YUN AND YANG ENDING FROM SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV AE WITH TRANSLATION

Here are Yun and Yang's fully animated endings from Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition. The video's in Japanese, but there's also a translation courtesy of Event Hubs:

SUPER STREET FIGHTER 4 ARCADE EDITION VIDEOS!

The Arcade Edition of Super Street Fighter 4 came out a few days ago and there have a been a flood of gameplay videos coming out. Check out some of them below!

WHY I DISLIKE FAT GUYS IN VIDEO GAMES PART 2

In part one, I outlined in detail why I thought I needed to voice out my opinion regarding obese characters in fighting games. In this follow up article, I just want to clarify a few thoughts on characters, persons, and ideas that may run contrary to my thoughts, but actually don’t.

E. HONDA

What about E. Honda,though? The famous sumo wrestler that first appeared in the granddaddy of all fighting games, Street Fighter II, way back in 1991? Well, first of all, my specific complaint was about characters who are obese, and not just fat. There are plenty of people all over the world that some may categorize as fat for whatever aesthetic reasons, but when physically examined, they wind up to be perfectly healthy. E. Honda pretty much fits this description. If you actually look at his design, you’ll notice that much of his torso is meant to actually be muscle, and not fat. His character design in the classic, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, is even more evident of this.

SUMO WRESTLERS

But what about a lot of the other sumo wrestlerswho are truly mostly fat and not muscle? Well, there’s plenty of controversy right now regarding this. Sumo is a sport where one opponent has to push the other outside the ring, and mass obviously plays a huge aspect of that. In this case, sumo wrestlers often pack on extra mass in order to gain an upper hand against their opponents. Of course, a lot of this mass is muscle, as sumo wrestlers typically engage in very rigorous physical training every day, like any other fighter. The problem is when they gain too much body fat in order to increase their weight even more. There have been numerous occasions when champion sumo wrestlers have died because of cardiovascular diseases related to high amounts of body fat. 

Sumo wrestlers that value technique over mass have been emerging, and these are much lighter competitors who have a tremendous amount of lean mass, and use their skills as the primary form of winning. This is obviously a better form of sumo wrestler.

ROY NELSON

Okay, but what about Big Country Roy Nelson, the recent winner of The Ultimate Fighter Season 10who is currently tearing through opponents in the UFC? Well, first of all, “Big Country” Roy Nelson has a big belly, but I really don’t think he can be classified as obese (compare his picture to that of Bob’s or Rufus’ in part one). He pretty much has a ton of muscle underneath all that flab, and he has the cardiovascular endurance of a champion. He works hard in the gym, and it shows in the Octagon. In this case, I don’t think his façade is something young people should emulate, but his work ethic sure is.

Also, if you notice, from his time on The Ultimate Fighter to his more recent fight against Stefan Struve, you can actually notice Big Country slim down quite a bit. This is because of his increased training to prepare for higher level competitors. The higher he climbs the ranks of the UFC, the fitter he’ll get.

And if you want to emulate a UFC heavyweight fighter, there are plenty of bigger names out there hyped even more than Big Country. People like champion Brock Lesnar, top contender Cain Velasquez, Shane Carwin, and Minotauro Nogueira are hyped way more than Nelson, and have slimmer, more muscular physiques, which is something that better represents the current Heavyweight division of the UFC.

Any more thoughts on “fat” or obese people being represented in popular culture? Drop me a comment below as I’d like to read your thoughts!

WHY I DISLIKE FAT GUYS IN VIDEO GAMES

As some of you may have already figured out, I really enjoy fighting games. Heck, I’ve admitted that they’re part of the reason I got so into fitness in the first place. Street Fighter was my favorite, and I idolized the characters there, particularly the main character, Ryu. And this is actually the primary reason I wanted to voice out my opinion about this.

RYU

Some of these fighting games are extremely popular, and people idolize the characters associated with them. For whatever personal reason, they think they’re cool. Just like me, they want to emulate them, and be just as strong and physically impressive. Idolizing Ryu was a great thing for me as a child because it geared me towards becoming a strong Asian person. Ryu is a Japanese character, and he’s drawn as a well-muscled fighter, who is, both story and game-wise, one of the strongest competitors in the world. That’s a great inspiration for someone like me!

