Savage Ultimate Metal Fighting Game Apocalypse

Let it be known that I am a fan of fighting games. Granted, I am not a fighting game god (I can only focus my godly powers on metal, sex, cosmic powers, metal sex, and cosmic sex metal), but I do enjoy a good hardcore brawl from time to time. There are a lot of great fighting series out there. The Street Fighter games are classic. King of Fighters? Sure. Soul Calibur and Samurai Showdown are among my all time favorites. But if you asked me, "Kaiser, what is the most Metal fighting game series out there?" my answer would be Guilty Gear. Guilty Gear was birthed in 1998, when video game developer Arc System Works decided to celebrate their 10th anniversary (they were founded in 1988) by threading passages from the long thought lost, esoteric text called the Libris Metallum into the programming code of their upcoming game. No one knew what this unholy union would produce. When it was finished, they put the game into arcades all over Japan. The result: Metal bands from across the globe had an unprecedented rise in their Japanese fanbase and Japanese women suddenly had bigger tits. Gamers went nuts over the lightning paced action, heavy metal influence, awesome soundtrack, and cast of characters named vaguely after rock stars (Axl Low) and metal bands (Chip Zanuff and Testament). Atlus released the first Guilty Gear in the States to a lukewarm reception (because most Americans in the 90s wouldn't know metal if it fucked their face and left a little present to gestate in their bodies before bursting out of their chest). Over the next 10 years, Arc System Works disciplined themselves to fine tune the crazy formula they have concocted, hoping to cure cancer, end world hunger, and make women orgasm on command with each successive game (they were unable do the women orgasm thing, but two out of three ain't bad). All of this culmitated in the finest tuning of the game. After making Guilty Gear X, Guilty Gear Isuka, some portable games, and a dozen different versions of Guilty Gear XX, they celebrated their 10th anniversary of the game in 2008 with Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus (originally titled Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus the Square Root of the Master Future Guardian Blade Awakening Super Battle Gonzales Gonzales the 3rd: The Reunion). The character roster is crazy. There's futuristic police paladins, sky pirates, asassins, a ninja, some samurai, some robots, an old man with a huge sword, some goth kids, a guy possessed by ghosts, a vampire, a cross dresser, a weird doctor, a slave-soldier of an oppressive nation, a braindead homunculus, an all around bad ass, and more than a couple of hot chicks. If you don't want to play this game after hearing all that, there is something wrong with you. They also created Guilty Gear 2, which is not a fighting game, but a action/real time strategy hybrid, which sounds weird to me. But whatever floats their boat. (Update: The reviews for GG2 were a resounding "meh," so don't bother.) It seems that Arc System Works is finally putting a cap on Guilty Gear, as their next fighting game, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, is very similar to Guilty Gear, but with a new story and roster of characters (Update: they're also releasing a quirky, fantasy-themed fighting game called Battle Fantasia). Then again, they also made a Fist of the North Star fighting game (which I fucking want to come over to the states, but that's a fat chance in hell) and that didn't slow the franchise down. Anyway, if you've played it, you already know all this. But I know some of you out there have not known the sweet metal feel of Guilty Gear. By all means, if you're a fighting game fan, you owe it to yourself to play this. Heaven or Hell: Let's Rock! Kaiser out BTW: that Libris Metallum book I was talking about earlier - I wrote that. Seriously, I traveled back in time to the Hyborean age and penned this little book to plant the seed of my infinite wisdom into the minds of the proto-humans and build an advanced civilisation. Needless to say, they destroyed themselves. I told them not read chapter 5.