Smashboards Creates: Battle of AGES, a SEGA platform fighter

[ninjahmos]

1. Bahn
2. Raxel

 

[nirvanafan]

Charlie
Raxel

 

[tonygameman]

1. Grace
2. Raxel

 

[Speed Weed]

Alright, voting's over.

Bahn: 6 points
Raxel: 4 points
Grace: 3 points
Charlie: 5 points

Bahn will be our Fighting Vipers assist!!!

That means we're done with Vipers content. Now we'd move onto our next character, but actually....I'm pulling somethin here.

I'm already doing the "do we keep going after this season or not" poll.

Thing is, again, we are now in much more uncertain times for this project, where it could end at any moment, so what I've decided to do is move up the decision to now. Why? So we can make our final submissions for this season with the proper context. If it's over after this, I'd want yall to know that during these jobs so that you can bring out your best material. If it isn't, I'd also want you all to have that context so you could be more relaxed with your picks. Either way, I think it makes sense to do it now as it'll influence how we go about things from now on. So without further ado......

CONTINUE?

CONTINUE? - Online Poll - StrawPoll

What's your opinion? Vote now: Keep going, Stop...

strawpoll.com

 

[Speed Weed]

So the results have come in, and uh. Oh wow. We're still going.

So I have to admit I have mixed feelings on this. Obviously this project is my pride and joy and I'd love to add more stuff to it, but I was kind of already gearing up to close up shop, especially considering the votes originally leaned towards "stop", so this kind of throws a wrench into what I had in the works. I.....don't have much of a plan now. So we'll have to figure things out as we go along.

That being said, as a compromise, I'm declaring the following: Season 4 will officially definitively be our last season. No more after that. The roster's officially capping out at 54 characters. Our project now has a clear, set ending in sight, and I want you all to take that into consideration going forward.

So.....what do we now. Well, let's ease the mood a little. This was kind of an unexpected bomb that just dropped, so I figure a more laid-back job would be nice.

Job #265: Submit a new SEGA character (or series)

It's that simple. For our last Season 3 slot, I'm letting you all submit any character from a SEGA-owned series that isn't in our roster yet, provided they haven't gotten major content (likw stages or assists) in DLC yet. And of course, as usual, if there's a series with more than one option, you guys can just submit the series. Have a good one.

 

[Flyboy]

Job #265: Derek Stiles (Trauma Center)

Derek Stiles is the protagonist of Atlus's cult classic game Trauma Center: Under The Knife as well as other games in the series such as New Blood and the Wii remake Second Opinion. He is a surgeon for Hope Hospital, and honestly when it comes to Sega fighters is one of my favorite little weirdo picks that I love to see represented. Trauma Center is a really fun little series and a fighting doctor with scalpel slashes and other motions inspired by the games could be really fun. I'm going with him instead of a general Trauma Center option because, while I am fond of the idea of the actual GUILT virus being playable, I think having a main protagonist of a series is good here.

 

[Speed Weed]

I will continue to push for Cenes because she is epic

So way back when, about halfway through the base game, I submitted someone who I thought could be pretty cool. But I never really got around to putting them forward again for future jobs. They became kind of a one-and-done pick. That changes now, because I feel like they could have a legitimate shot in DLC. So here they are, the one, the only, finally being submitted again.....

Job #221: Cenes Crawford from Thunder Force V
View attachment 361195
Thunder Force is a series of shmups created by the now-defunct developer Technosoft. The series originally started as an obscure multi-directional overhead shooter, before transitioning into a horizontal shooter with its third installment. The series never exactly set the world on fire, but it has a significant following among retro gamers and is often held up as one of the finest shmup franchises of its kind. Unfortunately, as mentioned, Technosoft eventually went defunct. However, as of September 2016, SEGA now own the rights to all their properties. So we can add Technosoft stuff to our project now!

I think adding a Thunder Force rep makes sense, as ever since they acquired Technosoft, SEGA have been making pretty good use of the series when it comes to legacy stuff, particularly in joints involving developer M2. Thunder Force IV and AC both got SEGA AGES Switch ports, while the third game got on the Mega Drive Mini and the aforementioned fourth one is coming to the MD Mini 2. Not to mention how they've also been using other Technosoft IP like Herzog and Elemental Master. But TF is the biggest one, so it makes the most sense. It feels like they're keen on establishing the series as a part of the retro SEGA library, which makes sense! Thunder Force has always had a strong SEGA association, the third and fourth ones are very well-regarded big titles for the Mega Drive, and the fifth one was notably on the Saturn as well. In a way, it's always been somewhat part of the SEGA family - it just went from honorary member to actual member.

