Fighting Games Friday: Blood Melted on My Skull, Girl

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last Fighting Games Friday post, which turned out to be a news roundup of most fighting game news provided in the weeks the feature took a break because of our annual Naughty and Nice feature series. Note a key word there: “Most.” It’s not that I forgot games; I simply didn’t want to jam pack too much news into one overly long post and prioritized the larger games. Don’t take this as me saying titles smaller than, say, The King of Fighters XV and DNF Duel are less important.

One is Melty Blood: Type Lumina, which French Bread took a break from the Under Night In-Birth series to develop. Their timing couldn’t have been better given the popularity of the Fate and overall Type-Moon properties (especially Fate/Go, which has led to Aniplex absorbing the developer) and the remakes of the Tsukihime visual novel titles. Type Lumina launched with 13 characters, an average amount for a fighting game these days that appeared lower than it was thanks to the last version of Melty Blood, Actress Again Current Code, having more than twice the number of characters. This is a modern fighting game, so this was bound to change through downloadable content.

The first among them will be Dead Apostle Noel, who comes with a hell of an outfit. French-Bread’s fighting game titles have always been very “anime,” but have come with a certain amount of restraint compared to other fanservice-heavy fighters around. With Noel, that restraint has loosened a bit. Her design gives the impression that the Type-Moon mobile game designs are further bleeding into other titles, an inevitable occurrence considering their overwhelming popularity. It felt like she would be just the beginning.

That is, until the next character was confirmed to be Aoko Aozaki, a returning character from several previous Type-Moon titles (including the prior Melty Blood game and its thousands of versions) who comes back in trademark white t-shirt and blue jeans for her default colors. It seems extremely restrained compared to Noel above; it also reminds me that a basic t-shirt and jeans is underrated as far as anime female character threads go, though I’m aware they aren’t nonexistent. I’ve seen plenty of examples as research for this post.

The best part about the Type Lumina DLC characters is how they’ll be free of charge when they arrive alongside a balance update on January 13th, rare for a modern fighting game. It feels like the team heard the cries of everyone who wondered if the character count was too low shortly before the game released. (Again, it is very much not for the base version of a fighting game.) This is unlikely to start a trend for the fighting game genre as a whole, but it will hopefully be one for Melty Blood titles going forward, or perhaps other fighting games attached to the massive Type-Moon brand.

It’s remarkable that Skullgirls is still receiving downloadable content. It’s the only fighting game around originally released during the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era nearly a decade ago (the tenth anniversary is in April) that’s still receiving worthwhile support. Not to mention how much the game and the development team have been through in that time, including a temporary delisting (thanks to everyone’s favorite company Konami), more than one publisher switch, and the majority of the team’s need to reestablish themselves as Future Club after Lab Zero Games’ owner was credibly accused of sexual harassment and took the company down with him. But Skullgirls lives on, thanks to a committed community that’s remained together over the years — including virtually thanks to being one of the earlier fighting games to have rollback netplay without the need for modders.

Umbrella is the newest character coming, due to arrive in finished form sometime early this year after being previously scheduled for a fall 2021 release. She looks largely complete the way she is now, considering she’s been available as an Early Access character in the Steam version for several months now, so it shouldn’t take too long before she’s ready. Black Dahlia, the mysterious partially-mechanical cyborg, will be the third character releasing as part of the new Season Pass of DLC content. She’s due to arrive later this year, though likely also later than expected following Umbrella’s delay. The fourth and final character as part of the pack has yet to be revealed, and likely won’t be until Black Dahlia is near release.

Including Melty Blood and Skullgirls in the same post is intentional synergy, since both French-Bread and Future Club are big fans of each other. A sprite for Skullgirls’ Filia was made for Under Night In-Birth in the latter franchise’s style as a nod, though she never made it into the game in a playable appearance. In exchange, UNIB’s Yuzuriha can be seen in one of Skullgirls’ backgrounds. There’s a part of me hoping they’ll take their friendship further by featuring guest characters in each other’s games (though likely not Melty Blood). There’s a lower chance of a full-on crossover game, but I wouldn’t be against that, either.

This should wrap up the fighting game news for a little while. But the last time I said that, developers and publishers owned me by providing a bunch throughout the month of December. I should just keep my mouth shut, but I’m too dumb to do that.