A tadpole is both a frog and not a frog; it is not yet a frog, but it is also undeniably inseparable from frogness. This is true regardless of the fact that there are frogs (the Pristimantis) which are never tadpoles; they develop directly into their adult form. Some frogs are born being recognized as frogs, some have to grow a bit first- but they're all frogs.

I wonder how often people used to talk about those blurry dots you see wherever you look before we knew why they were there
I have no idea how to describe them without sounding like I'm insane, but the things that are caused by the one part of your eye not having light sensors or whatever

So a lot of hub bub has come up regarding an interview about Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves only having your standard arcade mode. I understand that Arcade mode isn't satisfactory value on its own. 6-10 fights against CPU all to hopefully get like 1-2 cutscenes and an ending that is probably not canon and might not even move any kind of plot forward just isn't enough for folks, especially with games costing $60-$70. While the gameplay and ability to play other people should be the #1 focus of a fighting game, not everyone is going to want to play against humans (at least at first), or want a break from sweaty ranked and people love lore. They love the characters, they love how they change, what they've been through, how they interact with each other outside fighting and story mode is a big opportunity to cater to that.

At the same time, I myself don't really like the modern Mortal Kombat/Injustice/SF5 style story modes. Essentially they are little movies that occasionally ask you to push buttons so ever briefly against some watered down CPU. While the lore and character love is high here, the interacting with the gameplay and "fighting" is kind of minimal. Some games like Guilty Gear Xrd (Unsure if Strive does this?) have no fighting in their story mode. I kind of like Blazblue's story mode in that while its basically like the MK/SF5 system but with Visual Novel segments replacing cutscenes, the difference is that it's also Visual Novel style in that you have branching paths and alternate stories to explore. The fighting itself can also alter what branches you're on, based on winning, losing, finishing with a super, etc. I find this more interesting than the standard binary "You lose try again, win move forward" of the MK/SF5 style.

One interesting way to do a story mode while still having an engaging gameplay loop are the games that basically tack on a completely different genre of game to it. Street Fighter 6's World Tour and Mortal Kombat Deception both do this with an open world rpg complete with NPCs, shops, flags, etc. I think this style is much more interesting but it also has some drawbacks. For starters, its a big ask for a development team to basically make a whole different game while making a complex fighting game on top of that. Capcom has multiple teams and engine/tech they can lean on which helps a lot while the MK team under Midway was just in their "Go big or go home" phase and even with Armageddon they were able to leverage the work they accomplished with Shaolin Monks.

Street Fighter 6's World Tour also has a pretty glaring issue I think. For those who haven't played it, you play as your own create a character, following them as they learn and level up their fighting, meeting new Street Fighters along the way to train from, and ultimately get wrapped up in a storyline about a rebel group trying to liberate a country from the grips of an evil rich man. The issue is that the Street Fighters are all isolated from each other. Sure you get to learn what they've been up to since you last chronologically saw them, some have moved on to opening restaurants, some continue on their path, and some have suffered from hardships. But they never interact with each other, only you the player character. Sure they have stories involving events with other characters and you get some nice art to help illustrate it sometimes but none of that is part of the story and you don't get to witness it itself. Sure it's "your" story but I think people love seeing the characters they love interact with each other. Consider how many people really love Super Smash Bros. Brawl's cutscenes.

So is there a "solution" to all this? I don't know. I guess everyone is going to want different things from their story modes, whether it be engagement with the gameplay to just enjoying watching the characters do things. All of these games I've talked about so far also usually have the standard arcade/ladder/time attack modes to help cater to everyone. I don't know if 1 specific mode will ever be enough to satisfy, but a combination definitely covers more ground. The fighting game genre has had to adapt to being a consoles first experience rather than 15-20 minutes on an arcade cab for 25 cents a go and I think it's done a good job. Can it be better? Sure. How? I don't know but I'm just one guy spitballing and I don't have the experience or team support that all devs have over me so I leave it to them to experiment and explore that space.

This brings us back around to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. So I'm someone that doesn't usually doesn't engage with the single player content of fighters I play. For example, I think Tekken 7 & 8, which are games I've played, have that modern MK/Injustice story mode but I have no idea. I did play World Tour however, which I think was helped by it being a very different experience from the core SF gameplay. So for me, City of the Wolves having just arcade mode is fine if the online multiplayer experience works fine. Still I understand and am disappointed that SNK still isn't trying to do more.

It feels like City of the Wolves has been on this kind of fast track development and perhaps this is a consequence of it. SNK pretty much only has the fighting game folks left so trying develop another gameplay mode is a big ask for the team as well. I don't know the reasoning, all I know is that people are going to see this game go for sale for $60-$70 dollar games and they're going to wonder why it doesn't have all the bells n whistles that the other games in that price range from Capcom, Namco, Netherealm, etc do. People have been chomping at the bit wondering the fate of Rock Howard post Garou and I don't know if some really good artwork after an arcade mode is going to satiate them.

I don't know why I wrote all that but thank you cohost for being a place where I can. What are your preferences for this kinda thing?