Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Street Fighter x Tekken

A brief post to list my latest PS3 acquisitions: Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and the limited edition of Street Fighter x Tekken.

I'm not going to do a lenghty rant about how the recent Capcom fighting games are nowhere as good as they used to be as I did in a previous post, but to summarize after playing the regular Marvel vs. Capcom 3 I adamantly refused to buy those games and was my brother who finally bought them (Marvel vs. Capcom 3 back in December and Street Fighter x Tekken last weekend).

After playing both games for a few hours against my brother, my opinion remains unchanged; I don't like Marvel vs. Capcom 3 at all and Street Fighter x Tekken is marginally tolerable at best. At least is interesting to see the "new" characters Hugo, Poison and Rolento in 3D renditions (I don't care about Tekken franchise since Tekken Dark Resurrection, that I have for the PSP).

The limited edition included this piggy bank shaped in form of a (fictional) SFxT arcade cabinet

The only interesting extra is a mini-mini comic booklet drawn by Udon Comics. Is nice to see Ingrid, a forgotten character that I really like, as the mastermind behind the Pandora Box...

Recent game purchases

Those are the games that I purchased (and finished) recently (and by "recently" I mean the past 3 months...):

Ace Attorney Investigations for the NDS and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for the PS3.

Ace Attorney Investigations is a spin-off of the Ace Attorney series starring the prosecutor Edgeworth, and taking place outside the court.

Is more in the vein of the Ace Attorney series than Apollo Justice, the fourth installment, and the cases are quite good. Despite that, I disliked the "friendly rival" Shi-Long Lang, and the main sidekick Kay Faraday was kinda boring and irritating. In fact, for me Edgeworth's best partner was Franziska von Karma, specially in her 13 year old appearance:

Cute young Franziska

Is not not the best game in the Ace Attorney series, but unlike Apollo Justice, is a worth sequel. Too bad that the second game starring Edgeworth is not coming to Occident...

And for Marvel vs. Capcom 3... I don't like it at all.
My brother and I play a lot of fighting games, mostly Capcom ones, and he was quite hyped for this one so at the end I purchased it, but it never was appealing for me for several reasons.
The first one is that, except for a very few exceptions, I don't like 3D visuals in fighting games. The second is that I dislike about a third of the cast represented. I don't like the recent Resident Evil games (the last one I liked was RE2) , Devil May Cry or the new Bionic Commando, so from the start I dislike 6 characters from the Capcom side (not counting the characters that "I can tolerate but I don't really like" like Zero or Crimsom Viper), and my knowledge of Marvel characters is mostly from the late 80's to mid 90's, so "new" characters like x-23 and Deadpool are pretty much unknown to me (and seemingly quite fan-service characters) and some old-school characters like Thor, MODOK or Dormammu are quite uninteresting... To compare, in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, with a bigger roster than MVC3, the only character that I disliked was Marrow.
And the 3rd reason is that I dislike the game mechanics, very different from the previous games from the series and with unnecesary gimmicks like the X-factor.
Worst of all is that a couple of weeks after I bought it, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 was announced Orz

Super Street Fighter IV

My brother bought Super Street Fighter IV for PS3 at the beginning of the month, and I've been playing non-stop until today (side effects of being jobless).

I must admit that I wasn't happy with the aesthetics of SF4, and I really hated the idea of a main SF game in 3D. When I was in Japan I refused to play SF4 in the arcades and I didn't really paid attention to it until I returned to Spain and played my brother's copy. It doesn't really looks like an Street Fighter game but plays like one.

I think Juri is the most interesting new character, and the only good looking Capcom new female character since Ingrid (C.Viper feels more like a SNK character than a Capcom one).

Juri and her sexy tongue

Juri is the first evil female in SF world (C.Viper was a double agent) and her psycho behavior and sadistic nature is kind of cool. It also helps her crazy/sadistic/erotical voice by a surprising Kitamura Eri.

Honorific mention goes to the extremely hot wife of Hakan:

Surely she beats all the other SF wives: Sally (Dhalsim's), Julia (Guile's) and Eliza (Ken's)

I'm a slightly above average player and I main Cammy (since Super Street Fighter II), but I managed to get all the 35 characters to rank C, a not so hard feat but extremely time consuming... I'm only missing about 40% of the characters trials, but is impossible for me to achieve that.

