Sunday, April 1, 2018

Assemble! - Fighting Game Archetype Roster - The Kid



This is Assemble, where we look at several different characters across multiple series to form a perfect team-up. Whatever the case may be, whether it’s a fighting game roster or an RPG adventuring party, we’ll find the best team for the job. In a change of style from the more long-form articles featured here, these articles will be shorter entries, focusing on one or two characters each, and spread out over time until the complete roster is formed.




What would a fighting game be without a roster of several different, powerful, and engaging characters? In this batch of articles for Assemble, we will be assembling a fighting game roster using characters from several different fighting games based on different character archetypes.


The picks will be based on where the characters fit in terms of game mechanics and their place in the story and world of the game. Only characters that originated in fighting games will be observed here. That means no guest characters, no licensed fighting games (unless their roster includes original characters), and no crossover titles. Finally, I’ll only be discussing games or characters that I am at least somewhat familiar with. While this means I won’t discuss all the fighting games out there, there should be at least some variety from just the major titles.


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THE KID

 
A frequent sight in several fighting game rosters, The Kid is a young character, or at least significantly younger than the rest of the cast, who is skilled in fighting and has seen fit to fight with the rest of the game’s adult combatants, sometimes even training under one of the series’ mainstays. They may be more wide-eyed and idealistic than the older fighters or more brash and impulsive than them, but this character proves that they can keep up with their elders. Like Aaliyah said, age ain’t nothin’ but a number.

For this entry, we’re looking at one series in particular.




Rival Schools is a little-known Capcom fighting game series that appeared on the PlayStation 1, later getting a sequel titled Project Justice on the Sega Dreamcast. The game had a plot revolving around the high schools of a small Japanese city and the roster, consisting of several of these students, embodied different high school stereotypes, from jocks to punks to preppies to even some of the teachers. With a cast consisting mostly of young characters, one would really have to stand out to count for the role as the Kid. They are all around the same age range, so they would have to be really unique in terms of appearance, personality, and possibly even moves to stand out.

Our choice for The Kid is…

Momo Karuizawa from Rival Schools/Project Justice.

Appearing in Project Justice, Momo Karuizawa is visibly younger than most of the teenage cast. One of the sports themed characters from the athletics-focused Gorin High School, Momo’s sport of choice is tennis, which she displays by attacking with her pink racquet and hitting tennis balls at opponents. Despite her cute, girly appearance, she has a devious personality and is one of the game’s antagonists, manipulating the baseball-themed Shoma Sawamura to go against his friends to fight some of the other heroic students and advance the villain’s main plot.

It’s always the cute and innocent looking ones, isn’t it?

For standing out as a young character in a cast of young characters with a quirky move set and a twist on her motivations we now add Momo to our roster.

ADDED!


What did you think about this article? Want to see what other characters get picked for our roster? Do you think someone would fit this role better besides whoever got picked? Make your voice heard in the comments below. Thank you for coming.

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