ode to the screen of defeat

Played The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga recently, a collection of the first five games in the venerated fighting series. Having not had the 'pleasure' before now of playing these games I was perhaps ill-prepared for the difficulty level I was about to encounter. A difficulty level best described as somewhere between 'crushing' and 'soul destroying' but that's not what's important here.

No wait it is, it's very much the defining feature of this collection, certainly the first half of it anyway. What is also important though is the charming way-back 2D aesthetic, the great character and stage design and a selection of some of the finest post-fight defeat screens to ever grace the fighting genre.

Admire the sheer poetry of Benimaru as he strikes a pose there. Yes this is truly some of the finer burns ever bestowed upon the defeated player. Running the gamut from 'WTF?' to 'WTAF?!' by way of occasional stops in normality. We have geography, we have bowling, we have ninja ladyhood! In short we have it all! 

In a series that plays deadly seriously these screens lend some much-needed levity to the proceedings. Fighting games of times past had to slip in their story somewhere and somehow afterall. No fancy rendered cut scenes here. In order to create intrigue, fleetingly obscure snippets of character break through as the game awaits the response to your latest humiliation at the hands of the AI. 

Sure you had the character specific endings to flesh out the narrative but let's be honest you are seeing way more of the game over screen than any of those. The post-fight taunt is really where it' was at when it came to how these games conveyed the random, the odd and the obscure.

Random aside but in a wider point, its curious how game makers stuck it out at all with backstory and lore back in the day. I mean I'm thankful they did of course, but it's an interesting tangent nonetheless that this may not necessarily have turned out this way. That on the path to formal competitive multiplayer tournaments, elite play and the like, developers just didn't give up on the idea entirely and focus purely on pure, unadultered mechanics.

Context is key of course and a unique selling point to boot. So the back story has stuck around and evolved over time and the space in which to tell stories has grown with it. The post-fight taunt is still around of course but perhaps doesn't occupy so critical a space in the storytelling of fighting games as it once did.

Different fighting franchises have pulled off varying degrees of success in this field over the years. My personal favourite Mortal Kombat has had something of a resurgence in the last decade largely off the back of an impressive story-led reboot and a great evolving narrative. On the flip side I find it hard to believe that anyone but anyone can muster the enthusiasm required to track the Street Fighter story and it's various zig-zags back and forth through time. It perhaps matters less for a game so finely tuned around multiplayer finesse but still, having played all the mainline entries I couldn't even begin to join the dots on that one.

I'm probably forgetting some corkers in that franchise but on the whole it's a series with a real lack of quirky idiosyncrasy in comparison to KOF, at least in it's early days anyway. Stern rebuttals in the comments section are always welcome of course.

But back to the subject at hand, post-fight defeat screens and the majesty thereof. By the arcade norms of then and the retro tastes of now, these are good looking games. All of it in service to a series that could wildly veer all over the difficulty scale and back again. But it's not the difficulty that I dwell on now after the fact. Instead it's the elegant economy by which it's makers dish out these snippets of weirdness. Credit to the localisation efforts too as it plays its own special part in elevating this material. When put together it's a vital component of what made these games tick for me.

Anyway here's to quirkiness in the name of violence, truly the best way to soften the blow. Until next time, enjoy this exquisite rendering of a fiery inferno at sea.