Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery; sometimes it's just a shortcut to success that seldom works. In gaming, few imitators see any level of success comparative to what was being originally copied. Bubsy attempted to copy Sonic the Hedgehog, with limited success. Super Smash Bros is a multmillion dollar franchise, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale was a dead flop. Some copy cat games get released quietly, and some are never released at all. One of these was Tattoo Assassins, a game that shamelessly copied off of Mortal Kombat. The game was a shameless ripoff; its cancellation was to the bereavement of nobody. But, did it have potential?
photo taken from http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/tattoo-assassins/
But back during the early 90's, video games weren't like that. Sure, some video games were explicitly adult fare, but the violence was often cartoony and, ultimately, harmless. When people thought "video games", they thought about Pac-Man, Pong, or Mario. Mortal Kombat helped change that.
In the year 1992, this was considered too violent for kids.
That was the shock factor, but what about the fun factor? Mortal Kombat was a tight fighting game for its time. Street Fighter 2 had just opened up the gates for the fighting game genre, but the genre itself was still not entirely codified as it is today, allowing for several games to still experiment with how to pull off combat. But like Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat followed a simple formula: one button for each type of attack, plus one for blocking. Pressing those buttons in a particular sequence would allow your characters to pull off special skills. And like Street Fighter, these skills were not just flashy, they were tactically advantageous. They either did a lot of damage, did ranged damaged, or applied Control over the opponent. And of course, the infamous Fatalities were not just flashy and gory, but pulling them off was extremely satisfying.
What does this have to do with Tattoo Assassins? Because it's one thing to copy a game, but if you fail to understand what made the original game so good, then no matter what you churn out, it WILL be garbage. But, how bad was Tattoo Assassins?
Ignoring the wonky controllers, the ridiculously stupid AI (you can beat EVERYONE using the same move, every time), and the mediocre graphics, what did Tattoo Assassins get wrong? It'd be cheap and easy to say "everything", and honestly that wouldn't be incorrect, but we need to go deeper, bit by bit.
The characters are the first thing we need to look at. Among the characters we can play are: a biker, a Hollywood style Hacker (the kind who can hack into any computer with just a toaster and a typewriter), a Nancy Kerrigan rip off (the girl who got her knee busted up by a rival in figure skating. No joke, that happened), an ex-stripper, the biggest Native American stereotype this side of the 1950's (NOT played by a Native American, for bonus points), an ex- Navy SEAL, an Amazon, and a rock star. All of these characters have someone who wants them dead for X or Y reason, and they are all fighters who try to survive.
The idea, on paper, is not bad. Having a wide assortment of varied characters is a plus; but care must be taken when trying to tie the back story to the game. In this game, each of the character's back stories is IRRELEVANT. An example would be the Native American character, Billy Two Moons. His back story is that he's Native American fugitive from the government. Great idea! How does this tie into the game? It doesn't! It's a bit of trivia that no one could possibly care about, because it's never RELEVANT!
Compare this to Primal Rage, a game where the back story explains why the 7 beasts are fighting each other. Sauron wants to eat everything, so he's fighting everyone else. Vertigo wants to create a world of chaos, so she's fighting everyone else. This helps make the fights feel more personal.
In Mortal Kombat, the game is one big tournament where everyone fights everyone to the death. Likewise Street Fighter 2 is about a world wide martial arts tournament. But what's Tattoo Assassin's main story? Well, get ready, because this is going to get long and confusing...
Some guy called Mullah discovered some magic ink that, when applied as a tattoo, can make the tattoos come to life. Then another guy called Koldan, who used to be a guard of the ink, steals it so he can make an army of mutants to take over the world (of course). So Mullah decides to find 9 assassins to give the ink to, to stop Koldan. Problem is, Koldan's power takes over the minds of 8 of those assassins, so the one who's left is tasked with killing not just Koldan and his mutants, but the other 8 assassins too. Got it? Good.
Honestly, I gotta give props where they're due; this is one of the most unique stories for a fighting game I've ever heard. In this day and age where story driven fighting games exist (Guilty Gear anyone?) Tattoo Assassins could have found an audience. But it was released in 1994, when the average gamer could give a blip about a fighting game's back story. They just wanted to use Ryu, Sub Zero, or whoever their favorite character was and prove their skills.
