Fighting Games Friday: Them’s Sparking Zero Herds

I forget to talk about certain fighting games often here, through… largely my own fault. I wonder if some games truly qualify as actual fighters, despite the genre definition not being that strict and quite obvious. (Smash Bros., for example, counts as a fighting game, and I’m not sorry to say that.) Indie developers also fly under my radar for not-great reasons. It’s worth talking about the only fighting games released these days that aren’t new installments in established franchises. They’re nice homages to the period when publishers were willing to experiment with the genre.

One of those games is Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. Perhaps you can figure out which category this was part of in the above paragraph. I’ve been keeping an eye on the game’s developments since the announcement last year, which Bandai Namco is slowly revealing the roster for. But I didn’t cover it here because, well, it’s not a traditional fighting game, and thus didn’t fit the definition I was going for. I have now realized that this was inane, even though I’ve covered games like this before.

You don’t have to pay much attention to the Sparking! Zero marketing campaign thus far to know that it will be one of those kinds of Dragon Ball games. The game will have as massive of a roster as previous Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi games developed by Spike Chunsoft (with this installment keeping the “Sparking” name from the Japanese releases worldwide), but a sizable portion of those faces will consist of alternate versions of the same characters. This was inevitable for a game in this franchise, but this game is ridiculous even by those standards.

A whole 24 characters were revealed when the game was first announced. Do you know how many of them are different forms of Goku? A whopping eleven. They made sure to cover nearly every form here, including three versions of base Goku from the early, middle, and end points of Dragon Ball Z. The same goes for the Super Saiyan versions. Goku is even surprisingly outdone by Vegeta, who has a massive 13 versions available. This makes sense to an extent, since Vegeta goes through remarkable phases throughout DBZ and has a distinctive arc with every one, as a character with an actually-solid arc. It’s incredible to consider how they’ll inevitably receive more.

Several other characters who only have one or two versions thus far have been revealed too, including Krillin, Yamcha, Piccolo, Tien, Jiren, Frieza (for now, anyway), Android 17 (again, for now), Android 18, and Trunks and Broly with two versions. Noticeably absent here is Gohan, who I’m sure will have several versions available as another character with a great arc in DBZ — one who’s really the main character throughout the series. Between this and his continued absence from Dragon Ball Daima’s early promotion, I wonder if there’s a solid reason for this.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is set to have a massive 165-character roster, meaning they’ve barely started revealing the characters. Not to mention all the gameplay they have to show. It’s set to be very similar to the previous Budokai Tenkaichi titles, albeit in a far prettier sheen.

Meanwhile, the story of Them’s Fightin’ Herds was one of success early on. The game was not a fighting game adaptation of the newest My Little Pony works, but was so close to being this that a bunch of people who don’t follow the franchise closely would have thought it was a legitimate MLP fighter. The game appeared to be among the series of successful indie fighting games, with plenty of support from developer Mane6 and the community.

The game’s halcyon development and support time has come to a very abrupt end. Mane6 and publisher Modus Games posted back in November that support for the game was ending following only one season, and that the Story Mode would not be completed. This preceded news about Mane6’s developers being let go.

That’s bad enough, but support is somehow ending on an even more sour note than expected with the final characters, Nidra and Baihe, arriving. (Thanks GoblinJunkBot for informing me!) The final characters could use some polishing, to say the least. Both were rushed out for release so the remaining developers (or should that be “developer?”) at Mane6 could wrap this up, and no one is there to polish them. For a game that appeared to be brimming with life among the indie fighting game and MLP communities, it’s an anti-climactic end.

I’ve seen this compared to the end of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s support, where Nintendo and the Smash team led by Masahiro Sakurai are unlikely to provide another balance patch for ridiculous characters like Minecraft’s Steve. But this is far, far worse considering the potential Them’s Fightin’ Herds still had, some promised by the developers themselves. It also reminds me of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which could use another patch to adjust ridiculous characters like Vergil and Zero that it won’t receive. Like that game, it will now be up to the community to fix and modify it, who will likely do a fantastic job considering how dedicated they are. But it shouldn’t be their responsibility.

Anyway, that’s that for this Fighting Games Friday. Perhaps next week’s post will end on a slightly more upbeat note. They could reveal five more Gokus and Vegetas for Sparking! Zero by then.