Versus Number Sixteen

Street Fighter IV versus Chinese Democracy


Retro-80s is as dead as the American president that defined the original era- make way for the waves of slickly packaged 90s rehash. This isn’t inherently a bad thing- a zeitgeist shift in our current cultural climate can shine light on some of the lesser celebrated1 entities, whether it be the detached synth-rock of Devo that has led to a bevy of bands with a nerdiness=cool aesthetic or the tight female-worn spandex that proves to be the only motivator for one to go to the gym2. I for one never really found the reappreciation of the 80s to be tiresome, although there was clearly a cynical undertone to the late nights of listening to The Very Best of Daryl Hall & John Oates and lazy Sunday Police Academy viewings; a sort of condescending “I can’t believe anybody took this shit seriously” feel towards some of the 80s less-ambitious offerings.




But one of the charms of the reevaluation of 80s culture was that a lot of this stuff was new to me. Sure, I had heard of Rambo and RUN DMC, but as I was just starting grade school as the decade was wrapping up, I found myself part of the generation that back-lashed against the narcissistic, cigarette-boat-driving, coked to the pores excess of the 80s3. Even things that bleed artistic merit, such as the B-52s and The Breakfast Club, were deemed hollow by the decade that would idolize Kurt Cobain and Quentin Tarantino4. But, without getting too deep into the hypocrisies of the decadal divide, let me focus on the “versus” article between the comebacks of two of the 90s most lauded entities: Street Fighter and Guns N’ Roses.


History:


Street Fighter IV: While there are certainly more recognizable franchises in the video game canon, few had the epochal shock that Street Fighter II had when it hit arcades. With few exceptions, video-games up that point had relied on simple controls, minimalist graphics and sounds5, and the consumer’s desire to rack-up the highest amount of points. Street Fighter II changed that with technologies that allowed graphics to look comic-book quality, sound effects that helped shape characters’ personalities, an easy-to-learn-impossible-to-master fighting system that continues to complex and enthrall diehards, and a sense of character and story that made older games’ narrative (shooting other aliens from your alien ship) seem antiquated. The game would have massive success both metabolizing quarters in arcades and countless home console versions. Several variations of the game would be released that rarely did more besides give a new character here and there or a subtle visual difference, a formula they used to print money for roughly six years. While other Street Fighter franchises would be birthed out of II’s success, it became obvious that the gaming public, a nerdy-by-nature demographic, was growing jaded by Capcom’s obvious “going-to-the-well” financial philosophy. The game’s staggering popularity lead to many competitors, such as Mortal Kombat, which was essentially Street Fighter but with digitized graphics, uber-violent “Fatalities,” and an American sensibility that the Japanese-made Street Fighter was missing.



Plus, around this time was when the first generation of 3-d fighters, lead by the almost-flawless Virtua Fighter series started to stake their claim as the next franchise to beat in the video-game realm. It was obvious that Street Fighter needed to respond in a definitive way- instead, they gave Street Fighter III, a game that essentially was a rehash of II, except with a different cast of characters and a more fluid (but still 2-d) animation system. While hard-core fans to this day claim that III and its subsequent variations have the purest mechanics of any Street Fighter, it had become obvious that Street Fighter had gone from T-Rex to fossil within the course of a decade. The face of video-games had changed dramatically in the time from the last true Street Fighter and 2009- the fighting-game industry was still alive but not exactly prosperous. Why fight just one stereotypical Indian guy who blows fire when you can kill Liberty City’s police force and army reserves while taking breaks to get hummers in your stolen tank? Why take the hours to learn combos and the creases of a fighting engine when I can play Dinosaur Jr.’s “Feel The Pain” with a group of people? Is there even a place for a game like Street Fighter IV with peoples’ wallets and attention spans dropping at a correlating rate that makes the rate crack and crime rise seem coincidental?