Cenes herself is the main protagonist of the fifth game. Born in Berlin, Germany, Cenes is the head of the combat unit 222 and pilot of the RVR-01 "Gauntlet". While the previous Thunder Force games mainly focused on the ever-present conflict between the Galaxy Federation and the ORN Empire, the fifth game shifts the focus to Earth. On there, the wreckage of the Rynex ship from Thunder Force IV is discovered and renamed "Vasteel", with its technology reverse-engineered to better mankind. However, **** hits the fan when the Guardian, an advanced AI made for the aforementioned purpose, goes haywire and uses the tech it created from Rynex to wipe out the human race - but not before humanity manages to fight back with their own "Vasteel".

So why Cenes? Well the situation with playable Thunder Force representation is interesting. The other idea I've seen thrown around is just adding Rynex as a playable fighter, and suffice to say I'm not really fond of that idea. Like, at all. I'd personally just rather have something with a bit more character, and my personal choice for an Actual Character would be Cenes because while there are canon pilots for other ships in the series, including Rynex, I'd go with Cenes cause A. she's by far the coolest of all of them, and B. TFV is noticeably more story-heavy than the previous games, and as such Cenes is much more involved in the actual game, which makes her more visible of a protagonist, and thus, more well-known - rather than the other canon pilots who aren't that prominent on their own and kinda just exist to be the pilots of their respective ships besides some lore tidbits in the later games, meanwhile Cenes is more of her own defined character. She might be the series' most iconic Actual Character, so she's a good choice if we're to take that angle.

So how could she fight? After all, she's a shmup character, she spends the game in a ship so she never really shows off much of her own combat chops. I still think you could easily spin something out of her, though. See, I was looking into how the Star Fox characters were implemented in Smash, and inspiration struck me when I saw the theories on how some of their moves seemed to be based on things the ships could do in Star Fox. And....that'd actually be a pretty dope way of implementing Cenes. Make her basically fight like a human RVR ship, give her a bunch of weapons that do the same stuff as all the different abilities you can get in the game, just make her this balls-to-the-walls bat** crazy projectile character. This way, you can incorporate all the crazy shmup bull** that comes with the territory while still adding someone with a bit more character than just A Ship. To me, she's sort of a Captain Falcon type, where she has a cool enough design that you can get away with kinda making things up and basing her more on the general series gameplay and it still feels natural.

Did I mention that the Thunder Force games have some kickass music? Because they totally do.

 

[tonygameman]

Looks like I'll order a super-powered armor once again, hoping there's enough left for the rent and batteries after all these close calls.

Cue the theme song sang by Mitsuyoshi-san himself right below (which Masahiro Sakurai once searched up in Wii U's Karaoke Joysound), Sonic's motivational dress-up and a Dreamcast factory tour since having been friends as of 1991, the anime legend Hironobu Kageyama (Dragon Ball fans may recognize a voice) joining Mitsuyoshi-san in a live duet, and HENSHIN!

Job #265: New Series Fighter - Taro Yamada

Taro Yamada is the main protagonist of a 1991 Japanese-exclusive action RPG game named Rent-A-Hero, which was released on SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive and used the same graphic engine as Sword of Vermillion (which got a fan translation in 2015). The game follows Taro moving to the town of Corja in Japan alongside his family (mother has a nice Opa-Opa apron) and younger sister Alisa (somehow related to Phantasy Star's protagonist by name), after his eccentric father changed jobs. During their house-warming party, he ordered pizza from 'Sensational Cafeteria' (or SECA in short) and instead received the Super Energy Combat Armor (as part of the "Rent-A-Hero" program) by accident, which gave him superhuman strength (after accidentally knocking out his father in a "Dadzilla" suit) and other gadgets. After realizing that he is required to pay a fee to rent the armor, Taro decided to become a titular part-time hero for hire (who looks like Captain Commando), performing various odd-jobs for the townspeople of Corja such as delivering food or finding missing children, before ending up in more intensive missions involving corporate theft, counterfeit money and mafia, even an ancient undead pharaoh (King Glutenramen) and ESP telekinetics, all while going against a fellow part-time hero and rival, Ultra Salaryman (or in full title, as lengthy as it sounds, "Ultra Great Super Hyper Miracle Strong Dash Top Fighting Salaryman").

Instead of traditional turn-based battles, Taro faces against criminals in a similar format to 2D fighting games, which was an unusual innovation for the RPG genre at a time. The 1991 game was a self-parody of SEGA, with multiple games from their history at the time getting shout-outs (even arcade ones like OutRun, Power Drift, After Burner, G-LOC: Air Battle and Space Harrier play their memorable tunes from 08:26 to 10:41 in a description), a decade before SEGAGAGA was released (with a same-named protagonist by coincidence), alongside cultural references of Sentai, American superheroes and Japan's culture/society between the 80's and 90's (like a man injuring his leg for trying the moonwalk of Michael "Yakson").

