At all. They think he's an irrelevant joke character that shouldn't even be considered as DLC for SFV because Capcom doesn't actually own him. Some people even try to brush him off as "not being a Street Fighter character" even though the guy has been in 3 Street Fighter titles. Again, sounds familiar doesn't it?
So now going back to the series itself it's now been 19 years worth of absence of SF EX characters from mainline SF games. In the interim Arika has used the characters very sporadically. After SF EX3 in 2000 Skullomania appeared in music game Technicbeat in 2002 and it wasn't until 2018 that finally after all these years of fans waiting that he appeared as a playable character in Fighting Layer EX in 2018 for the PS4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgi-Y6MZvL0
See how hyped the crowd was at EVO 2017 for Skullomania's reveal? A spin-off character that hadn't been in a new game in almost 2 decades got a bigger reaction than Street Fighter's DLC characters that year, Kind of puts things in perspective when people say a character like Geno wouldn't ever get much of a reaction if revealed. And yeah, it's EVO, but still. 19 years.
Also funnily/interestingly enough a female version of Skullomania more recently appeared in SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy for the Switch (more about that later on):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=eUH2l7z9ius
So yeah Arika was using the character very rarely in their own games and then finally as guest characters in an SNK game, but still no SF game despite a fan demand for a return of Skullomania. Why?
Well the only vague details on the subject come in the form of a 2016 interview with Gamespot around the release of SFV's first DLC several years ago. The following is an interview between Street Fighter series producer Yoshinori Ono and a passionate Skullomania fan/Gamespot journalist:
What are the chances of getting Skullomania in Street Fighter 5?
O: Aaaaaaahhhh. I get a lot of requests for Arika’s
Street Fighter EX characters. There are issues around using characters from EX that would bore you to hear about. So I’ll just say that it’s not easy as it might be, getting characters from another game, unfortunately.
The game has a long-term strategy, we’re going to be bringing content to it for years to come. I’d say never say never, who knows, 2019 or 2020 may be the year of Skullomania.
Every year is the year of Skullomania for me.
O: Hold on to the hope you have, but be ready for disappointment.
There is no disappointment in being a Skullomania fan.
(Note: Yeah, this is a little too relatable isn't it?)
And just because here's a funny a follow-up to that interview:
So now with all of that information on the table: Skullomania getting into Street Fighter and Geno getting into Smash seem to be very similar situations. Both Sakurai and Ono have seemingly both attempted to get these "irrelevant" yet fan requested late 90s era characters owned by a seperate developer into their respective series. But nothing has happened yet. Why?
As implied by both Ono and Sakurai in past interviews the issue lies with the legal ownership of these characters. Despite the fact that both have attempted to borrow the characters for their games something keeps impeding that from actually happening. The curious thing is that SNK was able secure the rights to Skullomania's female version for that game. How? because they traded an appearance with King of Fighters lead character Terry Bogard to appear as a playable character in Fighting Layer EX. So the issue isn't Arika being unwilling to use the character anywhere as they're obviously willing to have a version of the character appear in a game series from a developer (that isn't Capcom) as long as some sort of deal is in place.
Now SE is obviously a very different company from Arika which to be blunt is kind of a literally who comparatively. But you have to wonder if something similar hasn't been proposed by Nintendo to SE or vice versa in the past with regards to obtaining Geno as a fully playable character (not a costume and not a spirit). And if it hasn't could that be something Nintendo might be willing to do in the future? Is there an issue with these specific contracts where one company owns a character and the other owns the series the character appeared in? Is that why SNK was able to make it work with Arika but Capcom wasn't? You have to admit it is strange that both of these characters keep running into the seemingly same roadblock.
Ura
, how would you feel about Edelgard coming with an army command feature, when it's something that would have benefitted Andy for a hypothetical Smash debut?