Chinese Democracy- I refuse to try to sum up Guns n’ Roses rise to fame, power etc. in this piece because I don’t think I could do it justice. I recently just finished Slash, a 400ish page book mostly about Guns n’ Roses and while quite an impressive chronology of drug use and STDs, I never felt like the book was comprehensive enough to be considered a definitive history. And while a lot of these postings may give you the impression that they are door-stop size in length, they really aren’t. After Appetite for Destruction, an album which has a very sound argument for best Hard Rock album of all time, G n’ R went into a sort of creative stagnancy. This was mostly due to touring, Slash being a heroin addict and doing bizarre shit like taking care of his plethora of snakes, constant shuffling of the bands line up, and Axl Rose being Axl Rose. Axl Rose, for all of his apparent faults6 does have a very obvious quality- ambition. So, when Geffen were willing to open up the sack of gold for Guns to make their Who’s Next or Physical Graffiti, little did they know that Axl was fully aware of the leverage one gets with success, and his golden ticket (Appetite) was going to get him the materials and cash needed to record his double-album7 “masterpiece,” Use Your Illusion. While the album featured little of what made Guns so damn bad-ass in the first place, it did succeed at enough levels to be considered a great album. Take a white hot band, have them produce a very listenable if bloated album, completely take advantage of music videos as a way to sell records and shake- success was obvious. The stadium tour that followed was renown for some great shows, some no shows, and many, many late shows. Due to reasons whose scope range far wider than even this web-site addresses, the band would break up with Axl retaining the legal rights to the name Guns n’ Roses. Use Your Illusion was released in 1991. Though never completely leaving the social conscience, Guns failed to produce any original music (besides a better than people think album of covers) for the next 17 years until the mythical Chinese Democracy came out. It is argued that no other album this side of SMiLE by the Beach Boys had had periods where anticipation was at this level. Axl, with the help of a militia of musicians finally put the finishing touches of Democracy for release in 2008- it couldn’t have possibly have lived up to expectations, could it?




Test #1: Is it sentimental back-wash or a reverent look-back?


Street Fighter IV’s almost entire existence is based on one thing- the player has played the older Street Fighter games. The control schemes, characters, backgrounds, sounds, everything has been slightly tweaked while giving a well-due complete respect to the King of Fighters, Street Fighter II. While the game’s mythology itself has failed to grow with the modern philosophy that all is a shade of gray, there are tiny slices of a new social conscience present in the game.8 But really, in a game where I can fight one huge green demon looking mother-fucker against a professional wrestler who merely fights so that people will think professional wrestling is a legitimate fighting style9, the last thing I need is some Ivy League-lite take on human nature.


Chinese Democracy feels a little more like the former (because Axl Rose’s voice is instantly recognizable) at first, but ultimately redeems itself by not trying to be Appetite for Destruction II. Twenty-two years have passed since Guns came out with that album, and simply put, kids in their twenties are considerably better at fuming rage and generating chaos than a multi-millionaire who last time I saw was doing a song for an Arnie Schwarzenegger film. While the album bleeds passion, it is a more self-contained sort- an odd assessment for a record who supposedly has tracks where there are upwards of twenty guitar tracks playing simultaneously.


In the end, however, Chinese Democracy kind of just sounds like a new Guns n’ Roses album, whereas Street Fighter IV seems to appreciate the adage to go forward one must start from their past. In that regard, Street Fighter IV wins round one.


Test #2: Stepping Forward


In one of the few (maybe only) scathing review I read of IV, avclub.com’s reviewer essentially said it’s the same game you have been playing for the last two decades. When everything has settled, and one gets over the pristine graphics10, well designed, if still distastefully stereotyped new characters11, and few significant changes to the gameplay itself, the reviewer is completely right- if you didn’t like the series of games before, seeing Chun Li’s undies during a high kick in HD isn’t going to make you reevaluate your stance on the series. Nor is this movie:




Chinese Democracy has had quite the polarizing effect on people, and it is because of Axl’s ostensible desire to try something new with Guns’ music. While there are still a few ironic Axl-I-hate-faggots-Rose-yet-still-try-to-imitate-Elton-John-and-Freddy-Mercury-often piano based howls, Rose definitely tries new genres of music from electronic to Industrial to Jah-Ya-ish Hip-Hop to at least give the listener the knowledge that this collection of songs wasn’t merely left over from Illusion sessions or pieces that just needed a vocal from Slash’s Snakepit. While I have considerable gripes with the album (see below), I do view Axl Rose with a similar regard as I do Billy Corgan12- neither works well with others but both are willing to swing for the fences by taking potentially suicidal and obviously costly risks with their music. While I think everybody on the planet would probably like Appetite for the 21st century, Rose simply isn’t at that point in his musical career right now- he tried something new, with all the world watching no less, and should be applauded for the effort.


