Bye Bye Taka...

While it's "unconfirmed", the Magic Box has reported that Taka won't be returning, and that the new female character is tall, dark with white hair, and carries a gun (for "decoration").

At this point, I'm really only hoping it's gonna be fun to play, because it seems to be abandoning much of the style that drew me to the game in the first place.

Spotlite

 

thanks for the lead, just thought I'd quote the brief;

"- UNCONFIRMED: Sega has revealed new details on their Namoi (sic) 2 arcade fighting game Virtua Fighter 4. The second new character for the game will be a tall, dark lady with white hair, who equips a gun (for decoration purposes) on her belt. There will be a total of 13 characters in VF4, the sumo wrestler Taka Arashi from VF3 will be removed from the game."

http://www.the-magicbox.com/

sigh. sigh. sigh. please don't be true.

 

FUCK

 

If this is true AM2 will lose a lot of credit. How can you drop the 'japanese national sport "sumo" . I understand if somones drops such a bad implemented character like tekkens 'ganryu' but taka ohhhhh no. First the Dodge Button, flat battlegrounds?, and now this. If they want to change so much they shouldn't call the game VF....

 

If Taka is dropped then I would really become concerned. I was very surprised to hear that Sega planned to release VF4 this year; if Taka doesn't make it then I'm going to assume they were rushing to meet the deadline.

 

It's all speculation, of course - although the magic box has been pretty reliable in the past.

If it were to happen, though, what a waste of great character design/implementation; I consider Taka, along with the E button, to be among the true hallmarks of the genius in VF3. Although I haven't met many Taka players, it's an almost universal opinion that he's an impressive character - both in his verosimilitude to the real art of Sumo and his cohesion/uniqueness within the game system itself. Thought to be an "expert" character, I don't think he ever got all the player attention he deserved, though, in general terms. Maybe in keeping with the "broader, mass-market appeal", Sega decided to scrape him off, due to his reduced accessibility for beginners (?) - however, it still seems incredibly stupid to me for them to do so. Why gratuitously alienate the older playing crowd so much? Taka had his own character designer, and it must have been a very time-consuming process to implement him, why waste all that previous work? Much of the groundwork has been done, it can't be just laziness to "upgrade" him to the new graphic standards. Ice's rushing to market theory makes sense, but there's still no official release date, just rumours.

I've had a "don't worry too much, leave it to the great people at AM2" kind of perspective so far, but this is really starting to get to me now. Perhaps the old recourse of having no expectations so they won't be shattered would work, but it's inevitable not to have expectations, since the game is inevitably part of a legacy - why the 4 in the name if it's going to break so much of what's implied by it?

 

That was me in that "anonymous" post, I had forgotten to log in... sorry

 

This is too much.
We have to make a stand.
Although we don't know much abt the situation, it's high time Sega broke some news to us.
And Taka... really doesn't have much room for development anyway. But it's such a waste.

Vicks Biru

 

Remember that Sega has tremendous financial problems, they need cash flow , fast. So they threw VStriker 3 out in a hurry, and VF4 will also be released 3 months after the arcade release on the PS2. such a fast conversion never happend before. Maybe Yu didn't have enough time to implement Taka, like he would like(realistic belly movement..hehehe...who knows...). Maybe he will be implemented in VF4.1. But we shouldn't forget that the news aren't official yet

cya