Despite being lesser-known compared to other Genesis games, Rent-A-Hero has proven to be popular thanks to it's comical tone and self-aware humor (SEGA's known for not being afraid of poking fun at stuff as shown in titles like SEGAGAGA), having gained a modern reputation as one of SEGA's fondly-remembered cult classics. The game is one of the 42 pre-installed games on SEGA Genesis Mini's Japanese release, the Dreamcast/Xbox remake (Rent-A-Hero No. 1, which had a cancelled English localization - even with a promo video) with Segata Sanshiro himself as a dojo teacher (which also has beat 'em up sections akin to SpikeOut), a live stage show in Japan and a theatrical movie/film in works (though there's been no news since it was announced a few years ago). A idea of people renting hero suits was later revived by SEGA in a Nintendo 3DS game called Hero Bank.

Rent-A-Hero was referenced and the eponymous hero himself even made appearances throughout numerous SEGA games, like Shenmue as a capsule toy (given that Yu Suzuki's AM2 team worked on both games and a Rent-A-Hero No. 1 remake being close in gameplay), a cameo in SEGAGAGA's final cutscene, a SEGA 60th anniversary icon in Sonic Colors Ultimate, a collectable in Earth UFO Catcher, a "rental hero" system in Sonic Forces, a selectable song in Samba de Amigo, a poster on Sarah & Jacky's stage in Virtua Fighter 2, container trucks with "Nomoruwa" written on them in SpikeOut Final Edition (based on Corja's president who Taro saves from assassination; the original arcade game's project codename was "Rent a Hero Returns" - at 1997), a "OKA" name entry song in Daytona USA, a puzzle in Picross S: Mega Drive/Genesis & Mark III/Master System Edition, Akira & Kage's pre-battle dialogue with Captain Commando in Project X Zone 2 and even a Egg Monster in Square Enix's Hanjuku Hero: Aa, Sekaiyo Hanjukunare...! alongside Dr. Eggman and Carbuncle. And finally, Fighters Megamix with his own vocal theme from Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, where he fought various SEGA characters such as Virtua Fighters, Fighting Vipers and Hornet itself. Perhaps this was where the Part-Time Hero job from Yakuza: Like a Dragon got inspiration from?

For Battle of AGES, Taro would be a super fun character, who's not only a relatively deeper cut and legacy character pick, but also bring really cool moveset possibilities and tons of personality, given some tokusatsu-based and comical moments (given him being cheerful and curious, who always has interest in new things and sometimes gets himself into trouble because of this, talk about being a easygoing everyman-turned-hero) in his series, being able to perform various martial arts moves such as punches and kicks for primary attacks, but he also has projectile attacks (a slashing projectile's named Sonic Cutter and used at 1:42 in this tweet's video) with Super Energy Combat Armor's weaponry, even being able to charge up for powerful special moves with electric/energy properties in Rent-A-Hero No. 1 (techniques like Rent-A-Somersault, Energy Sword, Dragon Thunder, Self Recover for healing, Space Barrier, Galacti-Cannon, etc. - above a linked section), which also apply for smash/strong attacks.

Borrowed from both the original game and Fighters Megamix (with his command/move list below), Taro's armor has a gimmick/mechanic, the battery meter which depletes over time and lowers much faster when using special moves or fully-charged smash attacks consecutively. Once it drops to zero, his armor wil shut down and disappear into a civilian form (front/back; with a different SEGA shirt depending on palette), making him weaker in stats and unable to use special moves in their full potential, unless he's either KO'd or charged up it's batteries with a special move (likely the downwards input), which fully refills his suit meter and allows him to use the Super Energy Combat Armor again. His All-Star Move may involve Rent-A-Hiroko (debuted in a remake and appeared on promotional materials, instruction books, plush dolls and an afore-mentioned live stage show) joining him in a tag-team beatdown with powerful martial art/energy attacks.

 

[Captain Shwampy]

Job #265: Etrian Odyssey

The last of the popular Atlus series not featured, this fun and harsh Dungeon crawler was created Kazuya Niinou who also created the 7th Dragon series. The series shares some noticeable Atlus and SEGA DNA, Yuzo Koshiro for one does the soundtrack for the series, even using the Mega Drives and various SEGA arcade machines FM synthesis. Hiro of Space Harrier, Hang-On, and Outrun fame has even done arrangements for the series. EOII even has a reference to Princess Gradriel from Princess Crown, a saturn title both by Atlus/SEGA featuring pre-Vanillaware devs and a cameo of Derek Stiles from Trauma Center. EO features dozens of unique classes that can easily be turned into an actual fighter. WE consider some things however: The series has a big focus on using your imagination with the team of characters you create for your guild so these characters are gonna be technically nameless blank states and also these games are designed around building team to fill each niche to win your battles so we also have to give this character a team to help them in fights. Let's start with the most obvious character:

