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Icons, Inspiration Vs. Plagiarism, Platform Fighters, and Character Archetypes

Right, so before I say anything, I want to establish that this is just my opinion, and I’m not associated with Wavedash Games. I haven’t played Icons yet, so most of what I say is all based on gameplay footage and what the developers have said.

Also, this is super unorganized and I’m not proofreading it because I’m lazy.

Icons, Inspiration Vs. Plagiarism, Platform Fighters, and Character Archetypes

With the recent gameplay trailer for Wavedash Games’ first game, Icons: Combat Arena, many players have been skeptical of the games’ quality and design. The most common complaint outside of its early graphics and somewhat stiff animation seems to be that the game seems like a copy of Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Now, it’s no secret that Melee was the direct inspiration for Icons, with core mechanics of the gameplay being taken directly from both Melee and the Smash Bros. series as a whole, as well as many of the games’ developers being well known within the Melee community. Hell, they even named their development studio after a technique in Melee, the wavedash. Many great artists, writers, and even game developers can agree that seeking inspiration from a well made source is not only acceptable, but advised, but at what point does inspiration or parody become “copying”, and at what point are you simply remaking the original source material?

In its current state, Icons is both a perfect example of how to do this well, and how to do it poorly. For example, let’s take a look at the character Kidd. I think Kidd is a great example of how to do this sort of thing right. He’s inspired by the “Spacie” characters from Melee, Fox and Falco. His design is a perfect representation of this, as not only does it make references to the game it’s drawing inspiration from, but it references the community surrounding the game.

In Melee, Fox and Falco are often referred to by the community as “Space Animals, or spacies. This archetype, on top of simply pointing out the fact that they’re animals in space, implies that a character has a fast fall speed, linear recovery, and generally strong pressure. The biggest staple of this archetype is the shine, one of the most versatile moves in any platform fighter due to its utility in combos and edge guarding, its compatibility with tech such as wavedashing and jump cancelled grabs, and of course, its frame 1 hitbox. Within the Melee community, one top player known as Joseph “Mango” Marquez, uses both spacies, and is considered a fan favorite among many viewers due to his aggressive playstyle and American pride. He’s often known as “The Kid” or “The GOAT” (Greatest Of All Time).

With their background in Melee, it was only natural for Wavedash to include a Spacie-esque character, seeing as they’re some of the most iconic characters in Melee. So, they created a space animal. But not just any space animal; a goat, named Kidd. Not only is his name a reference to the animal he’s based on, but it’s a reference to the GOAT, the Kid, Mango. Kidd’s character concept is a love letter to the Melee community, and his moveset still reflects this, having similar moves to Fox and Falco. He even has his own shine, although presumably not as strong as spacies’ shine in Melee.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, Icons has examples on how to do this wrong. Let’s take a quick look at the character Empress Zhurong. From looking at her design, she seems to be some kind of warrior with an aztec motif, but she seems to be using a fairly traditional double edged sword, which isn’t too characteristic of aztec weaponry. Looking at her cape, crown/headdress, and elegantly crafted sword, it’s pretty clear that she’s royalty as well. However, despite this unique design, the character her moveset is based on is Marth.

Based on her gameplay, she doesn’t just draw example from Marth, Zhurong is Marth. All of the moves we’ve seen of hers have been almost a direct copy of Marth’s. Although it would be nice to see some variation, this moveset doesn’t even fit with her design. In fact, her archetype of “sword user” doesn’t even fit in her design. The closest thing the Aztecs had to swords were one edged machetes, with their common weapons being macuahuitl or spears. They took a character design that could’ve brought a unique playstyle and moveset, and slapped Marth over it, despite it not fitting with the character’s design.

With all that said, i think Icons brings up an interesting concept: The idea of character archetypes in platform fighters. However, before we hop back into more platform fighters, let’s take a look at some traditional fighting game archetypes, specifically the “shotokon”

In the Street Fighter series, there are several characters use the shotokon fighting style, which has garnered them the nickname “shotos”. These characters include, Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Dan, Sakura, and quite a few more, with each character having similar movesets with variations on each move. The shoto archetype is defined by nothing more than a few special moves- the hadouken, a fireball projectile that travels straight across the screen, the shoryuken, an uppercut that can be used as both an anti-air defensive move or an offensive reversal move, and the tatsumaki senpukyaku, or hurricane kick, which is primarily used for some aerial approaches or as a combo tool. They also tend to have combos that vary greatly in difficulty, and average health.

After the success of Street Fighter II, many fighting games began featuring shoto characters in their roster. In fact, most fighting games have a shoto character, be it King of Fighters’ Ryo or Guilty Gear’s Sol Badguy. While Ryo is almost a direct “copy” of Ryu (at least in terms of special moves), his name even poking fun at this, Sol’s moves are all variations of the shoto staples. For example, Sol has a fireball, but it travels across the ground. He has an uppercut, but it uses his sword. He has a kick move that can be used for an approach or as a combo tool, but it doesn’t really involve any spinning, and has more utility for movement thanks to Guilty Gear’s Roman Cancelling mechanic. In fact, all of these moves, which on the surface seem incredibly similar to a classic shoto moveset, have different uses on top of their original intentions thanks to the game’s mechanics. Most people don’t even think Sol feels much like a shoto for this reason.

