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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Apr 2, 2012 4:03:22 GMT -5
Although we're clustering it under the banner of Your Weekly Kusoge, it has it's own dedicated page, so I'm making a topic. Have you played Shaq Fu? Do you you like it? There's a website dedicated to destroying all copies of it - though sadly they didn't provide photos of its destruction. If you've never heard of Shaq Fu, this is a great place to start. www.hardcoregaming101.net/shaqfu/shaqfu.htmAfter reading the article my house now looks like this*: *not a true statement
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Post by Bobinator on Apr 2, 2012 8:39:42 GMT -5
You know, the more I think about it, the more I believe Shaq was a last minute replacement to the game. I would have love to seen what the early concepts to this game looked like. Honestly, without Shaq, this probably would have gone from 'legendary kusoge' to 'some weird fighting game', at least that's the way I see it.
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Apr 2, 2012 8:46:22 GMT -5
According to this endings page: www.vgmuseum.com/end/genesis/a/sfus.htmThe project lead was Paul Cuisset. Perhaps we should try to track him down. We should be nice about it though - I'm always disheartened when so-called writers contact people behind poor games and are rude or mean to them. No one wants to make bad games. I would love to hear his side of the story, in an impartial and unbiased discussion. EDIT: According to this: www.facebook.com/pages/Paul-Cuisset/110976145619387He worked on Amy, the recent survival horror.
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Post by Gendo Ikari on Apr 2, 2012 9:59:49 GMT -5
Yeah, Cuisset has recently made a comeback.
I think Shaq-Fu is one of those things that's become "cool to hate". It's a bad fighting game but its generation had much worse. I agree with the theory that it was a completely different game, with Shaq slapped in late for marketing reasons. Delphine were great with 2D art and animation but they would have needed more to pull out a good vs fighter. Unfortunately it marked the start of their decline, I do not remember any of their following games replicating the quality and success of the earlier ones.
Are there sources about them taking Mortal Kombat as the only reference for creating Shaq-Fu? Else, it would be only speculation but the article seems to treat it as fact.
The absence of so many characters from the SNES version is due to the cartridge being only 8 or 16 megabits (I don't remember exactly); due to production costs, they wouldn't rise the cartridge size and they cut some characters out - and worse off, some of the relatively more interesting ones!
The article also says the Amiga version has no sound. I rapidly checked a longplay of that on Youtube and it can play only music or sound effects, but it definitely has sound. I suppose the writer tried with an Amiga emulator.
Finally, a typo on Rajah: "duel", I suppose it's rather "dual"?
Do you have reported cases of such assholery? Never heard specific stories but I can believe they happened.
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 12:25:57 GMT -5
Post by kal on Apr 2, 2012 12:25:57 GMT -5
Yeah, no I am not impressed with this review, sorry guys. Normally I wouldn't go into too much detail and tear a review down but at this point I'm sort of sick of all the crap that people heap on Shaq Fu. Like a punching bag for the entire gaming industry Shaq Fu has been taking one on the chin for way too damn long. It doesn't deserve that and I'd sort of hope that HG101 - which infamously defended the Zelda CDI games would give it a little more unbiased coverage than literally "Shit game". Anyone who read the Fighting Game thread will probably have seen this one coming since I listed Shaq Fu as one of my favs (for various reason, not because it's super amazing). First things first, I know the reviewer is playing the game wrong - that's cool the game doesn't help you in that regard so I don't blame anyone for that but it's not the fighting game you think it is. How can I so recklessly claim this just by reading the text!? Let's begin with the following comment The taunt button is pretty useless, fair enough - taunts often useless so you probably shouldn't really hold that against a game. HOWEVER and this is the hugest HOWEVER, the "Power Boost" (which I believe is actually called Move Boost, no promises on that though as it could be a regional/console translation that differs) is essential to playing the game of Shaq Fu. Holding it and pressing one of the 4 directions does different things. *Pressing Back-Move causes your character to Rapidly move backwards - depending on your chosen character the speed varies. For instance Kaori basically flash teleports (Sett does too but his is slightly slower) where as other characters move back at various speeds. *Pressing Up-Move causes your character to ALWAYS perform a forward leap (as opposed to a direct upwards jump). This is handy if you're worried about the finicky controls. In combination with Move+Forward It's useful for setting up leaping closing attacks which if you want an example you