Aoi Umenokoji was one of the two new fighters added to Virtua Fighter roster in VF3 and her character design was meant to take advantage of the new Sega Model 3 arcade board it was running on. When VF3 and the Model 3 arcade board were shown off in a video demonstration at the AOU show (Amusement Machine Operators’ Union) in 1996, Aoi was shown first and foremost in the demonstration with long flowing sleeves meant to move and react like real fabric. However, when the game finally arrived in arcades and later on Dreamcast, her flowing sleeves had been chopped off. I have to assume there was just too many issues with them clipping through other characters and other potential problems.
Virtua Fighter 3 1996 AOU tech trailer, posted by Dave Freeman
Yun Lee, SF3: Third Strike, Hong Kong Shopping District 7:45pm stage
“Perhaps you’d prefer to challenge me at a skateboarding game?”
Although he never uses one in battle, Yuns distinctive character trait is his skateboard. However, the board is never depicted uni-formally through out his appearances in the Street Fighter 3 and Street Fighter 4 series of games.
Yuns board in his official Capcom Street Fighter 3 art looks like this:
Capcom official artwork: left SF3: New Generation, right SF3: 2nd Impact, SF3: Third Strike art does not show Yun with his board.
In these drawings his board is clearly based on the same idea minus a few differences in one having a tail guard, the other a nose guard. Both are red, have yellow rails and wheels, and similar graphics. The similarities here are not by accident because his board is 100% based on a real world skate board: One of Scott Oster’s Dogtown boards from the 80’s.
Two examples of 80’s/90’s street style skateboarder Scott Oster’s Dogtown decks
Its only in official artwork (and in his SF3: New Generation winning quote image) that you can get an idea of what the deck graphics are in the SF3 series of games. During a match you only see Yuns skateboard appear when he is the opponent being fought on his own Hong Kong stages. However, in those instances the design of the board is linked to his characters sprite colors, and usually will not match its representation in artwork.
Yuns entrance on his Hong Kong stage in SF3: New Generation, note the board matches his pants/armlets/bill of cap
In Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Yuns stage is changed and he no longer has as dramatic of an entrance as he does in the first two SF3 games. He merely hops in from offscreen on the right and the board rolls away, with the same color scheme matching his character sprite. The main wrinkle that SF3: Third Strike presents is an odd change to the shape of his deck that I dont think ive ever seen a Skateboard have. Its only visible in SF3:TS during his win quote:
Yuns SF3:TS sharp cornered skateboard deck
For whatever reason the tail of his skateboard now has a very sharp 90 degree corner with no curve at all. Some old school decks did have a more flatter tail, but never to an absolute point like that, so its a very odd illustrative decision. That same shape carries over into his Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition / Ultra ending:
Yun being clobbered in his SF4: AE/U ending, with sharp cornered deck
Its especially odd to see that in SF4 because they use a fully 3D modeled skateboard for Yun in that game and it does not have a tail like that. The Street Fighter 4 design also totally scraps the Scott Oster deck graphics for an original design.
Yun with his SF4 deck that is not based on any real world skateboard design or company that I can find. The boards color is based on characters palette.
The deck carriers over the star-burst background from the SF3 deck, but swaps out the central artwork and Scott Oster/Dogtown names for “White Dragon, Masters Foundation”. Im guessing with how much more visible the entire deck is in SF4 they opted against directly referencing an existing skateboard to avoid any potential conflicts. Yun has also moved past the trend of attaching plastic rails and nose/tail guards to his board.
Yun skating in the background of the Halfpipe stage in Street Fighter X Tekken
The only other time that Yun makes a unique appearance with his skateboard is a minor role in the background of the Half-pipe stage in Street Fighter X Tekken. You never get to see the bottom of the board because he never attempts any tricks, he just rolls back and forth along the half-pipe as the fight in the foreground carries on but it is the signature red with yellow wheels seen in most official artwork. Now with Street Fighter 5s roster complete its unknown if we will ever get another change to see what may happen with Yuns skateboard next. We could have to wait for the rest of our lives.