Gunner

The favorite of Atlus, I mean she has Jack Frost on her hat! Of course she's the favored one! Gunner can use elemental bullets like Flame/Ice/Volt, Snipe bodies parts and bind them so they cant be used for short periods of times, charge their guns up, cause shell shock, and even ricochet their bullets! This were a special part of this character comes in, A gunner has to pinpoint an enemy's weakness so In reference to PSO2 were gonna give her an ability similar to WEAK BULLET, an ability learned by the Ranger class in PSO2. What happens to an opponent that gets hit by a bullet its weak to? they get debilitated for a short period of time making them prey to the gunner and other opponents. Be wary though Gunners are ranged fighters for a reason, they have incredible attack power but their health and defense make them literal Glass canons. You can call in several guild party member to help out in surviving though just like in the LABYRINTH. A War Magus can heal you, A Paladin can increase your defense, A Hexer can curse an enemy, A troubadour is a jack-of-all-trades,

 

[nirvanafan]

Casey/Kid Chameleon

Was looking at Genesis games with no roster/assist rep & there are a lot of good options. Centurion, Bonanza Bros., Sketch Turner, Vectorman, Ecco, & Ristar just to name a few. Landed on Casey/Kid Chameleon due to his moveset potential utilizing the different masks/abilities his platforming adventure from 1992 offers.

 

[KneeOfJustice99]

When someone says "Atlus", or "SEGA Fighting Game", the Power Instinct (or Goketsuji) series might not be the first thing to come to mind. That said, it's in an interesting position where it's a fairly significant part of Atlus's history, has plenty of unique and interesting characters that would be fun inclusions (my personal favourite being Solis, but shoutout to Chinnen!), and is a series with multiple instalments on different generations of SEGA's own hardware. Not only would this count the mainline series, but also stuff like Groove On Fight and Matrimelee - given the series has uniquely continued for long enough to have a few unusual sequels and the like. I recognise that compared to some more iconic picks Power Instinct doesn't stand out immediately as an interesting one, but delving into it brings out a lot of fun (which is totally worth it.)

 

[ninjahmos]

Sketch Turner (Comix Zone)

This is another obscure SEGA game, but Comix Zone is still an interesting one. From its slightly different take on the beat 'em up genre to its 90s comic book style to its grunge soundtrack, it truly IS a cult classic. Sketch Turner, the game's protagonist, and his mixed martial arts(?) would be a pretty good fit for this.

 

[OrpheusTelos]

I am once again shilling for Love & Berry in this thread.

Job #186: Love and Berry

View attachment 349815

Love and Berry are the two protagonists of Love and Berry: Dress Up and Dance, an arcade game that utilizes the same card-reading technology as Mushiking and Dinosaur King. Love and Berry is definitely the odd one out amongst the Sega Arcade Card trilogy. For starters, instead of being aimed at a demographic of young boys who wanna see things fight each other, Love and Berry is squarely aimed at young girls who are into fashion. As the title suggests, the main objective of the game is to dress up the titular protagonists and then put on a show for an audience. The better dressed your girl is and the better you perform at the rhythm game section, the higher you’ll score. Think a mix of Style Savvy and contests in the Gen 4 Pokemon games.

Although the game was relatively unknown outside of Japan, Love and Berry was actually a pretty decent success for Sega. The arcade game itself brought in money and regularly got updates until 2008, it got a DS game which came with an accessory that allowed you to scan in cards from the arcade game, and it even got an anime film. Pretty good for a relatively niche Sega property. It’s not completely unreasonable for Sega to wanna reference these two if they wanted to go for a wahoo wacky pick. Also I just find it to be a fun little curiosity in Sega’s arcade history, being one of the few games they made that were directly aimed at a female audience.

Anywho, how would Love and Berry fight? Well, they’re witches whose main power is something called “fashion magic,” which allows them to change outfits on the fly. If you really wanted to take some creative liberties, you could lean heavily into that and make them into something of a mage-type character. Maybe do something wacky like give them an attack that changes their alts or the alts of the other characters? Incorporate the tambourine into their moveset somehow? You’d have to get really creative with their moveset, but I think they could be insanely fun if done right. Also I just think the idea is really funny. If Sakurai isn’t gonna give us Style Savvy in Smash, it’s time to take matters into our own hands.

ADDENDUM: In my quest to become a Love and Berry Lore Expert™️, I have discovered that the original arcade game actually was released in English sometime in 2006. It must not have been that much of a hit over here because I can’t find much info about it other than the fact that an English localization and dub does exist. It’s also in this search that I discovered that A, the game received regular Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer updates each season to correlate with those seasons’ fashion trends, and B, the game’s soundtrack is also on Spotify with no region lock whatsoever if that tickles your fancy. I also stumbled across this neat little 2005 article from Web Japan that provides a glimpse of just how big Love and Berry was at the time. It’s not super in depth, but the fact that this game covered by an official Japanese tourism site should speak to its popularity.

 

[YoshiandToad]

Job #265: Hihin-maru (StarHorse series)

What is StarHorse?

StarHorse, first released in 2001 is a horse racing arcade based simulator series popularised in Japan.

Whilst there are four main entries in the series, each series has had several seasons worth of additional content, as well as additional versions such as StarHorse Pocket.