can see Rajah's AI use fairly frequently. *Pressing Forward-Move causes your character to run towards your opponent (or in some cases like Leotsu and Sett teleporting adjacent to). Useful for closing distance or in some cases catch your opponent off guard. Voodoo does something very unique here, she turns into a wolf (it looks amazingly smooth too) and if she reaches the opponent, she'll jump to bite them in the throat. Beast can't run unless he's in Fury mode for balance reasons. *Pressing Forward-Move when adjacent to an opponent will make your character perform an unblockable throw flinging your opponent behind you. Some characters like Rajah (his PowerPunch is unblockable) and Beast can't throw due to balance reasons. Mephis has a unique forward blast he does instead of a throw. *Pressing Down-Move cause your character to activate a magic shield that blocks *some* projectiles. Yes I hate the inconsistency on this thing but basically if it's hard to jump or or duck then it'll be blocked by this. This is because standard BACK command for block doesn't defend against projectiles. Already we see immediately if you aren't using the MOVE-BOOST button, you're pretty much guaranteed to lose every match because it is FUNDAMENTALLY PART OF THE GAME. Not to mention at least 3 characters (including Shaq himself) have one of their moves tied to MOVE-BOOST. Now that we've got that out of the way we need to talk about how Shaq Fu is played, at least in my understanding of the game. Remember the game came out in 1994 when the *rules* of fighting games weren't quite all there yet and experimentation was still acceptable. Combo's were an accident and not everyone used them. Shaq Fu chose to go into a more duelistic, counter based fighting system. The basic game is such that timing is key - specifically finding that opening between your opponents guard. The game really owes more to Karate Champ, Great Swordsman, Karateka et al than games like Street Fighter / Mortal Kombat. It's not about combo chains - really it's about positioning, feinting your opponent and then breaking their guard with a well placed special attack or throw. If you come in trying to play Street Fighter, you'll loose because it's just not that kind of game. Additionally the game has limited move queuing. If you enter a special ability just as you come out of a different ability, you'll perform that special immediately - really handy for getting that extra second on your opponent. Don't try to bum rush your opponet it'll just get you kicked in the face, either throw a projectile (the AI rarely have time to put up a projectile shield) or close with an attack, then mix it up with a low kick or MOVE-BOOST Back > Projectile. Now lets look at another review quote I know this is a joke but it's also not particularly informative. Not only is more content absolutely a good thing (That's the joke :V ) - the SNES version itself is actually by far the inferior version. Music aside the Genesis version is superior in so many ways it's basically a different game altogether not only do the aforementioned stages and characters appear it also has more animation frames and frankly plays smoother. Usually a hg101 article at least attempts to recommend a version but in this case, no apparently in Shaq's case they're either crap or more crap - that's not just unhelpful it's basically a lie. On a similar note appreciate the coverage of the Amiga version but it may be worth noting that it is almost identical to the Genesis version except that the backgrounds no longer animate (as far as I am aware) and of course the already mentioned sound issue which is probably a blessing. This is more a general annoyance but the sound issues on the Genesis version likely doesn't have anything to do with the "superior" SNES chip, can we please move away from sterotyping the SNES sound system as amazing compared to the Genesis. So it could play samples that doesn't mean it was the Genesis sound chip being bad, it was probably laziness. I'm fairly sure they grabbed the chords from the SNES version and copy pasted it into the Mega Drive.Then assigned whatever synth's they had that sounded vaguely similar Which of course doesn't work properly because their usage of the Yamaha's pure synth is pretty awful and they managed to mangle up some horrible chrip for one of the most repeated instrutment channels. This is laziness on their part and yes it ultimately means the music in the Genny version is bad - this is not caused by some magical problem with the Genesis sound chip though this is caused by some dude half-assing the music. There's a few songs that don't include that awful chirp and they sound pretty fine, even good. I don't personally remember the Genesis version sounding this much like vomit on the actual Mega Drive, when I get a chance I'll double check just to make sure it isn't some bizarre emulator issue (I'm just guessing the reviewer didn't sit down with a Genesis to play the game, maybe he did and my memory is sugar coated, that happens). Now about the animation, what part of the animation is inferior to Art of Fighting? Because as far as I can tell it couldn't mean the Genesis Art of Fighting because that's clearly inferior