Monday, January 1, 2024

Kids WB Create a Roster

 

As a Quick Introduction to this blog, I am a huge fan of the Build the Roster Series by Thorgi's Channel on Youtube, and was challenged to make one of these in his format. Definitely go check out his awesome videos if you like this, and let me know if you'd like to see more blogs like this!

Cartoons have had a long history of fighting games, ranging from decent to pretty embarrassing, but with recent breakout successes like Nick All-Star Brawl fueling the fire behind the concept, I think we can start to see more of these in the near future. Lately Warner Bros has been a long topic in the cartoon community with the recent company shakeups after the merger with Discovery and that brings us to today's topic, what if we decided to make an All-Star Brawl style game for WB’s original Cartoon Channel, Kids WB! Now I know it’d be downright weird for them to make a fighting game celebrating a now obscure and dead cartoon channel that hasn’t been heard from in almost 20 years, but hey, Childhood Nostalgia is on the rise for the Kids WB Era, and with Cartoon Network’s last attempt at a fighting game not going over so well, Maybe a similar game that appeals to a slightly different audience would be crazy enough to work!

Now the first thing to consider here is Roster Size, Nickelodeon All-Star Battle Royal launched with 25 characters, while Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion launched with 26 giving us a good foundation for the rough size that one of these network fighting games should be. Between the 2 numbers, I think due to CN’s closer association with Kids WB, as well as the OH SO WB Behavior of wanting to slightly 1up their competition like savages, I think it's safe to say they’d go with the 26 number just to offer more bang for their buck then their Nick counterpart.


Now as for the story of this game Kids WB Presents an interesting challenge with the clashing tones of its various series, featuring lots of goofy comedy cartoons with animal characters, as well as a lot of darker and gritty superhero action shows, and pretty much everything in between. For this reason We will be taking notes from the Marvel VS Capcom franchise in terms of writing, as they had to perform a similar balancing act merging the heroes of Marvel Comics with a wide variety of Video game series that could be far more or less dark and make it work. As such the game will focus on an antagonist from one of this forgotten networks series’, in the distant future reigniting conflict here, merging universes together as he wages war across time trying to conquer the Kids WB Multiverse during its prime to prevent the network from being absorbed by CN. But who would this villain be? Well I have the perfect one in mind, and that is None other than Imperiex, the primary antagonist of the extremely popular but unfortunately short lived Legion of Superheroes cartoon, one of the last series Kids WB aired. As an all powerful and very dark villain from the distant future, he's the perfect choice to create such a plot.

Kids WB’s series can basically be broken down into 4 Key Types, Looney Tunes shows, which are either reruns of Looney Tunes, or new shows that take place in the same universe. DC Comics Shows, which are shows based off of DC Comics in some way. Kids WB originals, which is any show they made themselves that Isn’t connected to DC or LT, and Anime which is just Japanese media they paid to have dubbed and aired. And On that topic I am sorry, but I just don’t think it's realistic for a game like this to have the anime characters. I tried to justify it in my head but ultimately a Game like this would be made by Warner Bros. to advertise Warner Bros stuff first and foremost, and not only do they Not own the rights to these anime characters but I would find it hard to believe companies like Nintendo, Konami and Toei would be willing to lend them out for this purpose without demanding way too much money. So with that in mind let’s get into the roster!

1: Superman (DCAU): This was not a hard call, I mean you got a multiversal crisis heavily involving DC Comics, this looks like a job for Superman! But beyond that Superman: The Animated Series was a huge deal, first Airing on Kids WB and being the first DCAU series to do so, and it was on this they ended up building their DC Animated Universe Franchise, even adjusting the continuations of Batman: TAS to match IT’s style. Superman, even just the DCAU version, is iconic and still gets tons of content today and is easily someone that WB would want to use, having well known and iconic powers, and while we would have the DCAU Superman as the default form, we would also have his design from Legion of Superheroes Season 2 as an alternate skin to better tie into the Imperiex plot. Superman would be a very beginner friendly character, much like he is in the Injustice Series, being pretty good at basically everything, but not the best at any of those, making him easy to pick up, but difficult to master.