Since this series is very popular in Japan (particularly with Japanese businessmen it seems!) and basically unheard of in the west I've had to do quite a bit of digging to uncover info about the franchise.

You may think the gameplay would consist of little but horse racing but there's a little more to it than that:

• Players can choose and train their jockeys, having them hit the gym or study real life horse races to study and pick up techniques and tricks
• Horse breeding is a thing to try and get faster horses. Foals will grow up rapidly in game, and can then be trained.
• In some StarHorse titles it is possible to farm, allowing players to grow nutrious fresh vegetables and fodder to be fed to their horses, powering them up.
• There's the actual horse racing itself where you see if your hard work as a horse owner and raiser pays off.
• And lastly players can bet medals to win credits, adding an element or real life gambling to the titles.
• The latest addition StarHorse4 even seems to allow players to have pets, such as rabbits, who can sometimes collect additional medals for them.
• StarHorse4 also has beginners aid secretaries in the form of six cute anime girls designed by Shining artist Tony Taka. These girls have a dress up option with constant new content coming out allowing users to customise their outfits or actions.
• StarHorse has even had several crossovers with appropriately horse based animes such as Umamusume: Pretty Derby and Makibao of the Sun.

Much like Virtua Tennis, StarHorse includes famous horses from the world of horse racing, which is a big appeal to hardcore horse racing fans.

Who is Hihin-maru and how could he play?

Hihin-maru is the mascot character of StarHorse, often used to explain how the game works as a guide alongside his girlfriend showing the ins and outs of the title.

Whilst the main horses in the game tend to be...ya know...realistic looking horses, Hihin-maru has consistently popped up through the series' history guiding players to become the ultimate horse racing/betting champion, and is inarguably the 'face' of the series, even appearing on the arcade cards used to make bets as seen here:

Anyway, as for gameplay, we have quite a lot to work with.

• Hihin-maru could start off as quite weak, but as a fighter he quickly builds up momentum. This would simulate the horse owner side of the game where you breed, train and power up your racehorses.
• We could lean into the farming aspect to get him to grow carrots and things that once plucked and consumed power him up signifcantly
• We could have the more he runs around the stronger he becomes.
• Have the betting aspect allow you to use up to five medals to place bets on Hihin-maru, with attacks doing more damage the more medals are placed, but with the downside of losing the gamble will greatly weaken him until he builds up the medal power once more.
• Naturally we can also have Hihin-maru summon a stampede of racing horses as a special move.
• Heck, we could even lean into those secretaries I mentioned earlier who are designed to aid the player as a built in set of assists, allowing Hihin-maru to set up several power up routines in a row, increasing his strength massively. 1000-horse power coming up!

 

[osby]

Job #265: Hero/Yuuri (Chain Chronicle)

The protagonist of Chain Chronicle: a young man (default named Yuuri, which I'll be using to refer to him) who leads a volunteer army against the invading forces of the Black Army in order to save the world of Yggdra, with the aid of his sprite companion Pirika (the fairy above his shoulder).

Chain Chronicle is a mobile game developed and published by SEGA that combines role-playing, real-time strategy, tower defense, and card trading where players built their army "deck" and engage in real-time battles on a 3x3 grid. The gameplay received a lot of praise and while the global version of the game was discontinued after a short while, the game goes on strong in Japan and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, a rare feat for a free-to-play mobile game.

Receiving a manga adaptation, an anime, and a short-lived sequel, it's obvious that SEGA sees Chain Chronicle as an important IP and it crossed over with various other games of them through the years (Shining Blade and Shining Resonance, Persona 3-5, Sakura Wars, Sonic, Valkyria Chronicles, SEGA Hard Girls, and Puyo Puyo to name a few).

As for Yuuri, while he's a simple protagonist who is quiet to the point where his army sometimes forgets about him and prefers leaving talking to Pirika, he is no slouch in fighting and prefers to talk with his blade (although there's more to his personality than what appears on the surface, which the anime further adds to). A sword-wielding warrior is a character type we have surprisingly few of and Yuuri would bring his shield to the table, as well as the aid of Pirika who can support him with buffs in battle. As a character coming from a game with a focus on keeping opponents away, his moveset would be defensive and award thinking ahead.

Overall, I think Chain Chronicle is surprisingly little-talked among big SEGA games - though I get that being Japan only currently has an impact on this. SEGA has an interesting history with mobile games and having a character that hails from one would be an interesting addition to our DLC line-up.

 

[Speed Weed]

it's voting time, big fellas

Here are our picks:

Derek Stiles ( Flyboy )
Cenes Crawford (ya boy)
Taro Yamada ( tonygameman )
A character from Etrian Odyssey ( Captain Shwampy )
Casey ( nirvanafan )
A character from Power Instinct ( KneeOfJustice99 )
Sketch Turner ( ninjahmos )
Love and Berry ( OrpheusTelos )
Hihin-maru ( YoshiandToad )
Yuuri ( osby )

Vote for your top 3 picks - you can self-vote, but only in third place.