BOB

So, imagine my surprise in 2007 when Bandai Namco games revealed the new characters to the sequel of their most popular fighting game franchise, Tekken,and one of them was an obese American. I was seriously disturbed when I saw the images for the first time. I knew how some people all over the world viewed these characters, and now one of them is a seriously unhealthy person? Not only that, this person moves and fights like an incredibly strong, agile and well trained martial artist. To this regard, some young people may think that the character is cool and want to emulate him.

RUFUS 

I quickly disregarded this as a sort of isolated incident, though, but when Capcom announced the lineup to Street Fighter IV,a sequel to arguably the most famous fighting game franchise of all time, they also included an obese American character. Not only that, this character moved even better than Bob and is actually one of the strongest characters in the game.

I really don’t understand why they needed to represent such a serious health problem in such a positive light. Young people are very impressionable, and they’ll cling to whatever imagery they find interesting. I really don’t want them to idolize obesity. Video games already propagate this by making them stick to the television screen even more and making them physically inactive. We really don’t need these games to create imagery that what they’re turning into is something cool, either.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

If these characters were featured in games that were very unpopular and which I didn’t really care for, I probably would never have thought of this whole idea. But the fact is, they’re being featured in some of the most popular video games in the whole world.

I really want these sorts of characters to stop being created. I want Bob and Rufus to be the end of the line. Obesityis a serious problem and it doesn’t need to be represented as cool in any sort of way. Fighting game characters are usually great sources of inspiration for young people because they’re popular and feature very fit and athletic characters that people can emulate and create positive goals from. In my personal opinion, new characters to these popular franchises should continue this trend and not do the opposite.

What are your thoughts on these characters? Should they continue to be created or not? Drop me a comment, as I’d love to hear your thoughts!

STREET FIGHTER LEGACY REVIEW

I’d like to take some time to give recognition to a recently released fan film about one of my favorite video games of all time, Street Fighter. The film is called Street Fighter Legacy, and is basically a 3-minute fight scene between rivals Ryu and Ken.







The exact description taken from its official Youtube page states:

“StreetFighter Legacy has been a labour of love and passion project for its creator, Joey Ansah, who not only conceived and pitched the project, but also co-directed, co-wrote and choreographed it, alongside cameo'ing in the film. Collaborating, creative partner and long time friend Christian Howard was part of the project from day one, co-writing the script and story elements, as well as further down the line, storyboarding the film, being assistant fight choreographer and most importantly playing Ken Masters.

Streetlight repped Australian Director Owen Trevor came onboard to co-direct the film. His experience and style carried forward from shooting on 3 series of the acclaimed 'Top Gear' have really been an asset to the project and given it a strong visual flair.”

I personally very much liked it because, outside of all the flaws that one may catch, I can feel that the people who made this truly believed and loved the material they were working on and, had this not been a fan – made only film and hade a much higher budget, all the limitations with the time, the special effects and so on, would pretty much be easily addressed.

Here is a short video on the costume designs in the film:



I find that the martial arts choreography is very decent and the actors have obviously put in plenty of effort. The first thing one would notice, of course, are the special moves. Again, this is an adaptation of a video game, so, of course, movements of such nature will exist in these sorts of things. Given the crew’s obvious limitations, these special moves are incorporated decently enough, padded with slow motion effects to give the audience a bit more time to appreciate them.

Another thing to notice is that the choreography is very linear. This, I think, is the flaw in the choreographer’s way of thinking. The game that the film is based on is largely 2D in nature. The characters can only move from left to right within a limited space. They cannot step to the side or work in a 3D space of any sort. The flaw is that they attempted to replicate this as exactly as they could, as revealed by their fight choreography video:


Now, I fully respect their intents on making the film as faithful to its source material as possible, but I believe that they should have limited to elements like the costume and set designs, the tone of the film, the motivation of the characters and so on. I personally feel that they should have taken much more liberty in the fight sequences and been a bit more dramatic with it, especially because of the extremely short time it’s given. Taking full advantage of the open space they had by making the characters sidestep, roll diagonally and adjust their positions from time to time, like a real fight might look, would have definitely added more variety to the visuals and made the whole thing plenty more interesting.

Regardless, I still very much enjoyed the film and, as a fan of Street Fighter, genuinely applaud the cast and crew for putting in tremendous time, effort and money by creating this labor of love and releasing it totally free on the internet for other fans to enjoy and talk about. Bravo.