2: Pinky & The Brain: When Kids WB First premiered in 1995 it started out with exactly 4 series, I’ll talk about the other ones further down trust me, but probably the biggest one to talk about here is Pinky & The Brain. After being spun off from the larger Animaniacs series, the duo were the first Steven Speilberg cartoon to debut on Kids WB, and basically became their iconic cash cow Icon characters for what remained of the 90s, having a long and successful run and even getting new content as recently as last year, so yeah they kinda just had to be here. As for how they’d play, I see Brain modifying his classic humanoid robot suit for battle in an attempt to use the chaos of the event as an opportunity to take over the world. I Take notes from Eyedol from the most recent Killer Instinct game, a two headed monster where you can swap between which head is in control, with each one possessing a different skillset giving the player access to different moves. This would be perfect here with the Player able to swap between whether Pinky or Brain is driving the suit at the time, Brain with more precision attacks while Pinky has more chaotic AOE ones. And for a supermeter they would be in perfect sync, a state that briefly gives the player access to the moves of both of them at once to allow for more advanced combos for a short time.

3: Batman (The Batman): Another pretty clear pick, you have Superman, you gotta have Batman too, that's just a no-brainer. But what wasn’t a no-brainer is which Batman to use here. DCAU Batman is the more iconic here, but considering that Batman: The Animated Series was a Fox Kids Network series that Kids WB only showed in Reruns, the Fact that we are already going to have quite a few DCAU Characters in this roster, and the tragic death of DCAU Batman's voice actor in recent years, I Felt it was probably best to go with the version from the more recent and sometimes overlooked The Batman series, but having said that, of course we would include DCAU Batman as an alt skin, would be a missed opportunity not to. But just because it's less Iconic doesn’t mean The Batman is a slouch, this series is very long standing in its own right, and is praised heavily for its high tech and gothic style and grit by fans to date, having a comparable amount of content to DCAU Batman post TAS, including 5 seasons and a really critically acclaimed crossover movie with Dracula. Batman would be a grappler style fighter who has the ability to set up traps using his various gadgets to allow him to control the area and get in close and land some straightforward and powerful combos. To balance him out he would have a relatively low amount of HP compared to most characters, making him a high risk, high reward style fighter that benefits those who strategize.

4: Freakazoid: Freakazoid is a character who fits this game to a T, as a Crazy parody superhero character who was made by the same studio behind Animaniacs and Pinky and The Brain, He does a really good job at bridging the Gap between the Looney Tunes and DC Characters to make the game that much more cohesive! He is also very iconic to the Kids WB Brand, also being one of the 4 series that the network debuted with and Airing his entire series exclusively on the network. Freakazoid would be a very fast rushdown style character who uses a lot of random attacks that neither the opponent nor the player would really be able to predict, basically being designed as a character who acts like you are button-mashing whether you are or not. There would be a science to him, but it would be the most complicated on this list to figure out, but he also wouldn’t be that much worse if you had no idea what you are doing.

5. Omi: Xiaolin Showdown was THE Big Kids WB Cash Cow of the 2000s, being basically the big series that it was pushing and the one that I and all my friends were into from it at the time, so of course we had to include their lovable and iconic mascot, who they used the crap out of in the ads, Omi in this roster. As a Master Martial Artist Xiaolin Monk who has Hydrokinetic powers, it's not too difficult to give Omi a moveset for a fighting game. I could see him being a Shoto style fighter with some Aerial Combat traits mixed in to account for his love of jumping and leaping style attacks. For a Super Move I would think a good one would be to have the other monks show up and do the Dragon X Kumei Formation to give him a brief power boost and access to his Wudai Weapon. But I think one of the most fun things to do is have him carry several Wu into battle with him for him to use as a way to really show off why his series was so cool. Give him an Ice Projectile with the Orb of Tornami, have him able to armor himself or turn invisible using the Two Ton Tunic and Shroud of Shadows respectively, you can get really creative with it! But another huge aspect of this pick, we really gotta have fun with the character interactions, like can you imagine Omi, who Does NOT understand slang, interacting with a bunch of meta, wisecracking 90s characters?

6. Static Shock: Another really big superhero series that came out and aired on Kids WB was Static Shock, which was an extremely important series at the time that a lot of people are quite fond of, and was eventually properly incorporated into the DCAU after its second season. Due to his main character status, interesting powerset and importance to Diversity in cartoons at the time, I think Vergil more than earns his place as one of the few DCAU characters to feature here. I see Static being more of a Zoner/Traps style character, not being known for his close quarters combat, instead using his saucer to play keepaway from the opponent as he fills the screen with electric attacks. He’d be a very dangerous character at a distance, but would have limited options if the opponent actually got close on him.

