Let me just start by saying I'm terrible at fighting games, so it's a bit of an odd dichotomy that I enjoy them probably more than any other type of game. The 2D types especially, the 3rd dimension always seems to confuse me more than it makes things interesting. And air dashing is a must, I'm not sure why, but things tend to look way crazier when people are darting about the screen, which equates to more fun as far as I'm concerned.

So, mainly spurred on by the wait for Persona 4 Arena, I figured now would be as good of a time as any to brush up on how to input quarter circles and other really basic things. I should probably be doing this on Blazblue, but what the hell I thought, as I committed to buy a copy of possibly the most hilariously named mainstream/niche fighter around; Melty Blood: Actress Again.

There always seems to be a core of people during EVO playing it, and it's fascinating to watch. Obviously there's going to be a few problems starting out, firstly the aforementioned bad at fite games, and secondly I don't understand a word of Japanese. Luckily the game is pretty well documented around the internet in places like metlybread and so on, even if their focus is on the more up to date version of the game. I spent the week or so the game took to arrive learning about the different types of moon, how each of the characters play, and more importantly, how to get PCSX2 to work without crashing... Emulation seemed to be the best way to go about being able to use a comfortable controller and not have to suffer though the blurry output of a PS2 proper.

In the end I settled with learning (pretty loose term) Shiki Ryougi, as you can't really go wrong with picking a character that's on the box... Plus her last arc is super flashy. Having played a lot of Blazblue, it was a little jarring at first to go back to lower res sprites, but they're really nicely animated, ducking, jumping and dashing all look really fluid, even blown up on a larger TV.

It plays very much like it looks, it's a bit quicker than anything else I've played, inputs don't seem as strict as I thought they'd be either, I seem to be able to break into whatever I like most of the time. I've still not quite got the basic combos for Full Moon Shiki down yet, but I'm getting there.

Now I just need to dupe some people into playing with me locally...

Anyway, hopefully time (mis)spent in the world of Melty Blood will go some way towards preparing for the folks who have had a 10 month head start in P4A. If anyone is still playing that is...

MB is the only game I've ever won money in. I love this game so much, which is completely bizarre since the aesthetic is my least favorite of every fighting except for Arcana Heart 3 (another game I really liked). So much hype in this game, man. You can chain and jump cancel quite easily in this, so developing combos and setups is pretty much restricted to how creative you can be within the system. The actual execution is EZPZ after a week or so of serious practice.

C/H Aoko 4 lyfe. So disappointed my friends dropped off and I haven't kept in contact with peoples on the internet about it. :'(

Where do the Japanese come up with these names?

@president_barackbar: I like to think they use an advanced form of Boggle.

@siroptimusprime: I really enjoyed my time with Arcana Heart 3 too, even if I never did quite get to grips with Petra. It's a shame the aesthetic puts so many people off, as there's a really fun game underneath. And if Melty really is as dynamic as you're hinting, I look forward to dumping a bunch more time into it this month!

As far as fighting game names go I personally prefer Under Night In-Birth. Also Melty Blood: Actress Again: Current Code beats Actress Again by virtue of having not one but two! subtitles. Too bad it had the stupidest PC release ever, apparently only being released with some limited edition anime blu-ray. This thread led me to finding it's demo though so I'm downloading it now.

@mwng:

Hopefully the time embed worked but if not click to 1:14:44. ZTB's Aoko play (even though it's Full Moon) is pretty much the reason I picked that character. So many traps and "passive-aggressive" setups. Like Kohaku but a whole lot less linear (and boring) because of the orb placement and laser being TK'able. The first 2-ish minutes of this show it pretty well. That overhead...

Fuck, I haven't played in too long. Need to get Current Code now. Fantastic.

@president_barackbar: You think that's bad, just wait until Under Night In-Birth. Starring TOTALLY-NOT-SION-YOU-GUYS "Eltnam."

I remember Spooky being really into this game a few years ago. The site FADC has a number of great Melty Blood matches archived on it. I never got the chance to play this game or Blazblue. The characters and mechanics just didn't grab me. It's always fun to go back to older fighting games though. Good luck finding some local competition.