Oddessies are rare, and wonderful things. Often, I'll think of all the great sagas out there, waiting to be told to me, and living in the minds of those who have wittnessed them before. Sprawling stories wherein there are characters that develop and become personal friends, or personal enemies with those who interact with them, who read them.. allow them into their world, and vice-versa. It is a blood relationship that once begun, you cannot forget.. somehow, these characters influence us, shape us.. and give us inspiration. 

There are of course, many kinds of story, and I often at time find myself drawn to sagas in the forms of video games, yes, series.. often made up of little words, but rather by pictures, actions, events. They are immensely simple, yet contain the unique element of involving the "player" in the saga. They shape it, personally, they control the heroes to victory, or shamefully lead them to their demise. It's a completely different take on reading a book, nothing is certain, there is no destiny. Take one of my favourite series for example, Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic is a guy who has been in my life for a long time.. since roughly 1990, when I played Sonic for the Master System. I had a Master system for a long time, yes, it was my first console.. and my first game for it was (apart from the obligitary Alex Kidd that came with the thing) Sonic. Sonic, in both it's Mega Drive and Master System incarnations, was an immensely easy game to finish, and it made pretty little sense. The story was pretty generic, too.. but stylish it was, very very much so. I finished it on my first play. The Mega Drive version taking me.. two tries. Anyway. It was my first proper game to be a geek about, I read all the Sonic reviews in the magazines, collected Sonic toys, and yes, even watched that godawful american cartoon of him. I really liked Sonic.. and as the sequels rolled out, so did I play them, I loved them.. I liked the continuity of it - and I think that's what's most important in these video games - contiunity. So what if there is little or no story? It rolls on.. being part of the journey is the fun of it. So Sonic became a saga. It became a saga in the same was as the Zelda series, the Mario series and the Castlevania series. But there is something about these early-born non-RPG video game sagas that I love, and that is that technically, there is no story. There is sometimes a terribly written paragraph in the instruction manual, heck, there always was.. but the rest of the story, well it was pretty much up to you. Sonic had an adventure for sure, through jungles and forests, underwater labyrinths, mechanical deathtrap complexes, lush, green hills, volcanoes, giant pinball machines, eerie lava-filled ruins, giant flying fortresses.. and there were obstacles to overcome, challenges to be met, and of course, Robotnik, his silent arch-nemesis at the end of every encounter. There was a rivalry going on here, and a big one. That's what I liked, the feel of it. There didn't need to be words.. the adventure itself was the story, you did so much, there was so much blood and sweat and well, not really tears... or sweat.. or blood, but you got there in the end, and it took you some work. Therein lay the saga. Later, in the excellent final Sonic games on the Mega Drive, there were more characters, and even a little bit of story, all acted out in cute mime. Knuckles would shake his fist at Sonic, Robotnik would sweat profusely, and Steel Sonic would glare indignantly at all who stood in his path. 
I still play these games, once a year.. I go through cronologically, from Sonic through to Sonic 3 & Knuckles ,I daren't go any further... S3+K is the last Sonic game I actually liked. Why? Well, they changed it after then. Sonic got a voice, he talked, he have conversations - it became truly story based, and lost all of it's mime-related charm, it's innocence was taken.. it's style was taken. But I'm not really going to talk about that today, no.. I'm actually going to talk about SNK and a little tournament in a place called Southtown: The King of Fighters. I really went off track, huh?