7. Phantom Girl (Legion of Superheroes): Speaking of DC, if our main villain is Imperiex from Legion of Superheroes, we need to have some other characters from that series in this game involved in this plot to help explain what's going on and have some personal investment. After doing a lotta research on the members of that show and looking into the popularity in the fanbase, I eventually settled on Phantom Girl as the best option. Tinya is one of the most prominent and popular characters in the series, being the daughter of the president, having an interesting character and also some of the most unique powers both for her own series and this roster, basically having the powers of a ghost. Her being in some control over the Phantom Zone also makes her one of the best equipped characters to apprehend Imperiex after he is beaten. With her phasing, Tinya would be somewhat of a tank style character who specializes in parries and grabs, using her intangibility power to protect her from attacks and capitalize on it afterwards. Her shortcoming is the player cannot get too greedy or reckless with this move or she will get punished hard.

8. Rikochet: Mucha Lucha! Would be a fantastic series to represent here, not only is it one of the biggest and most iconic series that Kids WB made in the 2000s, up there with Xiaolin Showdown, but it is almost MADE to be turned into a fighting game. Being a series set in a world full of Luchadors who possess shapeshifting abilities that allow them to perform unbelievable signature attacks, making a moveset out of these is a cakewalk. Of the characters in the series, It's a pretty safe bet to go with the main character Rikochet, who even in universe, is the basic definition of a Rushdown character who is able to clear distance quickly and deal numerous consecutive hits with his flashy special moves like the Spinning Top and the Pulverizing Pinball. He’d really just be a very fun addition to the cast, ready to face all these new powerful opponents in the ring.

9: Jack Spicer: This roster mostly has a lotta heroes and anti-villains so far so I think it's high time we had another Villain in this list, and there is NO Villain that Kids WB seemed to love more than Jack Spicer, a man they used in their advertisements for Xiaolin Showdown so much, a poll once found that a very large portion of their audience actually thought he was the main character! Anyway Jack is a really fun character and would work well in an evil scientist role against various DC characters, while showing off how much more over the top cartoony he is. He’d be a very gadget based fighter who focuses on zoning, who is able to summon Jackbots, fly with his copterpack, and set various traps. I would also wanna see for a super move, him to pull out his Iconic Monkey Staff, allowing him a significant boost in melee combat for the duration, temporarily removing his big weakness.

10. Drix (Ozzy & Drix): I went back and forth with using the Ozzy & Drix series in this list, we’ve had size disparities in Fighting Game adaptations we’ve had to settle before, but the cast of this series is literally Microscopic! That said, considering how iconic this series was at the time and how it was a Kids WB exclusive, on top of how Surprisingly well it lends itself to a fighting game adaptation, I ultimately Decided it was worth adding a shrinking/growing aspect to the reality warping plot for the sake of including them. Anyway, I decided to go with Drix here despite Ozzy being the main character, as I feel like Drix just has more potential for a move set, and we already have quite a few main characters in the roster so this helps make the roster more interesting and varied. Drix would primarily be a Zoner character using his primary weapon, his giant arm cannon. This thing can fire a wide variety of different ammo with various effects, making Drix play similar to Samus Aran or Megaman from the Smash series. Drix would also be distinct from other Zoners by having a very high amount of HP, but limited mobility.

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11. Jackie Chan: Another very popular action series from Kids WB is Jackie Chan adventures, Surprisingly being one of their longest running series at 95 episodes, despite its fluctuating quality. The obvious choice for what character to pick here is Jackie, yeah he’s another main character, but the show's GIMMICK is that it stars famed Martial Artist, Jackie Chan, so it’s arguably the most appropriate time to have the main character. My idea for how Jackie would play is similar to my idea for Omi, a largely Shoto style martial arts based fighter who performs special moves using various Talismans. We of course would have Jackie use talismans with very different effects to the Wu we give Omi for variety, but yeah I REALLY wanna see a Wu vs Talisman fight in this game like all the kids I went to school with did, even the interactions would be really funny as we can have Jackie pull his classic “It belongs in a Museum'' Line in response to the Wu. Just because it would be funny I wanna give Jackie an alt skin of his Evil self when split with the tiger talisman just for the interactions…..actually screw it, give Omi a skin of his evil self too! Let’s get nuts!

