Skullgirls

I'd been monitoring Skullgirls' progress for years. Even back then, when it looked like something that would run on a PlayStation 1, I knew it had potential. Something about the art style and design really interested me, and I'm always up for a new fighting game - even amongst the really terrible ones, there's only a few I actually hate.

I kept tabs on it for a while, but for a couple of years, there wasn't really a lot of progress. Then, about late 2010/early 2011, I came across the revamped SG, which was the beginning of its shaping up to the current model. I was marveled at how much the graphics had improved. Having a composer and voice actors whose work I enjoyed, also continued to pique my curiosity, and having Mike Z, whose name I recognized from fighting game websites, working on the game's mechanics only served to tell me that this was going to be a major labor of love.

As news continued to come out for the game, I only kept getting more and more excited. I worried that I was getting hyped for nothing, and that it wouldn't live up to my expectations. And sadly, I wasn't even able to play it when it first released - I ended up moving only days before it dropped, and couldn't afford it. Thankfully, though, I had come into some Microsoft Points about a month later, and was able to get it on Xbox Live.

I was pretty much floored. It was everything I had hoped for and more. The graphics, the humor, the story, the voice acting, the mechanics, the music... it's all just this perfect little package of awesomeness. I played it for longer in one sitting than I've probably played any other game except maybe Brawl. Many months later, after I'd been more or less forced to move my 360 into the other room and my PS3 became more prominent, I went ahead and bought it on that system, too. There have been very few times when I've purchased a game on more than one platform without them being radically different, but Skullgirls was worth every penny.

Then the PC version was announced. I'm not a huge PC gamer guy anymore (never really was, but I had at least played as much as I did my consoles once upon a time), but once the Indiegogo rolled around, I knew I had to help these guys out. I also saw a chance to cross-promote one of my own characters, but there was no way I could afford $1000, even if I had just gotten my income tax check. But I made a few deals and I was able to get Patron Saint status, mostly to give back to these guys who had given me so much enjoyment.

Since I wasn't a big PC gamer, I never even got Steam until the release of Bad Bots (which I just had to buy, for various reasons). So I had Steam for only a short while before Skullgirls released. I figured there was no way that I could run something this powerful on my old laptop, but lo and behold, after just one patch of the beta it ran smoothly. If more fighters come to Steam and are this fluid, I'm gonna eventually go broke.

So while Skullgirls isn't for everyone, it certainly is for me. And that's why I've given it a perfect rating, the likes of which I almost never give out.