So, I was thinking to myself.. I never have understood the characters of the much-loved series, The King of Fighters. Fighting games are another minimialist saga style. They have little or no story.. and yet, the tiny progressions they offer, the inter-character rivalries and the subtle story that may as well exists.. has the same "classic" feel as Sonic. I get engrossed in it, and I enjoy the characters a lot more subsequently. I've never really gotten into KOF properly, I haven't been able to respect it. So, I decided.. it was time to embark upon a quest, to find how this series had become so popular, a journey into the heart of KOF. I'm a pretty big Street Fighter fan. I think I've pretty much played all the important ones, I'VE PLAYED STREET FIGHTER ONE. For those who are curious, don't be curious.. it's one of the worst games I've ever seen in my entire life, it's pants and there is nothing more to it. Nonetheless.. in playing SF1 I learnt a little more about Street Fighter, a bit about the characters, and I learnt about some of the characters that returned later, and who cameoed, and who were referred to. Technically, the game sucked, but I kind of didn't mind that. Now that I've finished it, of course.. I think I'll never play it again, unless I get paid a lot of money. Anyway, having played every historically important Capcom game, and even knowing the history of Strider Hiryuu by playing the original games, even in the Master System incarnations.. made me feel complete, I didn't just enjoy the game, I respected it, I understood it.. I felt like I was kind of a proper fan of the series. Even if I wasn't that good at the games, I knew all about them.. and this made me like them. I understand Capcom's style so easily now, that though I can understand and predict the typifications and stylisations present in their games, I respect and enjoy them, an old friend. Something caught the hearts of SNK fans in the same way, and I wanted a piece of the action.
And so it began.. I went to the place where it all started, square one. A game, from around the same era as Street Fighter 2.. which at the time was uproariously popular. There was a game to challenge it though, I still find it inferior, as will anyone in their right mind. SNK had a perchant for the cheap from day one, as I soon learned. The game was Fatal Fury.
Fatal Fury was a simple, button masher of a game.. the game was balanced so out-of-your favour that you really had to know what you were doing to get a handle on your opponent. There were three playable characters, who were all fairly generic, but they were to become heroes in their own right, later on in video game history. I found the game terrible, yet interesting, this was video game history, and I really love my classics. I set out with Terry, the main character to finish this game, which, contrary to public opinion, is not really too difficult... if you play like the opponent. Cheap, cheap, and really cheap. What followed was a short period of change.. I had to go back in time, back into the days were games were technically pretty average, and they were downright fiddly and difficult to play. In contrast, the gaming "engines" of today's fighting games are immensely more complex, with more buttons, more moves and more rules - and therein lies the difficulty, but by the same token they are much easier to control, and you have a lot more you can actually DO, with more precision, and so on, and so forth. Back in the day, it wasn't like that. Your controls were simple, but.. to add a little spice to things, they had different methods other than control and complexity. One prevelant one was to make it so that you had to perfectly, and I mean totally perfectly execute your moves for them to even work, and then, make them useless. Also, stuff like.. make the buttons only work half of the time. Then, there is AI. While these days the AI must abide to the same rules as you, once upon a time it was not the case. In Fatal Fury the AI has periods of invincibilty, and three of the opponents transform into more powerful versions of themselves after the first half of the match, gaining incredibly powerful moves and the like. Another annoying technical thing, that many of you won't understand is that no opponents moves have recovery time.. they can interrupt any special move action with an attack if it misses. Human players can't do this though, and all of the moves take forever to pull off. After accustoming myself to this, I finished the game, eventually, with the obligitary 4 credits on the 4th difficult level, and I felt rather pleased with that. Of course I could only do this once I read up in a FAQ on how to defeat Billy Kane without getting hit, and how to snuff Geese - argurably the cheapest fighting game boss of all time (later to be proven wrong.. it's Geese in Art of Fighting 2)- with relative ease. The tactic is rather stupid too, just keep using the same special move over and over again.. he has no defense for it. Why "Geese" anyway? How the heck is Geese meant to inspire fear in the hearts of mankind? We're talking about a guy who is to remain THE most notorious SNK fighting game boss for years to come, and he's named after a pack of white birdies more viable to peck at your knees than kill you. In one of the Art of Fighting endings, someone even makes a crack about his name, calling him Duck or something. They're actually aware of what it means in English, so it's not some weird Japanese-ism.. why Geese? Why?
Fatal Fury is an awful game, though. It has bad controls, terrible response, enemies are usually twice as fast as you and do more damage, have invincibility from time to time when doing moves, and some (such as Billy Kane) have attacks that are more or less invincible, and with full screen range. Geese, for example, has one full-screen move that does 40% damage to you, and it has no delay (that means, he doesn't need to recover from it). Simply put, they substituted AI for cheapness. The characters in Fatal Fury 1 sucked. "Duck King" the rapper? The main characters were solid, though. Andy, even though he looked like a prat, was the fast "cool" one. Terry was the "heart-of-gold" fighter and Joe was comic relief. The big-baddies were good, too. We had Geese, of course.. who was rather intimidating, and Billy Kane, who was downright nasty. Basically, there was some good there. The graphics, however, were pretty bad all around. I have no love for them, same goes for sound, and well.. design really. It was a shaky start for SNK. But in retrospect, I find it perhaps one of the most incredible things in the history of gaming that Capcom decided to make a sequel for Street Fighter.. which truly was a disgusting, ugsome game. And so..