12. The Flea: with how Iconic and well suited to this it is, I felt that Mucha Lucha was one of the series that most deserved having more than one slot in the Base Roster. The Flea is one of the three main characters of the series alongside Rikochet and serves as the primary comic relief character, ending up being used a lot in Kids WB’s ads as a result. Unlike other Luchadors, the Flea does not rely entirely on his shapeshifting but also his extremely foul odor in combat, which would do great at differentiating him from Rikochet as his moves would focus more on grappling and smell based projectiles. We’d also give him a higher HP than Rikochet due to the absurd and comical amount of abuse he takes in the show, including continuing to fight without half of his internal organs inside of him as a plot point once.

13 & 14. Sylvester & Tweety: I’m tackling these two characters at once as the reasons they are included are fairly similar. One of the 4 series that the Kids WB network debuted with was Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, which aired exclusively on Kids WB for its full duration and was the most successful piece of new Looney Tunes content the network featured, basically making them THE most appropriate Looney Tunes characters to represent the network. Now in terms of how they would play, they would basically be polar opposites. Sylvester would be all attack, plenary of Rushdown pounces, scratches and using traps to attack which would be very aggressive, but also somewhat telegraphed and punishable. Tweety on the other hand would be a counter focused character, acting completely unaware he’s even in a fight but having moves that seem to damage the target by complete accident such as stepping on loose floorboards or knocking over things, making him more of a spacing character and weirdly enough somewhat of counters to each other.

15 & 16. Hawkgirl and John Stewart (DCAU): another pair of characters I wanted to tackle at once, I had a time trying to choose which of the DCAU Justice league characters to include on this roster, I thought of legitimately good arguments for all of them, but in the end I settled on these two. Why? Well when I try to imagine the Founding members of the Justice League from the DCAU specifically, by far the most obvious difference is rather than Aquaman and Hal Jordan, they have these two instead! Considering that John has only ever been in fighting games as an Alt skin of Hal, and Shayera hasn’t been in one at all, this game would be a perfect opportunity to give them a place to shine, and as a bonus them having a romantic relationship with each other previously gives us a lot of juicy options for interactions. We can take notes from the Injustice Green Lanterns for how John would play, but to set him apart I think I’d give John more of a turtle strategy, where he focuses on tanking things with his defensive powers and counter attacking with powerful efficient strikes rather than showing off and being aggressive. Shayera on the other hand would be the opposite, an Aerial dominance character similar to Painwheel from Skullgirls who jumps above the opponent and deals an aggressive string of attacks with her mace in aggressive fashion.

17. Yakko Warner: Of the 4 series that Debuted Kids WB, the one I had the hardest time justifying representing here was Animaniacs. This series did not start on Kids WB, but on the Fox Kids Network, and only moved to Kids WB for its later seasons. And after Animaniacs finished, Wow did WB whore out the reruns of this series, letting them play on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Discover Family, and hell if you count Hulu doing the Reboot series, technically even flipping Disney! Making it one of the hardest series to tie to any one channel I have ever seen! But ultimately, I think if one network had to best represent the WARNER Sibs, this is easily the most fitting, and given the recent Animaniacs reboot, WB would definitely want to put one of them in here for synergy. Now the Warner’s don’t really have enough signature attacks to have their own move sets, so I’m going with Yakko, who is the most basic of the three and more or less the leader, and has the snappiest way of speaking for his interactions. But I do think his Moveset would include several assists from his Sibs. Such as Dot popping in with her pet to briefly stun the opponent in fear, or Wakko with his Gag Bag generating randomly selected tools for Yakko to fight with.

18. Candle Jack: We still need to get some more villains in here and probably the best rogues gallery to tap into at this point is that of Freakazoid. There were a lot of choices to consider here, with The Lobe normally being identified as his arch nemesis, but between The Brain and Jack Spicer, I just felt that would be too many nefarious mad scientists. Instead I went with Freakazoid’s most ethereal otherworldly foe to tie into the cosmic level threat. Candle Jack is a terrifying boogeyman creature who supernaturally kidnaps anyone who mentions his name and takes them to a realm where they don’t exist anymore, because he’s insane. He has one of the most creative power sets of Freakazoids villains lending himself to being a grappler who uses teleportation to keep himself In Your Face, rather than Run, and it would be really interesting seeing him cross paths with seasoned DC heroes like Batman as well as goofy easily frightened characters like Jack Spicer.