animation wise and the SNES version of Art of Fighting 2 clearly has inferior animation to Shaq Fu Genesis. Sorry if the videos have poor quality (the Shaq Fu one even has blur damn it, did he edit it in AFTER EFFECTS?!) people have a real issue with uploading vidos with decent framerates to Youtube for comparisons sake it'd be better to play the games yourselves side by side. Now, I won't include the Arcade or the Neo-Geo version because neither factors in (both way too expensive options for the average gamer). I'm not an unfair man, so I know the sprites are larger in several other games including Art of Fighting but if you're going by pure technical animation skill and frames - Shaq Fu is argurably the best animated fighting game on either the SNES or the GENS especially at time of release. It's certainly BETTER than Art of Fighting and even detractors usually admit that it looks damn good. Most of the animation in other fighters is done with keyframes and sort of fake inbetweens where as most of Shaq Fu's is complete with unique inbetweens for every other move, even the idle animations have more frames than your average console fighter at the time. You can argue that you prefer the look or feel of Art of Fighting but from a purely technical perspective, Shaq Fu has amazingly fluid motion. As for characters getting *stuck* in motion, that's part of the balance of the entire game. You try and kick someone in real life there's a lot of actions going through you can't just suddenly stop. It feels a little awkward but that's more the way you're trying to play the game, rather than how the game wants to be played (and how I HOPE it was designed). Learn your moves, don't go throwing out long winded moves unless you know why you're doing it. Finally here's something worth considering, something that may be potentially eye-opening for the US gamers here and may explain EVERYTHING. I'm assuming most people played the US version running at 60 fps. The developer however was the French company Delphine Software who, being based in France may have been working specifically on the PAL 50 fps standard meaning that the slightly slower paced 50fps running on a EU Mega Drive may in fact be the intended play speed. Suddenly the game isn't incomprehensibly fast, the input commands are more forgiving because the input window itself is slightly longer AND the AI feels like it cheats less due to the slightly reduced speed, you can match them for commands fairly easily. Could the ENTIRE Shaq Fu being the worst game ever be largely due to poor quality NTSC conversion? It's an interesting thing to consider anyway and one that I think gets overlooked. Wack the game into a Mega Drive (or boot up KEGA FUSION and set the region to EU) and give the game another chance and with all I've said here you may just maybe grow to appreciate it. Or failing that at least get over this rational but flawed hate that has been going on for the better part of two decades. *IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS* Everything I've said holds true for the Genesis version, the SNES version might well be a steaming pile but that doesn't matter so much since the Genesis version is massively superior we should focus on the best version when discussing the games quality. Also I apologise on the length of this and all the quoting (yeah I hate quote arguments too but I have to address the specific points) but when trying to deflect 20 years of hate, it takes a little more than a few words. Additionally if there's interest I'm happy to stream a demonstration of the game, I'm not great and a bit out of practice but I don't usually get steam-rolled by the AI.
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 13:01:14 GMT -5
Post by Weasel on Apr 2, 2012 13:01:14 GMT -5
That rather long post really seems to bring up a constant complaint I have about "professional" reviews: I'm tired of seeing games given overly negative reviews because the reviewer is either absolutely not part of the game's target audience (a 30-year-old man reviewing a game intended for 3-year-old girls, for example, or the latest Command & Conquer being played by someone who prefers one-on-one fighters), or else just does not understand the game. It's not fair to review a game when you know nothing about it - if you're not going to take the time to learn how to play the game, what is the point of reviewing it?
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 13:04:36 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2012 13:04:36 GMT -5
Not sure how old everyone in this thread might be, but I played Shaq Fu when it came out. Both on the Genesis and the SNES. It's a shitty game no matter what decade you play it in. It always has been, and always has been regarded as such.
I think the main reason it gets so much derision is because it's not just a shitty game, but a shitty game made by a basketball player who was clearly trying too hard to expand his brand image. Shaq may love video games (and Superman), but that doesn't mean that this was the right way for him to present himself in video game form.
This was also after he had already released a couple of rap albums, so people were seriously getting tired of his shit.