Fatal Fury 2. This was Fatal Fury all over again, pretty much, but with a difference. The graphics were slightly better, but mainly, they'd tweaked the AI. Yes, it was much, much cheaper. I couldn't finish this game, not with infinite credits, I couldn't get past Billy Kane. Why? Now he has about three invincible attacks, and a pole that reaches right across the screen, and he's twice as fast as you. That's not to say I didn't get close. I really want to do this, and I will finish it. There were new characters, also.. and you could play as them, rather than the plain three main guys from Fatal Fury. Mai Shiranui, the ultimate fighting-game bimbo also joined, and I was groaning even then. I was kind of disgusted to know she was "in love" with Andy too. But this is what I was searching for, in my quest.. the story. All too soon I felt like I knew Fatal Fury 2, it really was so similar to the first one. I was pleased that even two games in I was understanding the epic, and it was surprisingly Konami-esque. Basically in every game, Geese (or one of his minions) would hold a tournament in a place called Southtown. The tournament, even from Fatal Fury 1 was called "The King of Fighters. Terry, Geese's arch nemesis, would attack him and kill him. Actually, in the first game Terry knocks Geese of the top floor of a building, and he dies.. forgive me for being a stickler, but doesn't that kind of make it impossible for him to come back? Anyway, in the timeline of Southtown, three other games fit into the mix that aren't part of the Fatal Fury setting. They were the Art of Fighting series, and to be honest I kind of hate all of the characters from it, apart from King. But it was part of the story, it had Geese in it.. so I needed to fill in those blanks. So then I went back in time, back in time in the world of Southtown, to Art of Fighting. 

If I had seen an Art of Fighting game playing in the arcade when I was a kid, I would have loved it dearly. It had the most amazing graphics for it's time, it had so much style, I even would have forgiven the completely awful gameplay and animation for the graphics, that's how great they were. Even now, they've aged well, and visually the game looks great. The animation still sucks though. As do the game mechanics. But, more familiar faces appeared in this game, ones I'd seen in the latter SNK games. Ryo, Robert, King, Yuri, Takuma, Mr. Big.. The story was starting to flesh out. I was learning the origins of the characters in these games, and I came to respect them. I knew the relationships they held.. and I kind of liked it. I liked King, most of all, one of the most stylish fighting game characters ever. But, like Fatal Fury, it suffered badly from extremely bad gameplay, and ridiculous difficulty. I struggled with the second level of this game for about an hour, simply unable to beat the fat bikie punk called "Jack" who insulted, in crappy digitised speech after every round - "Geyomawaki", which - after being heard for the hundreth time, you realise is actually "get out of my way, kid". Even more surprising, is that he manages to say this while spitting what appears to be a tooth out of his mouth. Amazing. Anyway, the immense difficulty of the game surprised me, and I gave up on it. But I felt gypped, and I came back to it, and smashed some bikie bottom, and got up to what I thought must be the end boss, Mr. Big. I kind of lost hope then.. Mr. Big was an anticlimax. The character design sucked, he looked like all of the worst porn kings of the twentieth century stitched together, the reedy smile, the shiny baldness, the chain, the dodgy Ray-Bann sunglasses, the fur lined giant goat and bowling shoes.. perhaps most disturbingly, the twin 8-inch cylindrical pole "weapons" he clubbed you to death with. He was cheaper than Geese at double speed, and I wasn't getting anywhere. I started to play Art of Fighting 2, and in the intro there was a tiny, fragment of story. A result of not finishing AOF1, I'd missed out on the complete meaning of this. Great. I'll have to go back and finish it soon. But I checked out AOF2.. the game still used the same terrible super system, and had crappy dynamics. But, it did have all of the great characters, Takuma, Yuri, Ryo, King, Robert and others that would appear later in the KOF series, and I was pleased to know their stories. But I stopped the AOF playing there. I got sick of the tedious, crappy gameplay. God knows, anyone would.
Then I went to Fatal Fury 3, which actually takes place after the first King of Fighters game, KOF'94. I didn't care though.. I kind of wanted to get my history down before I touched KOF. I was enjoying this a lot.. I was learning a lot about the KOF world. I already was kind of itching to play the KOF games to see all of these retro characters in a big match... I can see where the appeal comes from now. All of SNKs fighting game characters come together in one super-match, and that is what KOF is all about, it's the culmination of the saga's heroes in one mega-story. Capcom never had it right from the start, they only had one series of fighting games.. SNK may have had a shaky start, but in terms of securing a loyal fan base, what better way than making an "ultimate dream match" game, years before even X-Men vs Street Fighter ever game out, way back in '94? So then I looked at Fatal Fury 3. One word: wow. SNK had changed. Fatal Fury 3 had no cheapness, it had beautiful graphics AND beautiful animation under the same roof, for the first time in a Fatal Fury game. This was really Capcom-rivalling stuff. The characters were great, and the game was genuinely challenging, not cheap. It was stylish, it had an inventive system and the whole thing just worked. There was quite a bit of character development, and new relationships formed. I didn't want to get into it too much. This was enough, for one day of exploration.