19. Elmyra Duff: so a pick that is very popular on BtR is the MEME Pick, that hilarious out of left field pick that lets the audience know you are self aware and embracing the joke, and one of the biggest memes I can draw on here is how back in the 90s it was really apparent that someone at WB, someone with REAL Power, absolutely Loved Elmyra. Elmyra first came out in Tiny Toon Adventures, where she got an increasingly large role the longer the show went on. After Tiny Toons Ended, she was the only character from it who came back to be featured in a full crossover episode in Animaniacs. And all of this finally culminated in her returning to Star in her own short lived crossover cartoon Pinky, Elmyra and The Brain, a kids WB exclusive series that shoved Elmyra into the Pinky and The Brain formula, which did NOT Work at All, and even the shows own theme song acknowledges this! Who better to break their way into a big Kids WB crossover roster than a character Known for inserting herself into things whether she’s wanted or not! And it can lead to some hilarious interactions with Pinky/Brain, Yakko, and any of the cute animal characters! On top of that she’s also generally a great pick for a fighting game being the physically strongest Tiny Toons character, she’s got grappler written all over her and I say we give her moves armor and lots of HP to make it easier for her to huggle and squeeze and lovvle to Pieces!

20. Shareena Wickett (Detention): Detention was a short lived and somewhat obscure series in Kids WB’s library, but the same cannot be said for Shareena, or as she is better known, every Kids WB fans first Goth Waifu! Yeah this is one of those cases like Morrigan from Darkstalkers where the character out shined their own series with Kids WB using her as a spokesperson in their programming blocks long after the show ended so she’d get people talking to be sure! Shareena can have a really fun moveset having the kids she leads pop up on screen to do assist attacks to annoy them from tons of different angles, on top of using her own pranks and goth abilities to summon ghosts and stuff to really torment her opponent all while keeping them off of her.

21. Zeta: The Zeta Project is an interesting series that spun off from Batman Beyond and is a lesser known section of the DCAU that I think would be a good thing for this game to put a spotlight on. Zeta himself has a LOT of potential for a fighting game moveset, being a shapeshifting Robot who can turn himself into weapons and take on the forms of others. I picture him having a similar moveset to someone like Double From Skullgirls, transforming rapidly into a bunch of different characters from the game mid combo to perform combinations of attacks that are strong and otherwise impossible to achieve, all while having a bunch of his own powers to show off.

22. Colleen (Road Rovers): Now it's time to include some more Obscure characters, and I think the perfect choice for that would be putting in a representation from Road Rovers! You know that short lived superhero cartoon about Doggies that drive cars and stuff? No? Well it happened all the same! When it came to choosing WHICH of the Road Rovers to go with, honestly any of them would fit pretty well, but I ultimately went with Colleen just because I feel like we needed more female characters in the roster at this point. Colleen is a British secret agent style fighter that uses martial arts to fight, and that would fill most of her basic attacks, But I think that the fun of her moveset would be that she's going to be a Summon Fighter who is able to summon ANY of her teammates from the series to the field to help her fight. The Road Rovers are a team and I feel when you feature a more obscure series like this, you should try and go above and beyond with the representation to do extra work in getting people into it.

23. Batman Beyond: Batman Beyond is yet another DCAU series that debuted on Kids WB and was extremely popular being one of the superheroes they basically made. I briefly thought about having this as an alternate Skin for Batman, but Yeah, Terry with his futuristic Batsuit has a pretty different set of abilities and playstyle, being much more suited to aerial rushdown than classic Batman. I also feel like including a Batman from the Future in this game that heavily involves a time traveling villain from the future and having him interact with legion members would be Really cool and a missed opportunity not to see. Also, just the interaction of Batman talking to another Batman from the future, who is speaking to an elderly alternate universe version of himself, is too funny to pass up.

24. Lexi Bunny: LOL, So if there is ONE Meme that I think could be funnier than Elmyra here, it's actually giving Proper Acknowledgement to the Kids WB Exclusive series Loonatics Unleashed! If you don’t know this series it is a popular point of reference for “What the Hell were they Thinking” being a Gritty Superhero series starring the Descendants of Looney Tunes Characters in the Future, which is not nearly funny enough to be a comedy, but also way too silly to be taken seriously! It gets made fun of all the time including by WB itself for this reason ( https://youtu.be/WloHxTZCAdk?si=DW-cxHDGYBLNPLZt&t=64 ). But that's the extra funny thing… this is a Game involving a multiversal clash due to a villain from the future that heavily involves both DC heroes and Looney Tunes, meaning for the first time in history, the Loonatics, these Looney Tunes style characters from the future who become Dark Superheroes, Are actually incredibly appropriate here! Now of the team, I had to pick Lexi as she is like……easily the most popular character in the entire series, it's not even a question. But her playstyle works pretty well here being an agile martial artist with lightning related powers. I think this would give her cool interactions with characters like Colleen and Static.

