Fighting games, after all, are still fundamentally about competition.
Balance is a topic that cannot be avoided no matter what.
"Why can't I find Brandon's character?"
Mike's voice suddenly rang in his ears, interrupting his thoughts.
"What?"
John snapped out of his reverie and followed Mike's train of thought back to the screen.
The character selection screen only has 9 characters, listed in groups of three at the bottom.
Apart from the group chosen by Schwarzenegger, none of the remaining six characters actually resembled Brandon Lee's appearance.
But he noticed something else.
A small icon is displayed below the character list.
This is an animated GIF illustrating how a player inserts a floppy disk.
This is something I've never seen before in Street Fighter.
Vivian's voice rang out at the right moment. "Let's see which three characters Brandon will choose as his starting lineup? Oh? Looks like he wants to add Psycho Soldier Team characters!"
"Additional characters?"
Upon hearing this, the audience all turned their attention to Brandon Lee, eager to see what tricks he had up his sleeve.
Suddenly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a floppy disk.
The cover features illustrations of three unfamiliar characters.
Standing on the left was an old man with white hair and beard, whose eyes were covered so he could not see, and whose nose was flushed with a drunken red.
Brandon Lee clearly did this on purpose, forcefully shoving the floppy disk in front of the camera to make sure he could get a suitable Close-Up.
The director also zoomed in on the corresponding shots when appropriate.
"Is he an old China man?"
John scratched his head, unable to fathom his design thinking.
But after a brief moment of confusion, Mike's expression changed to one of sudden realization.
"It's that guy! We've seen his movies!"
Seeing John still looking dazed, Mike clapped his hands, "It's that one—what's it called again? Oh right! ' Drunken Master '! The Kung-Fu Master produced in Hong Kong in '78!"
Upon hearing this, John frowned and thought for a moment before his eyes lit up.
"No wonder it looked familiar, it really is exactly the same!"
In the film " Drunken Master ", Beggar So, played by actor Yuen Siu-tien -tien, is a renowned master of Drunken Master in the martial arts world.
After watching it, Mike kept saying he wanted to learn his Kung-Fu Master, and dragged him to drink a few bottles.
In the end, I didn't learn anything except for vomiting all over the place.
Aside from the fact that this character is clearly a tribute to Beggar So's Chin Gentsai, the one standing on the right is obviously the prototype for Brandon Lee's cosplay, Sie Kensou.
If both characters have a strong Kung-Fu Master element, giving people a feeling of returning to Street Fighter...
The purple-haired high school girl standing in the middle completely shattered the atmosphere that had been painstakingly created.
"What kind of nonsense is this? It doesn't make any sense at all."
This character named [ Athena Asamiya ] doesn't look like a fighter at all.
Which fighter wears a cropped sailor uniform and a short skirt to the ring?
Are they here to fight or to walk the runway?
But what should be said but not said----
The little girl is really pretty.
It can't be some kind of combo of kicks followed by Phoenix Arrow, Shoryuken kick that sends you flying in the air and electrocutes you, followed by a powerful ultimate move to finish you off, right?
"But what's he going to do with a floppy disk? Is this generation like Pokémon, with two versions?"
Mike reluctantly shifted his gaze from Athena, looking curiously at Brandon Lee was holding the floppy disk.
John did not reply.
He looked at the icon below the character list that prompted him to insert a floppy disk, and a very outrageous idea popped into his head.
As if to confirm his guess.
Brandon Lee suddenly inserted the floppy disk into an inconspicuous opening in the machine's chassis.
This appears to be a floppy disk drive interface.
After a few seconds of loading, three new options suddenly appeared at the bottom of the character selection screen.
The three characters were exactly the same ones drawn on the cover of the floppy disk.
All the spectators who witnessed this scene fell silent at that moment.
Then came a deafening gasp.
"Additional character packs! Doesn't that mean the King of Fighters can be updated with an endless number of new characters?"
"Not only that! Listen, the background music has changed!"
Upon hearing this, many people pricked up their ears and listened carefully.
Sure enough, the music had switched to a new piece with a distinctly Eastern flavor at some point.
This additional content pack appears to be far more flexible than they had imagined.
Many people's eyes were drawn to the floppy disk drive on the machine's chassis.
It looks like this arcade machine is just a NovaBo in a new shell.
This means that the technology just demonstrated can also be enjoyed by ordinary players!
"Wait, everyone. This means we might have to buy an extra reading device and spend even more money on more cartridges!"
"What? You won't buy it, but I will! Shut up and take my money!"
"Exactly! You can play as a new character just by spending money. There's nothing better than that."
"I hope Street Fighter can adopt this system soon; there are just too few characters right now, it's really not enough to play."
The impact of the new hardware system was quickly overshadowed after Brandon Lee selected his Psycho Soldier Team lineup.
Everyone wanted to see what made this new IP, which GAMENOVA created as a standalone project, so different.
"ROUND1"
"READY"
"GO!"
Almost instantly after the game started, the two acted swiftly without hesitation.
Brandon Lee's starting Athena Asamiya even did a small jump on the spot, and then started to create distance and play a neutral game at an absurd speed.
Lin Lixin and his colleague, who were in charge of the match commentary, quickly composed themselves and began to explain the current situation.
"Okay, we can see that Brandon's Athena Asamiya is planning to hold off the enemy for a while—wait until he unleashes his attack!"
Athena flashed behind Rocky and used a light kick! It was blocked—he leaped behind Rocky and unleashed a reverse Phoenix Arrow! It hit!
"Press down, cancel the Shoryuken punch! Fire directly with a power spike!"
"Shoot a wave, jump CD, second time! Third time! 28 hits in a row!"
"It's a pity we can see here that Brandon Lee's energy bar is low, otherwise a finishing move here would have taken away most of Rocky's health."
After two consecutive combos that were so fast they were almost invisible.
Schwarzenegger's starting Rocky was wiped out of health before he could even make a move; at that moment, the game's countdown timer had just run out of 10 seconds.
John's mouth was slightly open, and he didn't know what to say for a long time.
You call this a fighting game?
What happened, buddy? Where's the blood? What happened to your back-and-forth fighting?
Mike stood up and picked up the ticket stub that had slipped from his hand.
"That was close! I almost lost the ticket. Has the game started yet?"
The first game is over.