Day Two

I was determined to finish Art of Fighting, and I did just that. I tried, honestly.. to try and fight cleanly, and that didn't work. So I moved to cheap tactics, that didn't really work either. In the end, it was only the infinite wallet that an emulator provides that allowed me to achieve this. And the ending reveals:

nothing.

Oh. My. God. I worked so hard at this game to get this and there isn't even a proper ending? "Ryo, that man you defeated, he is our..." - "TO BE CONTINUED?". What the heck? AOF1 isn't a highly scoring game in my books. The graphics were kind of neat, and the story was okay, UNTIL the ending.. but no. AOF1 is not a game to be played, it's one that you learn from, and then put away, much like Fatal Fury 2. Speaking of the 1-2 differences. Art of Fighting 2, I went back to it. Strangely, the SNK tradition of making the second game the same, but with much more cheap AI was true. It was a shockingly cheap game, there was no way the fights you could have would be fair and square, and I longed for the Samurai Shodown announcer. You'll only get that joke if you're a complete Samurai Shodown geek, like me. I understood the intro to the game now, after reading the terrible Engrish very carefully. I'll tell you the AOF story.

One day, Ryo's father and sister went missing. Ryo has a friend called Robert, who is an annoying git. Ryo is kind of annoying too, but that's a different story. Ryo, in search of answers, visits the local kendo dojo, or something. He calmly beats up the instructor who says "I don't know where your sister is, try Mac's bar". So off to Mac's bar it is. In the cutscenes in this game there is a little cinematic of Ryo riding his harley, or Robert driving what appears to be a Ferrari F40 or something, I can't remember.. it has digitised speech, too, which is pretty neat. Except Robert is voiced in perfectly crappy, corny American-English, ugh. "Whoa dude, he was tough man!" etc. 
So, at Mac's bar Ryo fights Jack, the fat, cheap bikie punk. He then goes to the bar, and beats up King, the tough, female bouncer, who rocks. Then he goes to chinatown and beats up Lee, and, following his trail of "clues" like this, ends up fighting the big, bad, Mr. Big. Mr. Big is kind of Geese's right hand man, and so once he beats him he asks him to cough up the truth. Ryo follows his advice and goes to karate dojo where Yuri, his sister is being held. He then fights a mystery man in a demon mask, using exactly the same style of karate as himself and Robert, and wearing almost exactly the same clothes as Ryo. After the fight, Ryo is beating up this guy and asks him to take off his mask. At that stage, Yuri runs in and tells him to "Stop, that man is..."

Yeah. 

Okay, here's the answer.

In the intro for Art of Fighting 2, it is revealed that the man in the mask is none other than Takuma, Ryo's father! (Horror chord!). Why? What the heck.. what kind of sense does that make? Well, apparently Takuma once worked for Geese, but he wanted out of the deal 'cos Geese is mean and Takuma is all fuzzy. So, in retaliation for his treachery, Geese captures his daughter, Yuri, and holds her hostage. Ryo and Rob go looking for her, and end up fighting Mr. Big, who I guess organised this little party...
Here is where it gets a little tricky.
Basically, the story goes that Takuma was "set up in a trap, involving Ryo and Robert", by taking Yuri hostage. So... um.. that doesn't make any sense. Cool. But I think what is trying to be said, is that it is Geese's fault and Takuma was protecting Yuri. Still, he could SEE in that mask, right? .. So why did he pummel the crap out of his own son, if he knew Ryo was on his side? Or why didn't he at least talk to him? And why didn't Ryo recognise his own father underneath a crappy little mask? The mind boggles, and so does the storyline for AOF.

Unfortunately AOF2 as a whole isn't much better than AOF1.. in fact, I would go so far as to say the graphics are actually worse. Still, at least there are more selectable characters. In AOF two we had (count 'em) two characters. Worse - they were exactly clones with a different "skin". AOF2 rectifies this, but retains pretty much everything else that is bad about AOF. This isn't really my concern here though, what I got out of the first two AOF games was something much more valuable, and completely intangible. I got a feeling, an understanding.. something not finite, but I became closer to the series, and closer to SNKs ideologies. The journey itself, much like with Sonic, was part of the story. The tiny details thread together, and there is where a true video game saga lies. A lot of it is interpretation, nothing is ever said of Geese's crime syndicate, nor of the brutal murders he commits, and the deeply entrenched hatred for the Bogards, which comes from a story at the root of the whole series. The flimsy at best storyline, and corny one-liners that do make up the actual substance are nothing, nothing at all, but somehow it works so well. Since there is in effect no story, the oweness to fill the literary "gaps" belongs to the player, and therein lies the initial ideology I described earlier, the player "making" the saga. Acting the part of the heroes, be it to glory or to ruin.