25. Father Time: Of the Steven Spielberg Cartoons, by far the most obscure is the Historical Educational series Histeria! Despite being more obscure it is also pretty prominent in Kids WB with its long episode count and being an exclusive. And Who better to represent the series than its wacky time traveling Protagonist, Father Time! Now My Idea for Father Time is actually pretty interesting, being a Major Player in the plot for the good guys side as he uses his time powers to put together a team of Toons in order to help stop Imperiex from messing with history! I Think we can also have some fun with his moveset, giving him some moves that reverse time to enable him to perform longer combos, like we see with Geras in Mortal Kombat, but with more slapstick.

26. Imperiex: Yes we are also going to make the main villain into a playable character, Who I am thinking will become unlockable when someone beats the storymode of the game, allowing us to start with 25 but really feature 26 characters in the starting roster. Imperiex would be a Big Bad and intimidating character to fight against, having lots of strong Area of Effect attacks and the ability to regenerate his own health by reversing his personal time like he could do in Season 2. But He would also have the weakness in general mobility that can allow a skilled opponent to outmaneuver, the idea being to make the player feel op when playing, but not actually be unbeatable outside of Boss status.

So there you have your starting Roster! Batman, Batman Beyond, Candle Jack, Colleen, Drix, Elmyra, Father Time, Freakazoid, Hawkgirl, Imperiex, Jack Spicer, Jackie Chan, John Stewart, Lexi, Omi, Phantom Girl, Pinky & The Brain, Rikochet, Shareena, Static, Superman, Sylverster, The Flea, Tweety, Yakko and Zeta! For a total of 26 characters featuring 9 DC characters, 9 Looney Tunes Characters, and 8 Characters from various Kids WB originals. But don’t think that means I am done just yet, no I think that a game such as this would most likely get about 2 seasons of DLC of Five characters each. Taking a page out of the BtR for Marvel V Capcom 4, I am going to try and build these seasons around certain themes, and the first one will feature characters that have been pretty lacking from this list so far, Villains!

So for the Villain season I am thinking the plot being Imperiex pulled in villains from various series to stop the heroes advance. For story purposes my 5 villains will be Shendu who is the most iconic villain of Jackie Chan Adventures, who can show off more of the Talisman powers Jackie himself didn’t use, with a specific focus on the fire breath and laser eyes ones to give him that real final boss energy. Wuya, the most powerful villain from Xiaolin Showdown, who will have a fun dynamic with Jack and bring in some more cool magical elements to this game. Dee Dee, an interesting Duo fighter from the Batman Beyond series who will be able to do a lot of fun team attacks and tag in and out with each other. Brainiac, one of the most prominent villains from Superman TAS and the DCAU as a whole, we can include a whole bunch of moves he had in injustice 2 and we can also include a skin of Brainiac 5 from Legion of Superheroes to sneak another of their characters into the plot. And lastly, El Malefico, the main big bad villain from the Mucha Lucha movie.

Then For the 2nd season, We are going to have a triumphant return of heroes as a cool send off to the series! First up we’ll add Buena Girl, she is the last of the 3 main characters in Mucha Lucha and I think If we have the opportunity to add her we should, She’ll fill the needed role as the tank to Flea’s support and Rikochet’s DPS, her moves tending to turn her into larger immovable objects with straightforward attacks like bulldozers and torches. Raimundo, who is pretty much equally the main character to Xiaolin Showdown as Omi and the official leader of the team, he can use more wide sweeping kicks and a different arsenal of Wu to Omi such as the Sword of the Storm and the Golden Tiger Claws to do sneaky teleports. Wally West was a breakout character in the DCAU and is a fan favorite in the series, it would be fun to incorporate him into the game, we can give him various superspeed powers to use, and honestly, Not having a Flash in a game involving time travel is also a huge missed opportunity. Ozzy, similar to Buena Girl, Ozzy and Drix is a buddy cop show so you need to try and get both buddies in there, Give Ozzy a lot of flexible martial arts moves that make use of his amorphous shapeshifting powers, give him his pistol for a ranged attack, throw in some cheesy one liners and you’re good! Gear, I mentioned earlier not wanting to have too many super genius Bad Guys, but I think this is a good opportunity to bring in a supergenius good guy and who better than Static’s best friend and sidekick, Gear! Richie would have some wholesome interactions with Vergil and be able to engage in some funny trash talk with Jack Spicer or The Brain.

