The Art of Character Customization AM2 vs Namco

Once upon a time, designing character customization items in fighting games, was all about the art form, the nuance, and the finesse of creating character specific items , martial art style specific items, and stage specific items. There was great attention paid to detail. Each customization piece was a work of art in its own right. The customization pieces were designed for particular characters and there was an art and science to programming the customization pieces so that would flow and work with the character's animations

If you look at Leifei's Yin Yang shield or Akira's budda statue. The attention to detail is stunning. The greaves from VF4 were awesome. If you look at the straps that attached to items to the character's in VF4 and how they flowed with the animation. That took graphics programming skill. AM2 literally introduced legitimate customization items to the fighting game genre and over the series up to VF5FS they elevated the customization to an artform and demonstrated amazing graphic craftmanship. The AM2 team were literally customization and animation artisans

All you have to do is compare the range and variety, detail, and elegance of the customizations in VF5FS to the gawdy, bulky, generic one-size-fit-all customizations of Tekken 7 and Tekken 8. OMG

For the most part the character customizations done by AM2 for VF4 thru VF5FS were hand drawn, individualized, detail oriented works of art. You could almost see the sense of pride and accomplishment of the AM2 graphic designers in each and every piece. Sure there were some whacky pieces e.g. Lion's Mantis head, but other pieces right down to the detail, color and flow of feathers were just simply intricate and elegant. Compare that to the cut, copy and paste garbage character customization for Tekken 7 and 8. The one-size-fit-all atrocities they call character customizations.

AM2 always demonstrated and amazing attention to detail in every aspect of animation from the wind, fire, and water of the stages to the flow of AOI's kimono and Lei Fei's monk garb. All drawn with exquisite style and elegance.

This stuff being shoved down the throats of the Tekken 7 & 8 fans by Bandai Namco, is little more than automated, templatized stretch-to-fit NFT-knock offs masquerading as character customization.

The graphics, animations, color palettes, attention to detail, hand crafted exquisite character styling, smoothness of concept delivered by AM2 represent the the Golden Age Fighting Game Design. Those of us lucky to have played and still own the editions of AM2's Virtua Fighter series are indeed fortunate

 

I personally don't like customizing characters. I just use the standard outfits.

 

Oh yea, I know a lot of players that don't like to customize their characters. I know a few that don't even need different characters, or different stages. There are some folks out there that all they want to do, is beat somebody and rank up, and they don't care about graphics, animations, stages, or customizations. All they care about is roll-back, character balance, frame data, game mechanics and any stage will do. They remind me of folks I know, who don't mind cheap wine in styrofoam cups, just a long as they get drunk

 

I might not be a big character customisation fan, but dude, character customisation in VF4 was da bomb. I did all sorts of cool things with it in VF4 Evolution.

 

Jacky with the Power Rangers helmet. Yeah!

 

I'll admit I prefer VF customization over Tekken. Tekken 6 customization was in my opinion peak for the series, then the later games became generic, but one good thing was using any color possible. VF customization is very unique per character.

 

Yeah, the uniqueness in character customisation, for each character was always a cool thing. Not all characters had the same items and accessories.