Winner: Chinese Democracy


Test #3: Quality of work


Modern video games demand much time and effort from the user. Consider Grand Theft Auto IV, arguably the greatest piece of entertainment software ever created- I played and beat the game while mostly avoiding the optional side-missions and I think it still took me near the fifty hour mark to complete it. Street Fighter is structurally different in this regard- the game is built for a quick duel, usually of the 100 second variety. That being said, I don’t remember the last time I spent as much time playing a game as I did Street Fighter IV. The game has now become what you have to imagine the developers wanted in their first try- a battle between quick-wits and reflexes with strategy that could only really be compared to a chess match (cliché, I know). Everything, from the graphics, to a fighting engine that fluently flirts between intuitive and labyrinthine, to the screw-ball Japanese aesthetic is phenomenal. While I’m not sure this type of game will appeal to the new generation of gamers who expect immediate satisfaction, for a 18 year veteran13, it is perfection. I’m not saying Street Fighter IV is the best game I have ever played; it isn’t. I am saying that there are no other games in existence that make grab onto you with a glee that can only be compared to getting stung by a sentimentality-spreading mosquito14.


One can not talk about Chinese Democracy without at least mentioning the old-dog-lifetime it took to release it and the anticipation that gained and waned as a result of the wait. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the choices Axl made. While some of the songs come across as forced and sound like they are Guns songs only because they are played by a band called Guns n’ Roses, Rose clearly has a swagger that can electrify when he is in his element. The reason David Bowie is often regarded as one of the best pop musicians of all time is because his ability to somehow weld thresholds- take a listen to “Station to Station” sometime- it will take two hands to count the number of genres. Axl, however, lacks this ability. While some tracks, such as “Street of Dreams,” remind one of a time where Axl was on the cover of every music magazine in the Western Hemisphere, forays into uncharted territory spawn very “meh” results. It certainly isn’t bad- the album as a whole is listenable and there are times when you are almost take comfort with the fact that if he makes an album in the next three years it will be ground-breaking. Maybe Chinese Democracy should be viewed as a cathartic exercise in that regard. But there is no question that the only sales this album will accrue are Guns fans- the music is too dated and arrogant to be considered top 40 Rock, not clever enough to be beheld by the indie rock crowd. What has become obvious over the last five or so years is that Slash and Axl have a semiotic relationship- Slash, with his mastering of blues rock and Axl with his sense of ambition mashed together helped work the kinks that both respective genres typically have.




Conclusion: Initially I wanted to simply write ‘Street Fighter IV’ here because it is simply better than Mr. Rose’s latest attempt at modern relevance. But, the way music ages and the way games age are naturally very different- games, due to their dependence on newer technologies have a newest “greatest of all time” nearly annually. While views on music may change as the medium itself does, the basic premise of rock music- guitar, drums, vocals, et al, probably won’t change as much as the video game medium will in the next twenty years (see: Nintendo Wii), and is why The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the aforementioned Thin White Duke have a longevity that no game- besides maybe Tetris- ever will. Chinese Democracy does get points for making a huge, sprawling, ambitious Rock album- it just happens to suck in comparison to the basic, beautiful, sentimental Street Fighter IV. Winner: Street Fighter IV.



1 Or in the case of the 80s, the more mocked.

2 And to any girl that I have been checking out while doing the bench-press, I have to thank you for making my max about twenty pounds heavier.

3 This proves to be hilariously ironic to me for the simple reason that it wasn’t like that the 90’s and 00’s have been such modest times in our history either.

4 Again, ironic, due to the amount of excess these two are identified with.

5 Complete tangent, but if you do dig the sounds of the these games as much as I did/do, I suggest checking out the musical stylings of Crystal Castles and The Advantage- the former is more a synth-based pop group where the other uses old themes from games and jams them like they were they were their own- sounds like a shaky premise, but both deliver.

6 Can’t tell you that for sure- never met the guy- though I would suggest for him to get those hideous fucking dred-locks off of his head. Also, it is literally impossible to look cool if you are fighting Tommy fucking Hilfiger- get with it man.

7 Although they sold them as two different albums. No matter the production costs, one must imagine that after G n’ R held the number one and two albums on the Billboard charts (the only group to ever do that), they got their cash back. As a fan, I’m appalled, as a businessman, I applaud.

8 Take Seth, the final boss, and his uncanny similarity in appearance, power, and attitude to Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen.

9 Nope, no fucking sense, whatsoever

10 Just watching Ryu throw his fireball still impresses me

11 These include but are not limited to “El Fuego” the Mexican luche-libre wrestler and Rufus, the obese American with a taste for motorcycles, fast-food, and big breasted fighter-groupies.

12 I have officially lost half of my friends

13 God knows what constructive things I can have been doing with my time if not playing.

14 Probably better than the ones spreading ebola.