And there you have it, a Full Roster of 36 cartoony but also awesome characters to see bash together in this unique nostalgic trip of a game! What did you think, who would you most want to play as, why Won’t WB ever make something cool like this? Why DIDN’T I put Goku in the game :P Let me know all that and More!

4 comments:

  1. Absolutely fantastic blog Thor! You were definitely in your element here talking both about cartoons and fighting games, and that was made really clear with your constant references to both the history of this cartoon channel and it's relationship to various series as well as your references to fighting game roles and why each character would be in the role they would be and how they would be differentiated from each other in ways that make a lot of sense! I love the BtR series of videos as well and this felt just like reading one in text format!

    I think your picks were all very well considered from the obvious picks for each category like Superman and Batman from DC and Omi and Jackie Chan for WB Originals to more out there picks like Coleen and Lexi Bunny. Yet in both cases you showed an attention to detail doing like picking a specific version of the Batman (a great choice btw) to increase the diversity of DC series, saying that Omi and Jackie shouldn't have matching Shen Gong Wu and Talismans and picking a Loonatics Unleashed not just for meme but because it was actually thematically justified. Your picks may range from obvious to who, but every single one felt well considered! I applaud your decision to include Jack Spicer over another one of the monks like Raimundo or one of the bigger bads like Chase Young or Wuya as Jack really fit better in the roster while still being distinctive, and heck even made a time machine.

    I really wanna applaud your image editing skills in making the roster image! That was fantastic work! Beyond that I think your DLC picks did a really good job of filling out the roster with characters people who would most wanna play and would contrast well with some of the base roster characters.

    Personally I would most want to play as Superman just because he's my favorite here and I'm not good at fighting games. Really a missed opportunity not putting Goku in maybe the ONE fighting game that might logically have both Goku and Superman :P But yeah I would love to see more of these from you, they're great!

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  2. Do you have a twitter? cause I want to follow you for more battle, and predictions.

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    1. No i don't use social media, just discord and stuff

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  3. This was a fun different blog type to see from you! I don’t have as much experience in the fighting game scene as much as you, but I have been caught up in the speculation of which characters would appear in Super Smash Bros. for instance which can be pretty fun.

    I have a sort of roundabout relationship with Kids’ WB. I don’t ever remember watching the network itself, but I have watched various shows it produced including DCAU shows, Xiaolin Showdown, Jackie Chan Adventures, and Mucha Lucha! to name a few. So I think it was a good choice in highlighting the unique offerings this network has and enlightening me to its history. Several of these cartoons I didn’t even know existed (Histeria, Zeta Project, Road Rovers, Detention for instance). I think its cool when games like this go for obscure picks (the main example I can think of is Ice Climbers from Smash Bros.) so I have no problem with seeing them on the roster.

    I think your choices were pretty good as far as highlighting the entire spectrum of fighter ideas from superheroes to cartoony shows. I too would love to see a showdown between Wu vs Talismans as someone who watched a fair amount of both of those shows. Not to mention, kudos for researching the fanbase to see who would be a good pick in the case of Phantom Girl from Legion of Superheroes. I see no problem with Ozzy and Drix being here when Smash Bros. set a similar precedent with small characters such as Captain Olimar. And yeah I definitely agree that a Kids’ WB fighting game would be the perfect environment to have a Loonatics Unleashed character.

    I like your interaction ideas with some highlights for me being Gear interacting with Jack Spicer, the Batman from Beyond interacting with the one from The Batman, or just in general Omi’s likely pretty funny interactions with a lot of the cast :P. I am not super familiar with Elmyra, but she seems like the perfect meme pick as well.

    The one character I am curious about the absence of is ironically from a show I’m not a huge fan of: Johnny Test. The wiki says that show was later produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment so I assume that’s the reason. With that being said, it really isn’t a huge loss and I liked all of your choices. I would like to try out all of these characters, and I could see myself repeatedly playing as Jack Spicer, Static Shock, and both Batmans to name a few. Imperiex seems like a good villain idea for it all on top of it too.

    Overall, this was pretty cool to see. I hope we see you do more of this type of blog or any other creative ideas. Certainly enjoyed learning a bit more about Kids’ WB.

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