Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.
If you’re trying to find the common thread that weaves all of these games together, don’t keep racking your brain, I’m just covering a ton of different stories and experiences.
Tangled Up in Blue
Street Fighter IV created within me something of a fighting game…well I hesitate to call it a renaissance, cause there was never a naissance, so to speak, but, should naissance actually be French for birth, it did birth in me the fighting spirit. I haven’t played the game in a while, mostly because I’m trying to save the world and attend high school (Persona 4) at the same time, but I figure I’ll get back to it soon, especially with that new tournament mode in.
The reason I even bring that up is because of the upcoming game BlazBlue has got a pretty sweet pre-order bundle set to launch alongside the game. Buying the game early, at no added cost, will yield soundtrack CDs and, my favorite feature, a DVD with top players going over the moves and strategies for each fighter.
Being the fighting game newb that I am, I find this kind of thing to be an invaluable help in creating strategies and managing opponents. I just hope it’s not too high level that I can’t understand or implement the things they’re doing. It should also help me to find the most bizarre, obscure character to master. I don’t always go for the strangest guy, but I definitely make an effort to try and choose lesser-used characters in fighting games mostly because I tire of seeing Ken all the time.
Royally Screwed
Staying on track with fighting games, the two extra King of Fighters XII home version fighters were announced and they…don’t include Mai?! There’s still time to announce Mai in the game, but the release date is rapidly approaching. Why they didn’t have her in the arcade release baffles me in the first place, but why they’re not including the absolute fan favorite in the home version absolutely blows my mind. We’ll see how this continues to play out.
Oh yeah, the new fighters are Elizabeth and Mature. Stupid name on that second one, if you ask me.
Stats 4 Me
If you know me decently well, then you know that I love stats. Very few things excite me more than seeing a nice, clean breakdown of how I did in certain aspects and how I fare against certain situations or match-ups, etc. It’s why I hate the stats section of SFIV (Why don’t they have stats for how I perform against each character as each character? Why don’t they have stats for each opponent I face?) and of SSBB (Actually, kind of the same things here.)
Leave it to Valve to satisfy my every craving with the detailed Left 4 Dead stats page that you can check for any player. Where else would you be able to see that I have 100% accuracy with an assault rifle or that my favorite Tier 2 weapon is the hunting rifle?
Can’t say “Screenshot or it didn’t happen” anymore, can you?
Granted, these stats were collected a few weeks (months?) after the game came out, so I probably don’t really have 384 Assault Rifle kills or 100% accuracy, but you can bet I probably won’t pick up an assault rifle again for a long while until I’m sick of looking at that sweet 100% mark.
It’s interesting too that my Zoey count is so low (only 55%) considering that I always prefer to play as her. I blame quick games, where my character choice is not left up to me.
Oh yeah, here’s a link to my stats page.
Stats I will be working on:
-More Zoey!
-Increase revive:revived ratio (currently 1:2)
-Improve finales survived (sitting at 12.5% right now)
-Drop average damage to teammates (this one ballooned after I spent a whole game on easy shooting my partner for fun)
-The fact that I’ve only shot one cartridge with the pump shotgun makes me laugh. So long as I’m never Francis or Bill, I doubt that number will increase too much.
-Want to know why my hunting rifle headshot rate is only 5%? It’s not cause I suck zoomed in, it’s cause zombies die in one hit with the hunting rifle, so why aim for a small target? Don’t expect that to rise.
-More versus! The new maps are out. I need to play them. I need to have a more lopsided (in the wins direction) record.
-I should throw more rocks as the tank.
-More survival mode medals. I need more!
-More achievements
Darek’s got more friends playing, so I should be able to find people to continue to play with and keep improving. I’m excited.
Gotta Catch ‘Em Again
Nintendo announced today (but in the Japanese today, which is still going on, but at 2230 or so right now) that they would be re-releasing Pokémon Gold and Silver as Pokémon Heart Gold and Pokémon Soul Silver on the DS Generation IV engine. Exciting news for Pokémaniacs, since Gold and Silver were perhaps the longest, and neatest games. Not only did you go through the new region in those games, but your quest actually required you to return to the original region and collect all those badges too. With one fell swoop, the geniuses at Nintendo have managed to bring all of the regions, minus the Gen III region into the future. It’s an exciting time for someone who wants to catch ’em all, but we’re all wondering out here in the West when Nintendo is finally gonna get around to letting us import our Platinum dudes into Pokémon Ranch, much less our new Gold and Silver buddies.
“You must be a master of sales”
If you got the obscure and kind of lame Resident Evil reference there, go you. For everyone else, let’s move on.
Capcom has released a listing of its top-selling game franchises to give you an idea of how well its game series sell and are popular relative to each other. Here’s the list:
Resident Evil – 40 million (56)
Mega Man – 28 million (124!)
Street Fighter – 27 million (62)
Devil May Cry – 10 million (11)
Monster Hunter – 8.5 million (11)
Onimusha – 7.8 million (12)
Dino Crisis – 4.4 million (13)
Ghosts ‘N Goblins – 4.4 million (16)
Final Fight – 3.2 million (10)
Ace Attorney – 3.2 million (12)
Breath of Fire – 3 million (15)
Lost Planet – 2.7 million (7)
Commando – 1.2 million (2)
1942 – 1.2 million (3)
Sengoku BASARA – 1.2 million (10)
Note that there are numbers in parentheses. This is the number of games released in that series, which gives me a great idea. You see, this list, in and of itself, does not accurately represent how well each game performs on a per-game basis. It’s not really accurate to say “Wow, Mega Man is way better than Street Fighter” when Mega Man has had 124 releases to SF’s 62 and only outperforms it by one million. Here’s the adjusted list in sales per game:
Devil May Cry – 909091
Monster Hunter – 772727
Resident Evil – 714286
Onimusha – 650000
Commando – 600000
Street Fighter – 435484
1942 – 400000
Lost Planet – 385714
Dino Crisis – 338462
Final Fight – 320000
Ghosts N’ Goblins – 275000
Ace Attorney – 266667
Mega Man – 225806
Breath of Fire – 200000
Sengoku BASARA – 120000
What does my expert analysis show? Well the top three series are all more modern A-list Capcom games. Games have become far more serious business in recent years, so this makes sense. Expensive games plus the increased numbers of buyers make these franchises more successful. The most glaring change in this list is the move of Mega Man to the near bottom of the list. What else can you expect from a series that got its start on the NES and has released 124 (!) games, many of which are portable or spin-offs not meant to sell. In fact, the last real Mega Man release was Mega Man 9 and that was released digitally.
This list really doesn’t prove anything, but it’s at least fun to look at.
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