Fighting Games Friday: Jump Fighter Frenzy

I’ve mentioned how convention and event season has died down in previous Fighting Games Friday posts, which implied that these entries wouldn’t be so stuffed with news. I’ve said this on at least two occasions, and it’s also at least the second time I’ve been dead wrong. Paris Games Week is currently happening, and though this year’s event isn’t as packed with news compared to last year thanks to Sony not having a conference, there were still announcements from other publishers.

It was previously confirmed that Shonen Jump crossover arena fighter Jump Force will have original characters in addition to those from big franchises, and all of them shown thus far have been designed by Dragon Ball’s Akira Toriyama. Of them, Kane has been revealed in screenshots, who definitely isn’t an anime-style adaptation of that Kane. He’s a villain who resembles a fusion of Golden Frieza and Hit from Dragon Ball Super, meaning Toriyama didn’t look far for design inspiration. But his status as a big villain and armor also make him reminiscent of Thanos’ design from the recent Marvel Avengers media. The other characters will be shown in due time, though whether there will be more original characters than the four announced is unknown.

Two more characters were also revealed at PGW: Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star and Ryo Saeba from City Hunter. Kenshiro is returning from J-Stars Victory VS, and retains moves and animations from that title, though his design has been adjusted for this game’s more realistic art style. Ryo is brand-new, however, who’s not often included in these kinds of Shonen Jump crossovers. I’m glad they remembered him here, if only to see how many people were shocked to realize City Hunter once ran in SJ. They’ll come with a stage based off Paris, which is fitting.

In addition to both characters being from SJ franchises, Kenshiro and Ryo were originally voiced by Akira Kamiya for the original anime adaptations. While Kamiya’s long abandoned Kenshiro’s voice due to no longer being capable of deepening his voice (he is 72 now), he’s returning to voice Ryo, whose voice isn’t as deep, in a new City Hunter anime film coming in Japan in February 2019. (This is definitely why Ryo’s in this game.) It doesn’t sound like he’s providing Ryo’s voice in this game, though.

Jump Force will release on February 15th. Look forward to more details about characters from other franchises between now and its release date, since there are several popular SJ franchises that currently have no representatives. There’s no way they will leave anyone from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, right? Right.

SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy released for PlayStation 4 and Switch at the beginning of September. The base package didn’t include many characters, but more have been released as DLC since then. They’ve thus far included guest character Thief Arthur from Square Enix’s Million Arthur series and a female Skullomania from Street Fighter EX/Fighting EX Layer. The next one is a returning character from spiritual predecessor SNK Gals Fighters: Miss X.

Miss X was the King of Fighters’ Iori Yagami in a schoolgirl outfit in SNK Gals Fighters, but there are differences here. While the cross-dressed version is an option here, there’s also a full-on gender swap, similar to Skullomania and Terry Bogard. Miss X retains the schoolgirl outfit, but also has the option of wearing the treads of rival Kyo Kusanagi. Miss X retains many of Iori’s moves, though they’ve undoubtedly received adjustments to fit this game’s unique style.

Miss X will arrive on November 15th. It’s rumored that one more DLC character remains, and we’ll see if that’s the case shortly after this character releases.

A new minor Street Fighter V update arrived this week. Capcom surprisingly reduced the game’s input delay by 4.41 frames, meaning techniques will come out a little quicker after the press of a button. This makes it faster than titles like Tekken 7 and Dragon Ball FighterZ, and about on par with the recent Soulcalibur VI. It’s still not perfect, but at least they’re working towards making it better.

New outfits are also coming to Extra Battle mode. Nash’s outfit from Cannon Spike arrived on Tuesday, while the mech outfit for F.A.N.G. arrived today. The mech Juri outfit will arrive on November 23rd, notably on Black Friday. Keep in mind Extra Battle requires spending Fight Money to get the chance to obtain outfits, or parts of each outfit. The battles can be tough, and players have to keep spending FM to get more chances. It’s silly, especially when options to obtain FM were removed.

The fighting game news never stops, and that’s good for these posts. But that’s bad for my predictions, so I’ll spare everyone by skipping that from here on. If you’re a big fan of the genre, good luck juggling all these fighting games. Learning one of them can be difficult enough, despite efforts made by companies to make them less intimidating, but the mere thought of playing multiple titles simultaneously is headache-inducing. That admittedly sounds intriguing, too, but I wouldn’t recommend actually trying it.