1. This might come as a surprise.....but I'm full-on pushing for Love and Berry this time. I think people tend to not realize how massively important and popular SEGA's card arcade lineup was. Games like this and Mushiking were huuuuuuuge. If we're talking important corners of SEGA's history that we haven't touched upon yet, I think this crop of games has to be up there, they're legitimately some of SEGA's most successful endeavors ever. And when you have a super interesting unconventional fighter to go along with it, and an opportunity to represent games that appealed to a different demographic than usual, and the fact that they've been put forward multiple times before.....**** it. I'm pulling for them.
2. Taro Yamada. I like him
3. Etrian Odyssey is a cool pick, it's not as high on my priorities rn cause we did just add both 7th Dragon and another Atlus character, but it's definitely super deserving.

 

[nirvanafan]

Sketch Turner
Hihin-maru
Casey

HM - Power Instinct

 

[osby]

1. Love and Berry
2. Etrian Odyssey character
3. Cenes Crawford

 

[Deleted member]

1. Taro
2. Cenes
3. Love and Berry

 

[ninjahmos]

1. Taro Yamada
2. Casey (Kid Chameleon)
3. Sketch Turner

HM - Etrian Odyssey character

 

[KneeOfJustice99]

it's voting time, big fellas

Here are our picks:

Derek Stiles ( Flyboy )
Cenes Crawford (ya boy)
Taro Yamada ( tonygameman )
A character from Etrian Odyssey ( Captain Shwampy )
Casey ( nirvanafan )
A character from Power Instinct ( KneeOfJustice99 )
Sketch Turner ( ninjahmos )
Love and Berry ( OrpheusTelos )
Hihin-maru ( YoshiandToad )
Yuuri ( osby )

Vote for your top 3 picks - you can self-vote, but only in third place.

1. This might come as a surprise.....but I'm full-on pushing for Love and Berry this time. I think people tend to not realize how massively important and popular SEGA's card arcade lineup was. Games like this and Mushiking were huuuuuuuge. If we're talking important corners of SEGA's history that we haven't touched upon yet, I think this crop of games has to be up there, they're legitimately some of SEGA's most successful endeavors ever. And when you have a super interesting unconventional fighter to go along with it, and an opportunity to represent games that appealed to a different demographic than usual, and the fact that they've been put forward multiple times before.....**** it. I'm pulling for them.
2. Taro Yamada. I like him
3. Etrian Odyssey is a cool pick, it's not as high on my priorities rn cause we did just add both 7th Dragon and another Atlus character, but it's definitely super deserving.

1. Cenes Crawford feels like an almost obligatory pick, especially considering how far down the road we are. Technosoft's output is, in my opinion, a vital part of SEGA's history to represent, with the Thunder Force series arguably being a defining part of the Genesis & Saturn libraries, and getting some of that series' music into here would be great. A cool design, an interesting character, and an important series? All of them seem like obvious reasons he should be here. I'll admit that, compared to my next pick, I think both of these would work fine - this is moreso personal preference.
2. Love and Berry, like Speed Weed already pointed out, are also in that state of being near-obligatory at this point. The importance of the whole SEGA card arcade game lineup is something that just can't be understated, but I think it's also interesting that this gives us an opportunity to represent the nebulous psudeo-genre of the archetypical "girl game" whilst still having a really unique character archetype, which all sort of just makes this kind of an obvious pick in my mind (albeit in a very, very good way.)
3. Taro Yamada is in an interesting situation where I genuinely think he'd be a really fun character to bring in here, even if the Rent-a-Hero series isn't as massively important as my other two votes. I think his personality and nature, as well as his game of origin being a beat-em-up and having an honestly interesting history behind it, would make him a really fun character to introduce - as would the potential "battery" mechanic he could bring in if you wanted to make him a little gimmicky (like in Fighters Megamix, if I remember rightly!) He's honestly just... a lot of fun. I think he'd be cool.

Massive shoutout to Etrian Odyssey and also Derek, both of which I think would honestly be awesome picks too.

 

[Tankman from Newgrounds]

1. Taro
2. Cenes
3. Power Instinct

 

[OrpheusTelos]

1. Cenes Crawford
2. Taro Yamada
3. Love and Berry

 

[HyperSomari64]

Love and Berry
Hihin-Maru
Kid Chameleon

 

[YoshiandToad]

1. Yuuri: Chain Chronicle is Sega's biggest mobile success. Deserves more credit IMO. 10 years as a mobile title is a seriously impressive feat when you consider Sakura Wars, one of Sega's biggest IPs in Japan lasted like six months.

2. Etrian Odyssey character: A series I'm not too familiar with, but I feel it's a franchise that deserves a closer look.