There’s two big reasons that this archetype works in fighting games. The first being that the design is perfect for a 2D fighter. Starting with the hadouken/fireball, a whole new level of depth is added to the game. Combat can now take place from anywhere on screen, you can try to make your opponent approach or hold their ground with their own fireballs (this was experimented on later with the introduction of EX specials, which for the hadouken, allowed you to spend some of your super meter to throw a fireball with more durability, which would beat out a non-EX fireball). Punishing a fireball required the player throwing a fireball to do so too close to the opponent, while still requiring the opponent to read this error, since it was still too fast to react. If the opponent doesn’t punish and gets hit, then he’s pushed back a bit, forcing them to inch their way closer. This makes the use of a fireball at close range a high risk, high reward strategy, while it remains safe at a long range. The shoryuken compliments this, but allowing a player to punish an opponent jumping towards them, meaning they not only have a normal defensive option, but a way to punish a slow attempt at a fireball punish. The shoryuken’s invincibility and early hitbox also allows it to be used as a strong reversal, but inputting the shoryuken requires you to stop blocking, which rewards faster/better execution while adding more risk to such a strong option. The hurricane kick allows for you to cross up an opponent from an aerial approach, which is a great tool to have for approaching and exerting pressure. At the same time, this move is easily beaten by a shoryuken or anti-air option.

The other reason this design works is because it’s easy to learn and familiar. If you’re new to fighting games, a shoto character has all the tools you need to learn. They teach you the projectile game, the defensive game, and introduce you to things like cross-ups. If you’re a fighting game player trying to learn a new game, you’ll have a familiar character to learn the game with. Taking a look back at Sol, he has similar moves to Ryu, with the same concepts and inputs, but tapping into these moves’ potential requires you to learn the games’ unique mechanics. This allows a player to learn these mechanics with a familiar moveset, while being rewarded for expanding their game knowledge and utilizing tools like Roman Cancelling

Now, with all that out of the way, let’s get back to platform fighters. There’s an inherent problem with platform fighters and archetypes, which is that they don’t really have archetypes. Based on platform fighters made from developers with a background in the competitive smash scene, like Rivals of Aether and Icons, it would seem many people consider the spacies to be the closest thing to an archetype, taking a role similar to the shoto. But should this really be the genre’s shoto archetype?

Looking at the spacies in Melee, which is considered one of the most iconic platform fighter archetypes, they play very differently. Fox is one of the fastest characters in the game, while Falco is fairly slow. Fox’s laser has no hitstun but comes out faster, allowing him to use his speed and avoid his opponent while tacking on damage. Falco’s lasers have low damage and are slower, but have hitstun, which compliments his slower speed by locking down his opponents and giving him control over neutral. Fox’s punish game revolves around getting short combos and laser damage until the opponent is at a high enough percent to up smash, while Falco’s punish game focuses on much longer combos that can lead to death off the bottom from down air. All of their moveset shares the same animations, but every move has different properties, to the point where each character has a different playstyle. Even their shines, which are considered staples of their characters, are completely different in terms out utility outside of pressure and reversals.

So, the only things that really defines the “spacie” archetype are that they should be fast fallers, they should have a linear recovery, they have a shine, they have a projectile, and a linear recovery. Looking again at Fox and Falco, where this archetype comes from, they lack any strong disjoint (compared to characters with swords, at least), and much of their punish game only revolves around one move. They’re also fairly easy to combo due to their fall speed, which allows them to get chain grabbed, meaning that making a mistake can result in the loss of a stock under the right conditions. In some matchups, they can even be considered glass canon characters.

Although I gave Icons’ character Kidd praise earlier for his concept being inspired by the Melee community, I don’t think he’s a perfect “inspired” character for this reason. He was advertised as the spacie of the game, with the devs saying that “Melee players would feel right at home with him”. With how they talk about him, he seems similar to a shoto in another fighting game. The problem is that he’s not a Sol, he’s a Ryo.

Icons was made to be very similar to Melee. So much so that they don’t really introduce any new mechanics. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it makes Kidd’s moveset feel kind of… useless. While many of his moves aren’t exactly Fox or Falco’s, his purpose of helping Melee players grow accustomed to Icons is somewhat pointless. What is there to grow accustomed to when Melee players would already be familiar with the system?

By making Kidd with this intention, they also have a lot of missed opportunity with the character. Again, outside of variations on his special moves, he’s almost an exact copy of Fox. There was no reason to do this if it wasn’t going to introduce players to new mechanics, especially when they hurt the character’s design in doing so. As of right now, Kidd’s up smash is pretty much exactly the same as Fox’s, which doesn’t make sense for a Goat to do, especially considering the fact that his legs would make it hard for him to do a backflip like that. Instead, they could have done something like having him ram his horns upward, and it would’ve fit the character’s design much better.

The same goes for Zhurong. Her inclusion is pointless, as not only does she not introduce any new mechanics to the game or the genre, not only does her design not make sense with her moveset, but she doesn’t serve the purpose of having a direct clone of another character, as there’s not much to “get accustomed to” for Melee players in Icons.

Of course, that’s not to say a character archetype can’t be used without the intention to teach new players. Characters like Zetterburn in Rivals of Aether or Wolf in Project M don’t really serve the purpose of being familiar or teaching new mechanics, as there’s not much to teach in rivals aside from parrying, and Project M already has Fox and Falco. Instead, these characters act as a variant to the spacie archetype, with both characters having a different projectile, shine, and recovery. On top of that, their aerials, tilts, smashes, etc… are all completely different from Fox and Falco. The problem is that Kidd and Zhurong (Zhurong especially) don’t bring anything new to the table.

As of right now, competitive platform fighters are still a mostly new genre. With large companies showing little to no interest in developing anything like them for competitive play, it’ll likely be a while before they get their own obvious archetypes outside of the Melee top tiers, especially considering the fact that the current character archetypes are still unexplored. If Icons does well, it’d be nice to see some new characters that could possibly be the first step in establishing new archetypes for the genre.