The Giants of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

Chase: What are everyone's thoughts on the giant TVC characters (the names escape me at the moment, so I'm just going to call them Lost Planet Mech and Giant Lighter Man). Are these characters balanced?¹

Alex: I've never played much TVC, but from the little bit I've watched on EVO streams, it didn't appear that they were overpowered -- just incredibly different from every other character on the roster so other players were unprepared to deal with them.

Chris: Chase, It's been a while since I followed TVC, but the giant characters were considered balanced. I think the problem was that the giant characters were actually good enough to use in tournaments, and people didn't like fighting them. They changed the flow of the fight like Phoenix does in MVC3.

Jonathan: I think the consensus was that they were powerful but just too big a target to be considered competitive choices. It's pretty clear that they're there more as a spectacle, and a different kind of challenge, than part of a balanced fighting game. The idea of playing as or going up against a Giant Gold Lighter Robot has its own appeal, surely. Ignore me if I'm totally wrong and they demolished the competitive scene, though.

And Chris, while I can see such an unfamiliar kind of challenge being trouble for a tournament scene, wouldn't it be seen as good for a video game in other circumstances? In a "We have something fun and different from every other fighting game out there" sort of way? It's a weird achievement considering other fighting game mega-bosses (mostly thinking of Galactus and other Marvel Vs. bosses) were completely un-fun to play as, whenever the option was available.

Daryl: According to my friend Kevin (KBeast, 2nd place TVC Evo), Gold Lightan was actually the lowest on the tier list due to his inability to deal damage. He cannot fight a full screen battle so he loses to people jumping around throwing fireballs or get snatched up in a command grab.

PXT-40a was actually doable with the ability to overwhelm the opposition with projectiles and deal heavy damage. Still, it had problems dealing with grabs and would get rocked by a few combos once it lost momentum in the match.

Chris: Plus I think both giants had issues with projectile characters, especially with Tekkaman Blade, since his spear throw had a "cut-scene" that would break super armor.

Evo, Tekken, and GamerBee

Alex: So what would you guys argue is the most balanced game at EVO this year? I'm going to have to go with Tekken 6.

Daryl: I've always thought of Tekken 6 as my perfect fighting game. I feel that the vast array of moves that every character has almost makes it seem that they all possess the exact same tools as the next character on the select screen. If you think about it, all the characters have two different grabs or more, various high/mid/low attacks, launchers, ground bound combo extender, and a selection of combo-ending moves. I feel like Tekken disguises all its moves well by taking the identity of their character and saying, "How would Lili's refined attributes or Dragonov's Russian Sambo make this move work?"

That, or EVO can run a Street Fighter 1 tournament. Nothing says balance like Ryu vs. Ken with identical properties.

Chase: I can't seem to get the hang of 3D fighting games. I play a decent amount of Dead Or Alive, but I'm much more comfortable with only two dimensions. Tekken, Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter are lost on me (though Virtua Fighter was my favorite fighting game for the 32X...by default).

Jonathan: I swear I have never played a match of Tekken 6 online that didn't begin with the other player beginning a juggle that KO'ed me outright. It's loads of fun when I play with friends, but when even remotely skilled players are involved...it's like those Magic Eye portraits that I could never cross my eyes properly to see.

Chris: Tekken was never my favorite series. I did try to learn Tekken 5 for a few months when it was the cheapest game at the college arcade, but once the price went up I went back to the Capcom vs. SNK 2 machine.

Daryl is right with the Street Fighter 1 comment. It's been mentioned in Shoryuken.com's Domination 101 articles, but the only truly balanced fighting game would be one with only one character. As much as we talked about Capcom's balancing with MVC3 and Arcade Edition, they're still going to have the most attention because that series has the most fans, the recognized players and "storylines," and because we want to see if someone will win an upset with a low-tier character like GamerBee did with Adon last year.

When I went to CEO in Orlando last month, one of the most-hyped matches was when an El Fuerte player [SeeDogPoo] nearly beat Marn's Yun. El Fuerte is a perfect example of the hard-to-master low-tier character, and almost everyone stopped what they were doing to watch the match. There is an appeal to a David vs. Goliath bout from a spectator's perspective.

Not that Adon was low-tier, but he was under the radar at the time.

Daryl: It took me a long time to get the hang of 3D fighters. For the most part games are all about being evasive while trying to assert your character into his/her comfort range. From there it's all reaction-based combat with some players remembering the frame data of common attack strings and doing the math to counteract with their own attack string. If you ever watch the YouTube series "Avoiding the Puddle," the hosts are always talking about how to punish moves with X amount of recovery frames.

