Interest in One Hit Kill Fighter?

I'm not sure if anyone remembers Bushido Blade or Bushido Blade 2 by Squaresoft, but those two games were basically the only ones of their kind. I was trying to get feedback on interest in making a similar game. It had 2 player multiplayer, and also a first person view mode, in addition to the normal fighter "side" mode.

A quick reference:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/retrospective-bushido-blade-article

The games did rather well in sales when they were released, and then after the second one, nothing. If I recall correctly, that was about the time when Squaresoft abandoned any franchise outside of Final Fantasy due to some money issues (I think because of the Final Fantasy film flop).

The basic premise of the games was to have a fighter game with a realistic damage system. Everything was based on a single hit. If you get hit even once in the arm, you lose the use of that arm, meaning that if you were using a two-handed weapon, you would swing noticeably slower. You would also lose the use of your thrown sub-weapon. If you were hit in the leg, you fall to your knees and have to hobble around, and your forward attacks became more like all or nothing dives, which left you easily exposed.

All characters had 3 stances: High, Middle, Low. Some characters would have specific stances for different weapons. Example: In Low stand, most characters would hold their katana behind them, ready to swing up. However, some characters would sheath their weapon and would use a iaijutsu fighting style, becoming very exposed, but very fast.

The game used a parry system where you could deflect the other person's sword by performing the opposite slash if you were in a similar stance. Basically, the goal was to block the other person's sword with your own.

Other notable features:
The game featured free running and jumping. The game's "normal" fighting took place on a 2D plane, but as the game was in full 3D, you could shift toward the camera, away from the camera, and most importantly, you could hold a button and just run around in whatever direction you pleased, which then meant you could use dashing attacks.

"Realistic" movement. There was no jumping 10 feet in the air, and characters moved at the approximate speed of a normal human. There was no flashing past each other and having an anime samurai moment, it was just straight realistic fighting. Jumping and climbing was limited to what a normal human could do.

Speaking of jumping and climbing, when a match started, you would choose the stage you would start at. However, all of the stages took place around a castle, or a particular landscape. However, you could run from one stage to another, which led to battles starting in a bamboo forest and ending up on top of a tower where you could fall off and die instantly.

"Reaslistic" weapons. I mentioned the bamboo forest above, in which you could cut down trees. However, it only worked with a bladed weapon, or the bladed part of a weapon. In other words, if you slashed with a katana, it would cut the bamboo. If you slashed with a spear, it would cut the tree, but only if you hit with the metal tip. If you had a hammer (yes, it had sledgehammers as well as rapiers, spears, and shortswords and other weapons I'm sure I'm forgetting. And each character had a preferred weapon that game them some unique moves), then you were out of luck and couldn't cut through the bamboo, leading to a distinct disadvantage in the forest.

Incredibly unique characters. All of the characters were part of two opposing samurai clans with a long-standing grudge towards each other. However, the characters were nuts. There was a disco samurai (complete with purple leisure suit and afro), an Irishman who dressed up like the phantom of the opera, your standard ninjas (at least three), your samurai that used iaijutsu, normal stances and two-sword stances, a really pale guy who was sickly but crazy strong, and even a kabuki dancer. Or maybe it was a clown. And strangely, it actually had a gender balanced selection of characters, all of which were depicted as strong and held their own. There were no damsels in distress, or stereotypically "feminine" characters.

All of that said... I really liked the game, but the franchise will never be continued. I know a lot of other people liked the game as well. What does everyone think about trying to make game that's very similar, specifically with the amount of mobility and possible one-hit kills?

Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you!

 

Yeah, this looks like a good niche to me. It doesn't sound like an easy game to make, if you want to capture all the depth the original had. But you know, trim it down to the minimum viable feature set, and start with that.

If you do it well, and openly admit that your game pays homage to Bushido Blade (without violating any copyrights of course), then you can probably get the fans of that game on board. They will form the core of your market, and possibly become evangelists helping to spread the word.

Start with the two-player version, but when you want to add AI for single player mode, please look me up... I'd be very interested in helping with that!

 

Awesome, thank you for the offer.

 

Maybe start with tameshigiri so you don't have to worry about multiplayer or AI. It might even turn into a fun minigame. A room with cutting mats would work, but that bamboo forest you described would be more atmospheric to me. If you have a good person to mocap, it's pretty inexpensive these days to set up a home mocap studio. If you start this project, post a link here so I can follow it.

 

That's a very good idea. Very cool. Also, the original game had a mode called "Slash Mode" where you had to cut down 100 enemies without dying yourself. So... close, but not quite.

 

For every successful game, there is a niche. One Indy said it this way, "Go look at all the old games. If something was fun once, it can be fun again."

Gigi

 

I loved this game - If you can get the execution right I'm quite sure you would find a niche.

Go for it!