If some of you watched one of the most recent videos by Stumblebee about creativity in indie fighting games, you might have caught wind of a quirky, work-in progress game, which played on a grid, with digitized actors placeholder graphics. At that point of the video, you might have asked yourself “what is this game”? Well, fret not, my fellow indie fighting game connoisseur, because this Thursday I’m taking you for a ride in the bizarre world of Mega Knockndown, a turn-based fighting game developed by the small studio Mega Memecast!
Author Archive: Andrea "Jens" Demetrio
Fight’N’Jokes — rolling back, 25 years later
An “Italian MS-DOS cartoon fighting game re-released with planned rollback”. There is a lot to unpack in this short sentence. First, because I haven’t lived the MS-DOS era myself, I was born at its sunset — My first operating system was Windows 98. Secondly, because we are talking rollback, and, specifically, retrofitting rollback netcode into a 25 years old game. Third, because I’m Italian, like the developers.
So, today, join me and Antonio Lattanzio while we talk about the re-release of Fight’N’Jokes, a hidden gem from a forgotten past coming back with rollback netcode!
Fighting Game Mysteries – D██t███rg█
It’s hard to talk about D██t███rg█ or to find any precise information about it on the internet. This game has been called “vaporwave” or “a scam” or even an “urban legend”, due its cryptic history. There are people enthusiastically saying that this game doesn’t even exist, while other would swear they have seen a copy of it on a shady ███████ eBay account registered as [NAME EXPUNGED], only for said account to disappear into nothingness one day before the end of the auction. However, despite all rumors, I can offer you evidence that not only D██t███rg█ exists, but it is also — somewhat — playable. Buck up and get ready to sate your curiosity, thanks to this deep dive into a game so cursed that I cannot even write its name without facing repercussions!
TMNT X JL Turbo — the impossible made possible
Welcome back, folks! Time for a new episode of Indie Fighting Game Thursday! Today, we go back to traditional fighting games (after, you know, my deep dive in learning the noble art of CARate and in investigating certain indescribable cursed knock-offs), but with a little twist: we will talk about a fan game that combines character from the DC Comics Justice League and the NES/SNES classic TMNT: Tournament Fighters: the bold, daring and technically impressive “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles X Justice League Turbo”!
Footsies with cars – Buck up and Drive!
Okay, first, before we start: No, I have not lost my mind, and yes, I am covering a game which isn’t strictly a fighting game… except it is — borrowing the wise words of Obi Wan Kenobi — from a certain point of view. Thus, after buying it during the Black Friday sales, I decided that this surprise topic would have been perfect for a short article! So, ladies and gentlecars, directly from itch.io, featured on the Yoyo Games blog, it’s time to cover this addictive arcade marvel called “Buck Up and Drive!”!
Beatdown Dungeon — Jet Set Crawling with Tofumen
A repost of one of my first ever Indie Fighting Game Thursday! This time, we’ll ride together into Beatdown Dungeon, an outlier to the “poor amount of single player content in fighting games” trope: The true and tried core of the game is a single player dungeon crawler through partially randomized floors, not unlike Shin Megami Tensei. And, when your character meets one of said monsters, instead of a turn based RPG battle, you have to vanquish them in a 1v1 fight. Join us in this crawl, accompanied by hand-drawn sprites and upbeat music!
Fighting Game Mysteries – The Laptop Arcade Player
This November, we might have stumbled upon one of the most cursed fighting game discoveries of 2021 — the Laptop Arcade Player, a portable arcade machine sold by LEHAWU on Amazon and Ali Express for 150USD and advertised as having 100+ games… among which, what seemed to be 2 completely original fighting games. Buckle up your belt and join me, GuileWinQuote, Ninjinister and MrMKL in this deep dive into the deep unknown of this not-at-all-cheap, obnoxious, obscure machine and the amazing discoveries that were made in the process!
Pocket Bravery (Demo)— from Brazil with a burning Heart
Pocket Bravery is an upcoming 2D pixel art fighting game developed by Statera Studio, an indie development team from Brazil. The game went through a rocky, ultimately unsuccessful Indiegogo campaign, but instead of giving up on it, the developers doubled down and decided to go on, against all the odds.
The game adopts a graphic style that can be seen as a compromise between the Neo Geo Pocket sprites and high resolution sprites, giving the characters a sort of “chibi” look.
Join us on this Indie Fighting Game Thursday and be ready to venture through this upcoming indie fighter, which is scheduled to have rollback netcode in the near future!
Heatwave — a pixel-perfect, Guilty-Gear-esque post-apocalyptic trip
Don’t get fooled by Heatwave’s apparent minimalism: at its core, this game is a legit-to-the-Angels air-dasher, with tight controls and tidal waves of combo freedom. Easy to pick, hard to master, and with three different fighting styles, this game offers options for everybody. Join us in this trip to a post-apocalyptic flooded Earth as we dissect the mechanics of this 20-pixels-tall air-dasher and what makes it tick!
Deep Doujin Dive - FateAxis 2 ~ The Fragment
It’s time for inaugurating a subsection of my Indie Fighting Game Thursday series: Deep Doujin Dive, in which we delve into obscure, rare or not very well known Japanese indie fighting games and review their mechanics, aesthetic and appeal. To kickstart the series, we begin with FateAxis 2 ~ The Fragment, a game by Rokusujio!