The crazy part is that I was in that Evo hall where GamerBee ousted Justin Wong at Evolution 2010. Even though I was playing Melty Blood casuals off to the side, I remember the storyline leading up to the match like it was an introduction to the World Series. GamerBee, this unknown foreign player with an underused character, is playing America's best, Justin Wong, during the Street Fighter 4 game of the night. What unfolded at the end was a sight to see. I want to say that nearly 600 people watching in the hall were up on their feet cheering and shaking the ground beneath my feet. For that moment, it seemed like the whole world stopped to acknowledge this new player and shower him with respect.

I want to say in that instance, the game is balanced. I dunno what the Adon/Rufus matchup numbers are off the top of my dome, but that match was definitely a demonstration of skill rather than the game playing itself out.

Tier List Stigmas

Chris: iPlayWinner had the match listed as even. I was watching that on the stream sometime after midnight, and I couldn't get to sleep until an hour or two later. When Gamerbee played at CEO, he was using Akuma and Fei Long to deal with Adon's bad matchups, but he's still an exciting player to watch.

We should start wrapping this up, and there is something I did want to ask you guys: Within your circle of friends, is there a stigma against choosing the best characters or picking from the low tier? We talked about Yun, Phoenix, and the top tier of MVC2, and I tend to gravitate toward good-but-not-too-good fighters like Rose.

Chase: We don't let my friend Bryan use three Jins in Marvel vs. Capcom 2; he's just too good with the character to allow him more than one. And for TVC, we usually state before we play whether we want to play with the giant characters or not, since it really does change the whole dynamic of the game. Other than that, we really allow anything. No one's that good to make the tiers show through.

Ed. Note: Home versions of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 allowed players to choose the same character three times.

Jonathan: Among friends playing locally, it isn't an issue at all. We just rotate between playing who we're good at and picking whoever we aren't familiar with and adjusting accordingly. It helps immensely when everyone's in the same room and can agree on having a couple of "Random All" matches. It's also the only time I can bust out MODOK in MvC3 and really have some laughs.

Online's a different case. Like Chris, I like to use the not-always-used characters. In SF4 I've avoided using guys like Ryu, Ken, Zangief and now Yun/Yang simply because they're everywhere; I run into so many of them that playing dozens of Ryu/Ryu matches sounds so boring. The few times that I get a Chun/Chun or Dudley/Dudley feel sort of special as a result. Personally, there has to be some mixture of the character's personality and play style that I like for me to put lots of time into them.

Daryl: I have two answers for that. Among my old high-school friends, we tend to play characters that we enjoy playing, like Hulk, Sentinel, Wesker, Akuma and Wolverine. Their thinking is that they try to win with the characters they think they can actually learn without much hassle.

My friends in the competitive scene have various tastes depending on the game. In MVC3, they tend to gravitate to the best characters that suit their play styles, so there's an abundance of rushdown staples like Magneto, Taskmaster, Wesker, and Dante. For games like SF4, BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, and Arcana Heart, my friends tend to pick a favorite character and ride him out to the bitter end. These one-on-one games play out like a chess match of who can open up his opponent first and dictate the tempo for the rest of the match.

Personally, I'm in that category. To me, picking a character isn't about who wins the most but who I have fun playing the most.

Chris: Triple Jins? I've faced a person who used Triple Juggernauts who just kept spamming assists. I won, but it's a frustrating match when you don't really play the game and can't do the "Double Snapback" properly².

Rose is my favorite Street Fighter, but I also like her good pokes and projectile games so I do tend to use characters like Mu-12 in BlazBlue or Trish in MVC3 who have a similar playstyle even if I don't like them personally. I did switch from Rose to Juri for Arcade Edition and the CEO tournament, though I prefer to think it's because I wanted a change in pace and not due to the Soul Satellite nerf³, which I understand why Capcom did it. Juri still has a hard time against the best characters, though I don't think she has it as bad as Rose does.

¹While Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a 2-on-2 tag fighter, the giants fight by themselves and have super armor to break through attacks. They are the PXT-40a mech from Lost Planet and the Tatsunoko hero Gold Lightan.

²In home versions of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 you can select the same character three times. A "Double Snapback" is when you hit both your opponent and the opponent's assist with a Snapback. You can juggle the assist character indefinitely afterwards even after he or she is KO'd, but in tournaments you have to stop as soon as the assist dies.

³In Super Street Fighter 4, Rose is invincible when she activates her Soul Satellite Ultra Combo, which makes it a great technique to escape pressure. The attack is no longer invincible on startup in Arcade Edition. The nerf is fair in the sense that the attack was a get-out-of-jail-free card, but otherwise her defense after a knock down is shoddy and she didn't get substantial buffs to compensate.