#mace daniels

[upforalittleheresy]

In the August 1997 issue of GameFan, Fighting Force was featured on the front cover and received four pages that revealed lore tidbits never recorded in the official manuals released with the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions.

For those wanting to access GameFan, Volume 5, Issue 8, you can find it on the Internet Archive!

[cityofkhamoon]

A 1997 promotional render of Lara Croft alongside Alana McKendrick (left) and Mace Daniels (right) from Core Design’s Fighting Force (1997).

[nintendo64fans]

Fighting Force 64, how I loved this beat ‘em up game

[upforalittleheresy]

God fucking dammit… The producer of Fighting Force, Ken Lockley, was a pedophile charged with using a computer to procure children for sex. No wonder a few things about the plot and characters I uncovered from the manuals and magazines felt a lil' weird. I know the producer isn't the developer of the game and wasn't the one who designed and created the characters, but I wonder if he had some role in the story creation that may have influenced some of the stranger aspects of Fighting Force.

Besides the interestingly peculiar ways Mace and Alana are described in official written material about the game, there's also a bit of racism in the plot: Hawk (a white man) rents Smasher (an alleged Black character) out of prison. I also find Dr. Zeng, a character depicted as an Asian man with a megalomaniacal intellect and a partially stereotypical Chinese appearance, to be kinda racist too.

I'm not entirely sure if the Fighting Force team intended Smasher to be a Black man because his renders and some of his concept art depict him as fair-skinned. However, I remember seeing concept art where he was gonna be more dark-skinned. It's important to note that skin colour isn't an indicator of race because it mainly reflects genetics and has been used to create oppressive categories to falsely define differences. Some skin tones are more common in certain societies and parts of the world due to genetic and environmental factors. Throughout history, there have been instances of individuals being born as white and belonging to an ethnic group that's most commonly associated with darker skin (e.g. Arabic and First Nations). I'm not a mind-reader, so for all I know, Smasher might either be your average white guy who's ridiculously strong or a man of non-European descent (e.g. African).

I think Fighting Force was pretty bold for its time in exploring some form of slavery and tying it to how the dangerous, notorious prison where Smasher is being held operates. I'll give them that much credit! That said, it could've been executed better if they'd wanted to create the most badass thing ever with truly outstanding writing. It's perfectly fine to explore taboo subjects in fictional media. Pulling it off is really hard because you're basically walking a thin tightrope between being too tame and being needlessly crude.

Frankly, I'm not offended by the bullshit woven into the plot and characters of Fighting Force in the slightest. Just because I'm not extremely fond of some parts of the story doesn't mean it ruins my enjoyment of the game. It's dumb fun for the sake of entertainment with batshit absurdity thrown in that'll definitely raise some eyebrows if people actually sit down to think about what's being presented, lol. Fighting games of the 90s had stories, but they were often more focused on level design and gameplay than the lore. Obviously, there was some weird shit added to the stories and designs of certain games in the 1990s, and I'm honestly not surprised that a few creepy people were involved in the production of video games before the 2000s. Fighting Force definitely has a few offensive/questionable elements, but it's nowhere near as bad as other pieces of fiction that've been preserved and shared with the public.

Despite learning all of this, I still love it for its surprisingly decent gameplay and the laughably absurd plot. What can I say? I'm a lover of specific kinds of trash, lmao. People are still allowed to love certain things, but they should acknowledge their dark history and less-than-stellar details as well as decide if it's still worth cherishing. However, loving certain things can have consequences that require thorough analysis...

Depending on the trash, people can repurpose it into alternate universe projects that significantly improve the original writing. It's always a joy when people bring out the wasted potential of the storylines, iron out the not-so-good parts, and introduce new ideas that help make things much better. The AUs aren't replacements, but they can be an alternative for people who may be put off by the writing of the originals and wanna have fun by remaking it into something they and others can enjoy.