HOW STREET FIGHTER CHANGED MY LIFE

Okay, I just bought Super Street Fighter IV, played a few matches to try it out and am really hyped over it! But, no, I’m not going to review it. I know that I really like to review stuff, but this isn’t a video game blog. What I will do is relate how the Street Fighter franchise relates to my personal views of fitness and well – being.

When I was a kid, I’d play pretty much only one type of video game: fighting. And most of the time, the Street Fighter franchise would, more often than not, fill my video gaming needs. What this instilled in me as a little boy is a sort of idol worship for the characters I played as. My favorite is, and always has been, the Ryu character. I’m not sure what it was about him, outside of the fact that he’s the male poster boy for the franchise and is the favored character of many players out there, but I believe it was because he always seemed the most human to me, and that made me relate to him more. Sure, he throws fireballs and flies vertically through the air, but he didn’t have green skin and fangs, or was bald, had an eye patch and stood nearly seven feet tall.

He was designed as a simple, Japanese fighter wearing a tattered gi of sorts. That’s it. Of course, he didn’t look specifically Japanese. He had a more generic, square – jawed hero look to him. In fact, some might even argue that he looks more Western than Asian in most of the artwork that depicts him. In any case, I knew he was Asian, same as me, and when I looked at him, he didn’t necessarily look Japanese. In a way, I could kind of see myself in his character design and so wanted to be exactly like him growing up.

Of course, he wasn’t my only childhood idol. As a kid, I’d chew up many things in pop culture, including comic books, action movies, anime, and, of course, video games. I liked (still do, actually) Batman, Goku, Bruce Lee, and other characters and celebrities. But I’m not writing about them right now; I’m writing about Street Fighter.

Ryu gave me a particular vision of the future that I wanted to inhabit; a future where I was like him, or at least close enough that I’d personally believe it. Of course, no matter how much I wanted to grow up throwing fireballs and launching dragon punches as a kid, I eventually conceded that I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish that. So, I went for the other aspects of the character. The tattered gi and bare feet were out, since I still wanted to be considered a normal member of society, so what we have left are the martial arts skills and buff physique.

In short, Ryu is a martial artist. He’s not a corrupt boxer, a psycho – powered terrorist, or a green monster. The basic story he’s usually given is that he wanders the world seeking out new challengers so that he can become a better fighter. He’s a martial artist, plain and simple; the original World Warrior. Well, I couldn’t travel the world like he did, but I could adopt his dedication.

As a kid, I tried out karate and taekwondo, and eventually settled on the latter. I trained in it for several years, but never attended any of the tests or whatever it is they’re called, so until now I only have a yellow belt. I grew tired of taekwondo because the instructors I got never really took many of their classes seriously, possibly because we were all very young. So what I did was took all the basics I learned and build upon it by myself. I would (and still do to this day) get any and all books on the martial arts I could get my hands on, read them cover to cover, and move on. I’d do this for videos as well. I started slowly amassing equipment for myself, such as gloves and a heavy bag, that I could use to train. Of course, many of these books also detailed how to become fit enough to perform the movements detailed well and compete in tournaments, so I started on a particular road to fitness.

And so this road has led me to this day. As mentioned in my “About Me” entry on the right side of my blog, most of what I know today about fitness and martial arts is “personal”, meaning self – study. I practice as much of it as I can, of course, and to this, still imagine Ryu performing his special attacks whenever I practice martial arts. But since I took all this so seriously, I am now taking a formal degree in human kinetics, actively writing a blog about all my personal knowledge, and sharing what I know to as many people as I can in order to propagate fitness and better living.

As mentioned, I had many influences throughout childhood that pushed me towards where I am right now, and the Street Fighter series has always been a huge part of it. I know for a fact that everyone has a childhood influence or dream. Something like, “I want to be a superhero” or “I want to be an astronaut”, but eventually gave up on it to become an accountant or a math teacher. Was this because they honestly thought making balance was more exciting than fighting crime or going to outer space or because they just gave up on what they wanted? I know this feeling very well because, until now, I still can’t launch fireballs from my palms, but I still work hard on my martial arts and physical fitness, and help others do the same. My childhood dreams mean a lot to me to this day, and I take them very seriously.


This is what Street Fighter has given me. What have your childhood dreams given you?

Credit goes to Gamefaqs and Gamespot for the many pictures I used in this post.