A good idea would have been to keep the story to a minimum; easy to understand, easy to digest, easy to believe. Here's an example: the nine best assassins in the world duke it out for the sake of a private, permanent contract with the richest man in the world, leading up to a confrontation against the man's best bodyguards. Each character has a different reason to want to join; one wants the money, another wants the prestige, and another wants the job as a front to kill the man himself, and still another just wants to take the chance to off the competition.
But a story is just the tip of the iceberg. The meat of any fighting game is, of course, the fighting. In this regard, as I've said before, Tattoo Assassins falters. The idea that a game can be beat by using the same move over and over is simply ridiculous. In this case, Data East (makers of the game) should have invested more time in the AI.
Ahhh, but that was the REAL problem behind the game: Data East didn't invest enough time or money in the game. When you want to make a product, you have to invest time and effort into it; the end result will be reflected of what was invested into it. And before you point me at Duke Nukem Forever, remember that there are always exceptions.
Data East wanted to make a Mortal Kombat rip off, and gave their team of developers half the time and half the budget it normally takes to make an arcade game. Right from the word "go", Tattoo Assassins was doomed to fail! But, if they had more time and resources, could Tattoo Assassins have a chance to be good?
The ONE thing the game got right was the Fatalities, and even those falter a bit. The fact that many of them are played for laughs (EG, farting out a whole cooked turkey out of the winning player character's butt) indicates a hidden potential for the game to be a spoof of Mortal Kombat. The game also offered Nudalities, a Fatality where, instead of killing off your opponent, you strip them of their clothing. This alone would have been a selling point for the game, giving it a heavy amount of controversy not just from parents, but from feminists as well (objectification of women, after all).
But would the game have survived the controversy? After all, we can't forget that Thrill Kill was canceled due to its heavy use of violence. And back in those days, video games had no shortage of opponents who watched like hawks for any chance to "prove" that the medium was dangerous to kids. I've no doubt that a game where you could strip your enemy of his/her clothing would have been billed as "pornographic" and thus banned.
Let's not forget that 1994 was the year when the Fighting Game market was starting to get crowded. It wasn't just Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2 duking it out, there was also Primal Rage, Killer Instinct, Darkstalkers, Virtua Fighter, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, among others. The market was too saturated; Tattoo Assassins would have been a niche title or a sleeper hit, at best.
Maybe the game had potential. Maybe with a little more effort put into it, it could have been a fun title that people could enjoy. If it had gone the direction of "spoof of ultra violent fighting games", it would even have been memorable. But the market of its time was too heavily saturated, and it's clear that Data East was going for a fighting game that took itself seriously. The game was doomed to fail, end of discussion.
So what's the lesson? Simple: a blatant rip off is doomed to fail, always. Nothing more that I can say, really
What does this have to do with Tattoo Assassins? Because it's one thing to copy a game, but if you fail to understand what made the original game so good, then no matter what you churn out, it WILL be garbage. But, how bad was Tattoo Assassins?
Ignoring the wonky controllers, the ridiculously stupid AI (you can beat EVERYONE using the same move, every time), and the mediocre graphics, what did Tattoo Assassins get wrong? It'd be cheap and easy to say "everything", and honestly that wouldn't be incorrect, but we need to go deeper, bit by bit.
The characters are the first thing we need to look at. Among the characters we can play are: a biker, a Hollywood style Hacker (the kind who can hack into any computer with just a toaster and a typewriter), a Nancy Kerrigan rip off (the girl who got her knee busted up by a rival in figure skating. No joke, that happened), an ex-stripper, the biggest Native American stereotype this side of the 1950's (NOT played by a Native American, for bonus points), an ex- Navy SEAL, an Amazon, and a rock star. All of these characters have someone who wants them dead for X or Y reason, and they are all fighters who try to survive.
The idea, on paper, is not bad. Having a wide assortment of varied characters is a plus; but care must be taken when trying to tie the back story to the game. In this game, each of the character's back stories is IRRELEVANT. An example would be the Native American character, Billy Two Moons. His back story is that he's Native American fugitive from the government. Great idea! How does this tie into the game? It doesn't! It's a bit of trivia that no one could possibly care about, because it's never RELEVANT!