When it comes to boring 90s fighting game protagonists Kazuya is certainly right in line with several others — at least upon first blush. If you were to walk up to the arcade cab and watch the demonstration for 30 seconds, once Kazuya comes on screen you immediately know he is the central character. He looks like an action figure that would simply be named “Martial Arts Man” but he gets more interesting if you know his backstory: mainly that his father threw him off a cliff when he was five years old and that he has the devil inside of him! Very dramatic! But he is simply presented as calm & cool and devoted to martial arts, its pretty generic. Later on in the series they ramp it up and give him a purple coat and plaster a permanent stern expression of his face to know how bad of a dude he really is. Long gone are the days when he could enjoy the simple pleasure of throwing his father off a cliff:
Tekken 1: Kazuya Mishima – A Father’s Fall, uploaded by SonKitty
Lau Chan is the canonical winner of the First World Fighting Tournament in Virtua Fighter 1, however, the honor is short lived because he is by default the first character you will fight in Virtua Fighter 2. Even if you pick Lau himself as your character in VF2 you are forced to face yourself, the reigning champion, in the opening match of the tournament. Sega has ensured that Lau will be the character to be defeated the most times in single player matches. Its one thing to win the belt, its a whole other thing to defend it.
Virtua Fighter CG Portrait Series Vol.6 Lau Chan One of the more unique releases by Sega during the Saturn era was a series of “CG Portrait” discs, one for each character in Virtua Fighter 2. These discs were essentially a multimedia chapter of an art book for the game that featured a series of CGi Renderings of the character and other elements mixed with photos displayed along with the characters theme song, and also a Karaoke version of that same theme song. The Virtua Fighter series has always had a bit of a sparseness to it beyond the central gameplay, so these acted as (slightly) more robust extras. However, at ¥1280 a piece (roughly $13 usd), and 10 retail releases its maybe expecting too big of a stretch from the fanbase. But hey, that was like 25 years ago, now you can just watch it on YouTube:
Lau Chan – Virtua Fighter CG Portrait Series Vol.6, uploaded by Game Archive
Blanka, Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior, Amazon River Basin Stage
The creation and backstory for the character Blanka is complete hodge-podge. A character that Capcom designer”Akiman” admits went thru several unrelated iterations before someone colored in the skin green and the feral jungle beast from the Brazilian Amazon river basin was born. Hearsay suggests that Blankas green skin came from the consumption of chlorophyll in jungle plants, and his electrical powers are due to an education from electric eels within the river. The ending scenarios for Street Fighter 2 of course tell us he is a lost human child that grew up alone in the Jungle. His mother recognizes him as her son “Jimmy” due to the anklets he is wearing; which she claims were a gift to him as a child. That lore addition throws a bit a of wrench into the works however, *adjusts glasses*, because these are HUGE brass anklets that in no way would a child ever wear. There is some official Capcom artwork from that time where there is remnants of chain links attacked to the anklets, suggesting he was captured at one point and broke free. It could also suggest these “gifted” anklets were perhaps shackles forcibly strapped to his ankles, and rather than him having been “lost” he escaped from an abusive home. Blankas fame after having defeated the evil Shadaloo boss M. Bison has drawn his mother out of the shadows in an effort to capitalize on her sons sudden success. I personally would rather that Blanka had a happy childhood full of eccentric gifts from his mother rather that torment.
In King of Fighters ‘94 all the characters are broken into teams of three with each representing a nation of the world. Terry Bogard, an American, and his American brother Andy, and Japanese friend Joe Higashi are all representing the nation of Italy. If you look at all the other teams, almost all of them have some sort of relation to the country they are representing (almost). There is already a U.S.A. team with three Americans on it, and the same goes for Team Japan (all Japanese characters). I thought maybe the last name of “Bogard” was Italian, but it seems its more likely to be Dutch. Perhaps the game designers had a better idea for an Italian stage than something from the Netherlands? Andy Bogard does have an Italian themed stage in Fatal Fury 2, so perhaps that is the tangential link that brought them to represent Italy. I hope Italy was proud of the teams effort.