3. Taro Yamada: Rent a Hero fits in nicely with our current cast I feel. A nice blend of goofy and cool. A character casual fans would feel is an obscure pick, but is really quite a fan favourite for big Sega nerds.

HM: Love and Berry. Absolutely would love to see it, but the above just caught my eye a little more this time round.

 

[tonygameman]

1. Hihin-maru
2. Derek Stiles
3. Taro Yamada

 

[Captain Shwampy]

1. Love and Berry
2. Hihin-Maru
3. EO character

 

[GamingFan1997]

1. Taro Yamada
2. Love and Berry
3. Etrian Odyssey character

 

[Flyboy]

1. Cenes Crawford - Sega bought Technosoft for Thunder Force. Cenes is from an extremely good Thunder Force game. I think we need a playable Technosoft character. It just makes sense.

2. Love & Berry - Represents a massively important part of Sega history and I just love the characters and their concepts.

3. Derek Stiles - I suspect I'll try and get him in next pass and understand the timing wasn't really right...but god I just love him.

 

[Speed Weed]

Alright, it's time to show the results.

But before this, I should preface this by saying that this was one of the closest, toughest battles of any character job in this project. It was intense, like, neck-and-neck. But we do have a winner.

And so......

Derek: 3 points
Cenes: 11 points
Taro: 19 points
EO: 7 points
Casey: 4 points
PI: 1 points
Sketch: 4 points
L/B: 20 points
Hihin: 8 points
Yuuri: 3 points

Closing off Season 3......the one and only Love and Berry!!!!!!

Moving on:

Job #266: Submit a moveset for Love and Berry

yall know how this goes! submit a moveset if you wish! that being said......

Discussion: How do we handle L/B's content?

So this inclusion, while mega deserved, does prove to be a bit tricky for one reason. You see, Love and Berry was one of many card arcade games released by SEGA. They relied on the use of real actual physical cards, and while these were a huge success in their time, this combined with the Japan-exclusivity of most of these makes them less accessible than the other games we've put on our roster so far. This means that it would probably be harder to do any research this time around, as we might end up feeling kind of out of our depth here. That being said, I want us to have this discussion: how do we handle Love and Berry's side content? Do you think we can properly do it?

Personally I think we can at least manage a stage. An assist might be harder but it's also possible I think

 

[osby]

Love & Berry content

I agree that there's no reason for them to not get a stage at the very least. As for the assist, the series has a few side characters but I'm not sure if they would be any interesting. Maybe we can still carry out that job but leave the submissions open for miscellaneous SEGA franchises, too.

 

[KneeOfJustice99]

I'm not 100% sure if this would necessarily work, but there's also always the option of including stuff from other card-based arcade games that SEGA's released if we were to shift our focus from purely Love & Berry to a bit of a wider scope. Whilst it'd probably seem kind of weird for the uninitiated to see something like a beetle or a dinosaur joining these "girl game" characters, it seems to me at least like it could be a decent possibility to widen the net a little whilst still making sure it all makes sense.

 

[osby]

I'm not 100% sure if this would necessarily work, but there's also always the option of including stuff from other card-based arcade games that SEGA's released if we were to shift our focus from purely Love & Berry to a bit of a wider scope. Whilst it'd probably seem kind of weird for the uninitiated to see something like a beetle or a dinosaur joining these "girl game" characters, it seems to me at least like it could be a decent possibility to widen the net a little whilst still making sure it all makes sense.

Tbf, Mushiking already got an assist so we'd be working with a more limited selection but this is a good point.

 

[Speed Weed]

Alright, so here's what I've decided:

-Stage job will proceed as normal

-Assist job will be opened up a little: it'll include both L&B characters and characters from SEGA arcade games that debuted in the 21st century

So without further ado:

Job #267: Submit a Love and Berry stage

Job #268: Submit a Love and Berry assist OR an assist from a 21st century SEGA arcade game

As for the expansion in the latter, I feel it's a good enough category that still mostly comprises of games with similar "vibes" to L&B. Have fun

 

[osby]

Job #267: Idol Stage (Love and Berry)

Idol Stage is one of the five available in Love and Berry: Dress Up and Dance! The stage takes the form of a single floating platform fashioned after a cute, bright design on an idol concert set piece. There is a higher, smaller soft platform in the middle of the stage where most fighters can jump easily to.

Similar to Boxing Ring in SSB, the big screen in the background shows the "performers" - giving each a stage name, such as "Blue Blur" for Sonic or "Fashionable Witches" for Love and Berry. When all fighters are down to single life and low on stamina, the screen declares a BONUS TIME - where characters gain increased speed and reduced assist cooldown timer.