Compare this to Primal Rage, a game where the back story explains why the 7 beasts are fighting each other. Sauron wants to eat everything, so he's fighting everyone else. Vertigo wants to create a world of chaos, so she's fighting everyone else. This helps make the fights feel more personal.
In Mortal Kombat, the game is one big tournament where everyone fights everyone to the death. Likewise Street Fighter 2 is about a world wide martial arts tournament. But what's Tattoo Assassin's main story? Well, get ready, because this is going to get long and confusing...
Some guy called Mullah discovered some magic ink that, when applied as a tattoo, can make the tattoos come to life. Then another guy called Koldan, who used to be a guard of the ink, steals it so he can make an army of mutants to take over the world (of course). So Mullah decides to find 9 assassins to give the ink to, to stop Koldan. Problem is, Koldan's power takes over the minds of 8 of those assassins, so the one who's left is tasked with killing not just Koldan and his mutants, but the other 8 assassins too. Got it? Good.
Honestly, I gotta give props where they're due; this is one of the most unique stories for a fighting game I've ever heard. In this day and age where story driven fighting games exist (Guilty Gear anyone?) Tattoo Assassins could have found an audience. But it was released in 1994, when the average gamer could give a blip about a fighting game's back story. They just wanted to use Ryu, Sub Zero, or whoever their favorite character was and prove their skills.
A good idea would have been to keep the story to a minimum; easy to understand, easy to digest, easy to believe. Here's an example: the nine best assassins in the world duke it out for the sake of a private, permanent contract with the richest man in the world, leading up to a confrontation against the man's best bodyguards. Each character has a different reason to want to join; one wants the money, another wants the prestige, and another wants the job as a front to kill the man himself, and still another just wants to take the chance to off the competition.
But a story is just the tip of the iceberg. The meat of any fighting game is, of course, the fighting. In this regard, as I've said before, Tattoo Assassins falters. The idea that a game can be beat by using the same move over and over is simply ridiculous. In this case, Data East (makers of the game) should have invested more time in the AI.
Ahhh, but that was the REAL problem behind the game: Data East didn't invest enough time or money in the game. When you want to make a product, you have to invest time and effort into it; the end result will be reflected of what was invested into it. And before you point me at Duke Nukem Forever, remember that there are always exceptions.
Data East wanted to make a Mortal Kombat rip off, and gave their team of developers half the time and half the budget it normally takes to make an arcade game. Right from the word "go", Tattoo Assassins was doomed to fail! But, if they had more time and resources, could Tattoo Assassins have a chance to be good?
The ONE thing the game got right was the Fatalities, and even those falter a bit. The fact that many of them are played for laughs (EG, farting out a whole cooked turkey out of the winning player character's butt) indicates a hidden potential for the game to be a spoof of Mortal Kombat. The game also offered Nudalities, a Fatality where, instead of killing off your opponent, you strip them of their clothing. This alone would have been a selling point for the game, giving it a heavy amount of controversy not just from parents, but from feminists as well (objectification of women, after all).
But would the game have survived the controversy? After all, we can't forget that Thrill Kill was canceled due to its heavy use of violence. And back in those days, video games had no shortage of opponents who watched like hawks for any chance to "prove" that the medium was dangerous to kids. I've no doubt that a game where you could strip your enemy of his/her clothing would have been billed as "pornographic" and thus banned.
Let's not forget that 1994 was the year when the Fighting Game market was starting to get crowded. It wasn't just Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2 duking it out, there was also Primal Rage, Killer Instinct, Darkstalkers, Virtua Fighter, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, among others. The market was too saturated; Tattoo Assassins would have been a niche title or a sleeper hit, at best.
Maybe the game had potential. Maybe with a little more effort put into it, it could have been a fun title that people could enjoy. If it had gone the direction of "spoof of ultra violent fighting games", it would even have been memorable. But the market of its time was too heavily saturated, and it's clear that Data East was going for a fighting game that took itself seriously. The game was doomed to fail, end of discussion.
So what's the lesson? Simple: a blatant rip off is doomed to fail, always. Nothing more that I can say, really
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