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 13:33:33 GMT -5
Post by Sketcz-1000 on Apr 2, 2012 13:33:33 GMT -5
I never played Shaq Fu, but as the defender of CDi Zelda I can understand Kal's point of view, wishing to defend something he feels is unfairly criticised. In Nick's defence, I put the line about less content being better or worse, as a joke, but clearly a bad one. I wanted a few more lines explaining the differences, so added some about the available characters and level, and then put that jab in there - though clearly I shouldn't have. Sorry! I have since edited this out. Hopefully Nick pops by and we can all continue this discussion. You raise some valid points, and I'm interested to see where this goes. Just play nice. As for the NTSC/PAL issue, I'm not sure if this is relevant, but the supplied screenshots for the MD/Gen version had borders which I cropped - which could imply that it was emulated in 50Hz. Do you have reported cases of such assholery? Never heard specific stories but I can believe they happened. The only two where I've spoken with people personally, who were met with derision, are Jeremy Blaustein and Agness Kaku, for the localisations of Suikoden 2 and MGS2. I've got it in interviews on HG101 somewhere. In the recesses of my mind I recall incidents where some developer didn't want to talk because they'd had scorn from some fanboy website trying to lynch them in an interview, but the specifics aren't coming to me. I might even be mis-remembering these. But hey, I gave you 2. EDIT: Now I remember one, a guy who did arcade ports to the 8-bit computers, regularly got hate mail for a bad conversion of Double Dragon or something - I think he said it put him off discussing his games or something. There are a couple of documented examples where people have been interviewed and mentioned fans or amateur websites being dicks about their less well received work. Which is why I tried to be respectful in the SeaQuest interview, despite the GB version being not so good.
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 14:34:01 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Apr 2, 2012 14:34:01 GMT -5
Yeah, no I am not impressed with this review, sorry guys. Normally I wouldn't go into too much detail and tear a review down but at this point I'm sort of sick of all the crap that people heap on Shaq Fu. Like a punching bag for the entire gaming industry Shaq Fu has been taking one on the chin for way too damn long. It doesn't deserve that and I'd sort of hope that HG101 - which infamously defended the Zelda CDI games would give it a little more unbiased coverage than literally "Shit game". Anyone who read the Fighting Game thread will probably have seen this one coming since I listed Shaq Fu as one of my favs (for various reason, not because it's super amazing). There's no official site position on defending/deriding popular games - it's pretty much up to the discretion of the author. That being said, if you'd like to take up the screed and defend Shaq Fu, I'd certainly be happy to put up sort of a "dueling reviews" sort of thing, if you'd be willing to write it. Oh, someone on Facebook says Shaq Fu has a blood code? I can't imagine it's as violent as Mortal Kombat...
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 18:32:42 GMT -5
Post by nickz on Apr 2, 2012 18:32:42 GMT -5
First, I'm going to apologize to anyone who did not like this article. I went into it knowing that some people may not like it, but I followed through anyway. That may have been a little reckless on my part. I see where everyone is coming from and will try to address things as best as I can.
I must have misunderstood the powerup system. Every so often I would get a shield up and thing I just performed a special block or something. I never had a manual, so I guess it's just failure on my part to not look it up. There are places online where you can find PDFs of game manuals and I should have thought to check one. Even though I've been playing Shaq Fu for a while, Kal is right. I was not playing it in the correct way and I completely failed to check this.
On to emulators. I never thought to change the setting to PAL. I did not think it would make a huge difference. After trying it out, yes, it's still kind of jerky, but the controls are a lot better. As for my mistake on Amiga Shaq Fu's sound, yeah I was using an emulator. The dumb cracking screen that comes with all the dumb Amiga games had sound and the game didn't, so I guess I thought it was just a rushed product.
As for the comment Sketcz put it, he showed me the article as it was going to be published and informed me that he added a few lines. "Whether having less content makes the SNES version less or more terrible, is up for debate." I looked at it, thought the line was funny, and decided that I wanted to keep it.
I like Shaq Fu. I don't hate it and I don't think I will. If I hated Shaq Fu, I wouldn't invest the time and effort to write an in depth (not really, now that I see all the stuff I missed) look at it. I guess think point might not mean too much to other people, as I've seen some writers who absolutely wallow in hate so much that they seem to enjoy it.
I appreciate criticism, both good and bad (you're not going to get better without it), so I thank all of you for helping out. If you want me to revise it, I can take some notes on what you want and hopefully come back with a better article. Thanks.
Edit- Fixed spelling, removed a paragraph where I completely missed a point.