My videogame collection I: Game Boy Advance

Since I don't have anything new to write about and the blog is disturbingly lacking in updates, I'll list the games that I own and I have at hand (the Dreamcast and PSX ones I have stored under a thousand of things, and the MegaDrive, SNES and NES ones are in "whereabouts unknown" status).

So I'll begin with the handheld games, starting with the ones for Game Boy Advance.

I bought a black GBA SP in 2003, mostly because at that moment I was doing over 2 hours of train commuting every day... Almost all the games consist of RPGs and ports of old-school games. My tastes in videogames had always been old fashioned.

Golden Sun (2001). Was the best GBA-only RPG available when I purchased the console. I liked it when I first played, but now I forgot almost everything about it, so it was not a memorable game for me.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age (2002). The second part of it. Purchased at the same time with the first one.

Breath of Fire (2001) A port of the SNES version. I'm a big fan of old Capcom games and of the old school RPGs, so was an instant get.

Breath of Fire II (2001) Idem

Lunar Legend (2002) Yet another port. I have a soft spot for the Lunar series because of the reasons that I explained in a previous post.

Tales of Phantasia (2003) A port of the original SNES and the only version available in English. I liked this game a lot (I have figures of Arche and Mint) and embarrassingly is the only Tales game that I played.


Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls (2004) A port of the PSX version. I keep purchasing the old FF games over and over... Of both games, I prefer FF1 by far.

Final Fantasy IV Advance (2005). Another port and my second favorite FF game.

Final Fantasy V Advance (2006) For some reason, I never have the willpower to finish it. I began both this and the PSX version of the game and I dropped both late in the game (around the time of the death of certain character). Is my personal cursed FF.

Final Fantasy VI Advance (2006) My favorite FF game and the first one I played. This was the last GBA game that I purchased.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (2003) This was the game that made me decide to buy a GBA. At the end it was not as good as I expected...

Sword of Mana (2003) an enhanced remake of the first Seiken Densetsu / Mana game using the style of the at that moment latest game in the series, Legend of Mana. This game, along with the aforementioned Legend of Mana made me to loose all the faith in the series (and is a shame because Secret of Mana was my first RPG ever and I remember dearly).

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (2004) I really enjoyed the first Kingdom Hearts and this was the title that bridged it with the sequel. Unlike Kingdom Hearts 2, I sorta liked Chain of Memories .


Riviera: The Promised Land (2004) A enhanced remake of a Wonderswan game. I liked A LOT this game, probably due to the visual novel-esque characters drawn by Tobe Sunaho, because as an RPG is extremely poor and linear.

Yggdra Union: We'll Never Fight Alone (2006) The second episode of the Dept. Heaven series (Riviera is the first). I bought it after the hype that I had with Riviera. Actually I never played it (yet).

Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars (2001) A tactical RPG with giant robots, is a side story of Kojima Hideo's Zone of the Enders series. I'm not a fan of the mecha genre, but I liked both Z.O.E. games in the PS2.

Super Puzzle Fighter II (2003) Pretty much the best puzzle game for the GBA, featuring Capcom characters.


Final Fight One (2001) The classical Final Fight with added dialogue and two extra characters (Alpha/Zero versions of Cody and Guy)

Guilty Gear X Advance Edition ( 2002) A terrible version of Guilty Gear X with very bad graphics, ear-bleeding sounds and nonexistent AI. Purchased only because it was at a bargain bin for 5 euro.

Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival (2001) For me this is the really ultimate version of SSF2T and not the disappointing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Too bad the GBA controls are not the best way to play it...

Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper (2002) I bought it because of the addition of Eagle, Maki and Yun, but now is largely outdated by the superior PSP version.

Final Fantasy Adventure aka Mystic Quest (1991). The only game for the original Game Boy that I own. Called Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in the original release, is the first entry in the Mana series that was remaked as Sword of Mana. As odd as it may seem, I prefer this version over the remake.

Shin Seiki Evangelion Mahjong Hokan Keikaku (2000) I usually buy European releases because are easier to find, and a few cases the American editions if the game is not published in Europe or had a very limited print. This is the only Japanese version that I have.
I learned how to play mahjong with Eva to Yukaina Nakamatachi (PSX), and I wanted to have a handled Evangelion mahjong game. I still play it from time to time, since I still need to unlock Magi computer and chibi-Rei
UPDATE: Soon after I wrote that, I finally managed to unlock all, after years of attempts!

『Amazing. You unlocked everything. You played this game quite a lot, don't you think?』

And Metal Gear Solid aka Ghost Babel (2000) Pretty much a game based in the PSX game with 2D graphics and original story and characters.

