Super Roster Maker - DreamMix TV 2: Konami vs. Hasbro

DreamMix TV World Fighters is a little known crossover game only officially released in Japan for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube. Previously touched on in this blog as an honorable mention in the countdown of Top 10 Platform Fighters, this game brought together characters from Takara Toys, Konami, and Hudson Soft (at the time, separate from Konami) to battle against each other, revolving around a story of boosting ratings for a TV channel. While the game is mostly obscure today and only got average reviews when it came out, being able to see Solid Snake, Optimus Prime, Bomberman, and Tyson from Beyblade fight it out was a surreal idea.

As likely or unlikely as a sequel to this game may be to happen, Konami now owns Hudson Soft, so they would only need to partner up with a second company to make a game like this happen, Capcom style. There happens to be one company in particular that would not only bring back veterans from that game’s roster, but would potentially open the game to a larger audience, both in the East and West.

Enter Hasbro. Like Takara, they are a widely recognized game and toy brand, but their reach also extends outside of just toys, with their characters also prominently shown in movies, TV shows, comics, and licensed video games. Konami teaming up with Hasbro on a series that already featured characters from both companies would be an enormous marketing opportunity for them and a chance for another cool crossover fighting game for the players.

That is what we’ll discuss as the topic of this Super Roster Maker, DreamMix TV 2: Konami vs. Habsro.

For this roster, instead of using the normal metric for selecting characters, we’ll keep things small here. This is partially because neither company has that many current fighting games to their name, especially when it comes to Hasbro, and there are many Hasbro brands, like Nerf or Play-Doh, that don’t have characters attached. To choose which series to pick from, I looked at several different sources to try to determine which series from each company were among their biggest. We’ll only pick the top ten series to each get one character, then the top three of those will receive a second hidden character (I would imagine to be unlocked via gameplay), bringing the final roster to 26.

PART 1: KONAMI MAIN CHARACTERS

 

Simon Belmont (Castlevania)

Solid Snake (Metal Gear)

Pyramid Head (Silent Hill)

Bill Rizer (Contra)

Harmony (Dance Dance Revolution)

Riou (Suikoden)

Moai (Gradius)

Frogger (Frogger)

Goemon (Ganbare Goemon)

Bomberman (Bomberman)

Most of these characters were chosen as the main characters for their series and their most recognizable faces. Harmony is one of the named selectible dancers from Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party, and so is one of a few that can represent the series, and Moai was previously a playable character in DreamMix TV World Fighters.

PART 2: KONAMI HIDDEN CHARACTERS

Alucard (Castlevania)

Raiden (Metal Gear)

The Butcher (Silent Hill)

Apart from the already mentioned characters from these series, these characters were the best fits as the secondary characters for this roster. Alucard and Raiden are both popular characters within their series and The Butcher, if nothing else, can serve as an effective Pyramid Head clone.

PART 3: HASBRO MAIN CHARACTERS

Optimus Prime (Transformers)

Twilight Sparkle (My Little Pony)

Duke (G.I. Joe)

Red Ranger (Power Rangers)

Jem (Jem and the Holograms)

Blythe Baxter (Littlest Pet Shop)

Jace Beleren (Magic the Gathering)

Drizzt Do'Urden (Dungeons & Dragons)

Bulletproof (C.O.P.S.)

Tyson Granger (Beyblade)

The ten characters listed here are main or otherwise prominent characters in some of Hasbro's most major properties. Some of these characters, like Optimus and Tyson, have appeared in DreamMix TV World Fighters, while for several of these series, a crossover title like this would be the first time they have even appeared in a video game.

PART 4: HASBRO HIDDEN CHARACTERS

Megatron (Transformers)

Rainbow Dash (My Little Pony)

Snake Eyes (G.I. Joe)

These three characters are all significant within their series in different capacities. Megatron is the main villain of Transformers (also a veteran of DreamMix TV), Rainbow Dash is one of the main characters of the current version of My Little Pony alongside Twilight, and Snake Eyes is a fan favorite characters of the G.I. Joe franchise.

FINAL RESULTS

Konami Side: Simon, Alucard, Snake, Raiden, Pyramid Head, The Butcher, Bill Rizer, Harmony, Riou, Moai, Frogger, Goemon, Bomberman

Hasbro Side: Optimus Prime, Megatron, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Duke, Snake Eyes. Red Ranger, Jem, Blythe, Jace, Drizzt, Bulletproof, Tyson

As stated before, a roster of 13 characters each for two sides leaves us with a small roster of  26 characters. Each side has three series with two characters each (Castlevania, Metal Gear, and Silent Hill for Konami and Transformers, My Little Pony, and G.I. Joe for Hasbro) and the rest of the series involved only have one character. If 26 characters seems a bit short to you different versions of this list may include other characters that didn't show up in my research making this article, like Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly (one of Hasbro's most well-known board games) or Yugo from Bloody Roar (an actual fighting game).

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What did you think of this roster? What characters would you want to see in a sequel to DreamMix TV World Fighters? Make your voice heard in the comments below.

Thanks for coming!

Assemble! - Fighting Game Archetype Roster - Guest Fighters

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 GUEST FIGHTERS

In a lot of fighting games, especially ones with DLC or unlockable characters, guest fighters are a big talking point as they can add in new elements from unlikely sources, as seen in recent games like Mortal Kombat X and 11, Tekken 7, Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.So, after selecting all the characters for the main Assemble the Fighters roster, a good way to close it out might be to select some guest fighters for this hypothetical fighting game lineup. 

For these characters, we’ll be looking at Eventhubs to look at currently active fighting games that are based on non-fighting game properties or crossovers between multiple series. One character each will be taken from each series to add to our roster and we’ll be looking at Eventhubs’ lists for tier rankings and popularity to see which characters have a good mix of competitive viability and fan appeal.

The guest fighters are:

For Dissidia Final Fantasy NT: Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII)

For Dragon Ball FighterZ: Cell (Dragon Ball Z)

For Persona 4 Arena Ultimax: Yu Narukami (Persona 4)

For Pokken Tournament DX: Sceptile (Pokemon)

For Injustice 2: Red Hood (Batman)

For Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite: Dante (Devil May Cry)

For PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale: Kat (Gravity Rush)

For Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Marth (Fire Emblem)

Each of these characters were in the top five of both their games’ tier lists and popularity lists. As for the characters themselves, each of them are popular characters from well-regarded series, including a couple of non-video game characters with Cell and Red Hood. While some might expect more mainstay characters from these series to enter into a giant fighting roster, like Goku or Vegeta from Dragon Ball, Superman or Batman from DC Comics, or Mewtwo or Lucario from Pokemon, the characters determined here seem to serve the players of these fighting games the best, while some popular characters aren't as good within said games as outside fans might think they should be.

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What did you think of these character choices? What guest characters would you want to see in an all-star roster of fighting game characters? Make your voice heard in the comments below.

Thanks for coming!