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 18:39:13 GMT -5
Post by lyinhart on Apr 2, 2012 18:39:13 GMT -5
Neat article. One thing that isn't mentioned is the fact that EA actually had exclusive rights to include Shaq in their games. That's why Shaq wasn't in the home versions and subsequent revisions of the massively NBA Jam. He wasn't in other licensed NBA games for a few years actually - like NBA In the Zone 2 for the original PlayStation. EA actually had a conventional basketball game starring Shaq in development, although I'm not sure whether this was before or after Shaq Fu was released (I'm guessing after). It was called "Shaq vs. The Legends" and it would feature Shaq and a lot of famous former NBA stars like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. It was also going to allow players to create their own characters and teams and travel around the United States. Eventually, EA dropped the whole thing and NBA Live (the only licensed NBA game at the time to feature Shaq) became their flagship basketball series. Live 96 had a lot of the player customization options featured in Shaq vs. The Legends and the NBA legends were available as hidden characters. A prototype of the Shaq basketball game was procured and dumped though: www.hidden-palace.org/?releases/46
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 19:28:54 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2012 19:28:54 GMT -5
Now that's a spicy meatball. Thanks for the info!
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Shaq Fu
Apr 2, 2012 23:43:39 GMT -5
Post by ReyVGM on Apr 2, 2012 23:43:39 GMT -5
Yeah, Shaq Fu is nowhere near as bad as the internet makes it out to be. I too thought the game was Pit Fighter level of crappyness, but the game is actually quite playable. It's not the best one, but it's certainly better than Pit Fighter, Tuff E Nuff and several other games.
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Post by kal on Apr 3, 2012 0:12:35 GMT -5
Yeah, no I am not impressed with this review, sorry guys. Normally I wouldn't go into too much detail and tear a review down but at this point I'm sort of sick of all the crap that people heap on Shaq Fu. Like a punching bag for the entire gaming industry Shaq Fu has been taking one on the chin for way too damn long. It doesn't deserve that and I'd sort of hope that HG101 - which infamously defended the Zelda CDI games would give it a little more unbiased coverage than literally "Shit game". Anyone who read the Fighting Game thread will probably have seen this one coming since I listed Shaq Fu as one of my favs (for various reason, not because it's super amazing). There's no official site position on defending/deriding popular games - it's pretty much up to the discretion of the author. That being said, if you'd like to take up the screed and defend Shaq Fu, I'd certainly be happy to put up sort of a "dueling reviews" sort of thing, if you'd be willing to write it. Oh, someone on Facebook says Shaq Fu has a blood code? I can't imagine it's as violent as Mortal Kombat... The blood code just turns on that tiny little blood effect that appears sometimes for each physical impact for every hit. If someone turned it on without you knowing, you'd probably miss it, no MK style Blood Fountains. I've pretty much said all I can say in Defence of Shaq in my post above, it's not an easy game to defend when every other person hates it. If you think there's enough there to rework in to a counter-opinion piece I'd be happy to give it a go, otherwise Nick seems courteous enough to make some small alterations - the more unreasonable complaints are gone now so feel better about that. Probably the main thing I'd like to see added is possibly a recommendation on the ideal way to play it, so at least the game puts its best foot forward for anyone wanting to try it. Since playing the SNES NTSC version is a really bad idea comparatively. Another minor thing is perhaps mention that Shaq is possibly the worst character to play (you could be playing Lightning man, Furry Girl or a Mummy) when talking about the story, this does not help the game endear itself to people when you have to play boring, huge hit box, crappy specials Shaq. Another play-tip I forgot to mention that's probably not worth putting in the article but it relates to the move inputs. The game actually fairly loose with timing but has one specific flaw - the button command (either Kick or MoveBoost) needs to be pressed about 1/4 of a second later than you're used to - however get this right and you'll be able to do a move pretty much every time, it's consistent about it. The special moves are supposed to be a little slow to get out since they're more alternative unblockable attacks. Personally not really comfortable with downplaying the quality of the games animation since it really is one of the better animated fighters on either the GEN/SNES released. This is more opinion based but this is one of the few things that Shaq Fu legitimately has going for it. There aren't many fighting games (for better or worse) that play with the over-animated style, especially now with modern fighters opting for GGXX style high res, low frame count motion.
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Post by Gendo Ikari on Apr 3, 2012 1:42:54 GMT -5
Personally, I'm for the "dueling reviews". Not just one to refute the first point for point, but to show the legimate points of interest of Shaq Fu. Would be also something new and different from the usual for the site.
Just springing to my mind: I remember an Italian review of the Amiga version telling it had a blurb (I don't know if from the box back or from some ad) that recited, more or less, "the best fighting game ever (probably)" <-- yes, even the parenthesis. I'm searching and so far I've found only an Amiga version box front, so I can't tell if it's true.
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