Purchases in Den Den Town

Pretty busy week.
Last Friday I had the placement test, on Saturday I went to Hiroshima (photos of the trip in a future post... or not) and today I went to view cherry blossom in the most famous spot in Kyoto, the Philosoher's walk.


On Thursday I went to Osaka with a fellow exchange student from the university. It was his first time in Osaka, so I showed him the otaku shops of Nipponbashi area.
While talking with him, he remarked that I indistinctively use "Nipponbashi", "Den Den Town" and "OtaRoad" to refer to pretty much the same area, but nitpicking the matter, that's not true.

"Nipponbashi" is the name of the bridge that crosses the Doutombori. Going south, down Sakai-Suji street, you find "Den Den Town" (electric town) from Nipponbashi 3-chome through 6-chome. There's a few otaku shops there (Gundam's, VOLKS Showroom, the two shops of K-Books, Animate, the main branch shops of Super Position...) and the rest are electronic shops and videogames shops like Super Potato Osaka.
"Ota Road" is the parallel street at the west side of DenDen, and is almost totally focused to hobby related stores: Melonbooks, Kotobukiya Shop, Gamers, Toranoana... and a few maid cafes.

First we went to Mandarake Grand Chaos, located in America-mura (NW from Nipponbashi).
I went to the buy-back counter to sell some doujinshi that I brought from Spain. Sometimes I buy from Yahoo! Auctions doujinshi lots, and among the stuff there are things that I had already bought. I sold 7 doujinshi (one from King Revolver, one from Crazy Clover Club and the rest from Shoujo Hyouhon, one of them containing a Takeuchi collaboration), Tsukihime Shiryoushuu (most known as White Book) and Maikaze's Touhou anime. I earned 9,800 yen, most of it coming from Touhou dvd (6,000 yen) and Tsukihime White Book (2,500 yen).

I purchased a Fate/stay night shitajiki (for 105 yen) and Ok Zwei, a Mai-HiME doujinshi from circle Twinzito that contains a collaboration by Kikuta from circle King Revolver. I think that now I'm not missing anything from him, but everytime I say this, an obscure and hard to find collaboration appears...


After that we went to OtaRoad, stopping at several shops. In Toranoana I bought:

Milk Hunters 5 by circle KuroYuki. Milk Hunters is a series of doujinshi based in the first and second seasons of Pretty Cure, where Nagisa, Honoka and Hikari are abused by a fat and ugly otaku...
I have the Milk Hunters 1-4 compilation, but the 5 and 6 seems very hard to find.

In Melonbooks building, after a brief checking on the 1st floor, we went to the second floor, that usually avoid because is the girls section, but to my surprise now a Lashinbang shop was opened there! I didn't check it all because we were short of time, but in my next trip to Osaka I want to buy a couple of goods there. I purchased Kara no Kyoukai Gengashuu Kessaku Sen 1 for 10,000 yen.

It was very expensive for a 2nd hand book, but since it was a C74 exclusive is very hard to find (only 1,000 were made). Nodaways, I was expecting to pay that much for it in Yahoo! Auctions, so it was a good purchase since I'm avoiding proxy bidder fees.
It contains key animations from the first 3 Kara no Kyoukai movies, but unlike the regular books (that I pictured in the C75 loot entry), this book is in full color.


Our last stop was K-Books. I bought:

Street Fighter Artworks Ha. Released a few days ago to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Street Fighter series. Contents wise, is similar to the previous Eternal Challenge (that commemorated the 15th anniversary), but with the new illustrations of the past five years.
Unlike previous books, is sorted by artist and not by games.

Akiman, one of the legends from Capcom's earlier period. Sadly, he left in 2003.

Bengus, now known as CRMK. The guy who defined the main Street Fighter II cast and created from scratch the Darkstalkers/Vampire cast. Until he left in 2006, he was my favourite artist at Capcom.

Nishimura Kinu. When Bengus left, she became my favourite.

Shinkiro. Formerly an SNK employee, I didn't got used yet to seeing his works with Capcom label.

Edayan. Sometimes I find some of his drawings a bit ugly, specially the girl's noses, but most of the time his works are great.

Ikeno. I don't like his "realistic style", but is the main one in SFIV... I prefer his cartoonish style better (like the pics in the photo).


Bonus photo. Capcom Main HQ, located in Osaka. Was my first stop in my first trip to Osaka.