 

[Captain Shwampy]

Job #268 Coppelia (Key of Avalon)

Key of Avalon is another Arcade card reader game by SEGA Hitmaker. Game is Online only and was design from the SEGA Trifore system which was trio arcade board joint venture between SEGA, Nintendo, and Namco. Due to this the game is literally impossible to play and will mostly become lost media outside of remaining old articles, cards, poor quality footage, and artbooks that exist of it. The setting of "The Key of Avalon" is a fantasy world where players can chant magic and summon monsters. In order to become a full-fledged mage in this world, the main character hones their magical skills as a student at the "Mage Academy". The main content of the game is the "Magic Test," a competitive game in which four players compete against each other at the "Magic Academy. The game genre is a composite genre, employing a board game system for player movement and a trading card game system for combat. If you enjoyed Ocean Hunter you may notice the same artist did the art for this game as well. Coppelia is noticeably the Mascot of the game and she originates from a secret area in the world that can create life out of nothing. Whenever she feels lonely, monsters gather from nowhere.

Her ability will have her summon a random monster card, sadly due to the games obscure nature and being japanese only, i don't what specific monster or names to choose out of the bunch but there's a rarity system at least.

She has chance of pulling out stronger rarer monsters they can effect the battlefields in many ways.

 

[Speed Weed]

Alright, it's been long enough: Idol Stage will be our Love and Berry stage and Coppelia will be our next assist!!!

Moving on......it's time to tackle the ending stretch of misc. content. Starting with:

Job #269: Submit a stage from a miscellaneous SEGA property

It's a free job again, you can submit any stage from a SEGA IP that doesn't have any characters. Keep two things in mind however:

A. This will, of course, take characters from the winning series out of the running
B. We're starting to come to a close here. We only really have two of these slots left, so I want you all to bring out your best material, or focus on what you think needs to be in, or whatever your approach may be. Either way, keep in mind that we don't have many of these left.

So er yeah....have fun

 

[KneeOfJustice99]

Whilst I'll admit I came embarrasingly close to letting the demons win and submitting Sky Dinosaurian Square, I've been giving this a bit of thought, and I wound up being caught between a rock and a hard place - two stages that, whilst not necessarily representing series that are still relevant today, both have unique and prominent places within SEGA's history and lineup. I eventually ended up deciding on something a bit unique, though (and, for clarity, the other one was Acropolis.)

Job #269
Stage Name: AM2 Wharf
Stage Origin: Virtua Cop (1994)

The opening level to the first Virtua Cop, AM2 Wharf would be a pretty unique and fun stage that could have a lot of potential with some creative liberties. My thought process behind it is that, whilst the battle would take place in the starting location (the most iconic one!), it could easily be changed up with a few neat additions. A couple of ideas that spring to mind could be a crane overhead that places a shipping container on the stage to alter its layout, or having the car's windows get shattered if an attack hits them - giving the stage the fluid feel that was so important as a design aspect of the original Virtua Cop.

That aside, you could even have a few unique different things going on too - whether you wanted to have a visible shootout between Rage, Hardy and Kong in the background, or even if you just wanted to have a few characters hanging around like in the King of Fighters Stadium stage over in Smash. (I'm aware we already have the Virtua Cop Squad as an assist, but it'd still be fun to have Kong wandering around in the background and shooting birds or flipping us off like in the unused FMV or something goofy like that.)

Virtua Cop itself is a pretty interesting series within SEGA's history that we haven't actually touched on all too much aside from their assist and a couple of Capsule Toys. Being one of SEGA's early forays into 3D technology following Virtua Racer and Virtua Fighter and continuing the "Virtua" brand going forward, Virtua Cop is a lightgun game in which you (playing as either Michael "Rage" Hardy or James "Smarty" Cools) go up against E.V.I.L. Inc. after they created an illegal gunrunning operation and killed a police detective to cover their trail. The game itself is pretty notable for the influence it'd have on later lightgun titles, perhaps most prominently SEGA's own The House of the Dead later down the line - as well as for being a prominent title on the Saturn, which is fun too.

Whilst the Virtua Cop series has technically been dead since 2003 with Virtua Cop 3 (or technically 2004 if you count the unreleased Nokia N-Gage port, yes, really), it's still a fairly iconic piece of SEGA's history and arcade pedigree that went on to inspire many of the details of an entire genre of games following it, and SEGA themselves have already recognised the game as being pretty influential in its own right. Furthermore, given the Squad are already assists in the first place, this feels like a fairly natural and exciting place to put this without really stepping on the toes of future potential fighters.

 

[ninjahmos]

Job #269:
Curien Mansion (The House of the Dead)

The setting of the first game in the House of the Dead, which is an iconic part of SEGA's legacy, along with Virtua Cop. Curien Mansion could have zombies in the background.

Unless this has already been submitted by someone else...

 

[Speed Weed]

Job #269:
Curien Mansion (The House of the Dead)

The setting of the first game in the House of the Dead, which is an iconic part of SEGA's legacy, along with Virtua Cop. Curien Mansion could have zombies in the background.

Unless this has already been submitted by someone else...

.....not only is this already a stage, House of the Dead is already repped in our roster. Which is to say this is definitely not eligible