This is a critique of guest characters.
Many are aware of the current trend in modern fighting games to bring in guest characters from other media. As you can most likely guess, it started off small. In the '90s, the Clayfighter series from Interplay brought in guests from the company's other productions in the form of Earthworm Jim and Boogerman, and Ehrgeiz, a production from Square and DreamFactory, brought in characters from the breakout hit RPG Final Fantasy VII. Early into the twenty-first century, Soulcalibur II made headlines with crossover guests exclusive to each console the game was released on. Link from The Legend of Zelda was available for play on the GameCube, while Todd McFarlane's comic book antihero Spawn was the guest for Xbox, and the PS2 version received Heihachi Mishima from Namco's other iconic fighting franchise, Tekken. A few years later, Dead or Alive 4 released as a launch title for the Xbox 360, and in its roster was a female version of the popular Spartan super-soldiers from Microsoft's flagship sci-fi first-person shooter franchise, Halo. Soulcalibur IV, in a rather surprising, and perhaps even jarring move, played host to Star Wars characters in its roster, with Darth Vadar available for PS3 players, and Yoda available on Xbox 360. In a clear effort to advertise the then-upcoming Star Wars game, The Force Unleashed, the Apprentice of Darth Vadar who was the star of that game was also made a fighter in the roster on both consoles.
In the 2010s, the trend has seen an increase in prominence with the advent of downloadable content (DLC) beginning with Warner Bros. and NetherRealm Studios' reboot of the ultra-violent Mortal Kombat franchise, with the God of War franchise's antiheroic protagonist Kratos being made an exclusive guest character for the PS3 and Vita versions of the game. DLC would also add Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street horror film franchise, sparking what would appear to be a new tradition for NetherRealm's fighting games, bringing a number of guest characters into the roster as downloadable content, with Mortal Kombat X eventually adding Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, and the Alien and Predator, while the DC Comics-centric Injustice series has also added Mortal Kombat guests while Injustice 2 also began to add other comic book guests with Hellboy and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Likewise, Koei Tecmo and Bandai Namco have begun to double down on crossover guests in their fighting games. Dead or Alive 5 Last Round features no less than six guest characters total, with Sega's storied Virtua Fighter franchise contributing four guests with Akira, Sarah, Pai, and Jacky, while DLC adds in Naotora Ii from KT's very own Samurai Warriors, and even SNK joins in on the fun with the addition of Mai Shiranui near the end of the game's run. Likewise, Tekken 7 launched with the storied Street Fighter villain Akuma as part of the roster, and he was eventually joined by Geese Howard from the King of Fighters, Noctis from Final Fantasy, and most recently, Negan from The Walking Dead, while Soulcalibur VI launched with Geralt from The Witcher as a guest and later added 2B from Nier Automata through DLC. Nintendo's all-star franchise, Super Smash Bros, also began to play host to third-party characters as well, beginning with its third installment, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in 2008.
Now that I've gone over many of the highlights of the guest character trend, you may be wondering, "What's so bad about this? It's clearly good publicity, and the guest characters are clearly helping to increase sales and profits for fighting games. Furthermore, in Smash Bros' case, that game has pretty much become a celebration of gaming culture as a whole beyond Nintendo, so what could the problem possibly be that you would start off by saying that you're critiquing the trend?" The answer to that question lies in the principle of moderation. Smash Bros gets a free pass because of the way that franchise has evolved beyond its initial origins. However, if you look at other franchises besides Smash, they should be able to carry themselves without trouble without having to rely on crossover guests. Or at least, I would certainly hope they could.
The decision to initial leave popular veteran characters like Lei Wulong and Anna Williams out of the roster for Tekken 7 was met with a negative reception from players. It was not helped after the fact then, that the game's first DLC characters did not help to rectify this issues, but rather focused solely on bringing in a couple of additional guests while the missing legacy characters took a whole year for Namco Bandai to begin adding back into the game. This is purely anecdotal, but some of the people I know, and if I had to guess, some of the people you know also, (50-50 chance, I know, the game still sold great, so toss-up there) were hesitant to go forward with buying Tekken 7 at first because of an emphasis on guests over vets. I honestly don't blame them. Dead or Alive 6 also has several legacy characters missing from Last Round (as well as two who are DLC already) that have been effectively tossed to the side to make way for another DLC collaboration with SNK to bring in two guest characters from KOF, a returning Mai, along with another as-yet unknown guest. As much as I feel I should love the prospect of another DOA/KOF crossover(These are my favorite fighting game franchises behind Soulcalibur), I value the legacy of the DOA franchise's characters enough to wear I would rather they be the focus starting out. As such, I've made the decision not buy the collab DLC on release and to simply wait until returning characters from within the DOA universe are added back in.
Now, this may sound like the issue is simply with missing veteran characters, but there's far more to it than that. I said earlier that the answer lies in the principle of moderation. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, as the old saying goes. Crossover guest characters can be a good thing, that is true. However, these guests are a good thing, in moderation. Or more specifically, their inclusion and addition to fighting games feels most welcome when the game's roster could still be considered solid without them. This is not always the case. Sometimes, guests characters end up used as a crutch to carry an otherwise mediocre or uninteresting game that doesn't hold up well without them.
If you want an example of guest characters being used in the wrong way, look no further than last year's missed opportunity, SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy. When SNK Heroines was first announced, I will freely admit that I was kind of into it, a playful, silly, and unique experience that features an all-star cast of female characters from across the history of my favorite developer for 2D fighting games. Or at least, that was what I expected to be. The reality of the game wasn't so grand. It ended up turning out that the game was focused solely on characters taken directly from The King of Fighters XIV, the company's previous release, at launch, with the only character not carried over from that game, Shermie, being another character from the same franchise, and the only real standout is a genderbent Terry Bogard. There are no characters from Metal Slug, and there is also nobody from The Last Blade or Garou: Mark of the Wolves. The only Samurai Shodown character included in the roster is Nakoruru, who was also part of KOF XIV's roster and is a canonical addition to the KOF universe, so it kind of drives the initial point home even more. One would expect a far different roster from a game titled SNK Heroines. Indeed, if they had titled it KOF Heroines, maybe the disappointment wouldn't have been quite as painful. Regardless, though, the roster is laughably safe, almost to a depressing degree, and it did not help that additional characters were added as DLC lees than a week after launch.
One would think that SNK would take this opportunity with DLC to fix the problems with the roster and bring in additional characters from franchises like SamSho, Metal Slug, and The Last Blade. Unfortunately though, that isn't what happened. The first two additions were collab guests, Thief Arthur from Square-Enix's Million Arthur mobile game franchise, and a genderbent Skullomania from Arika's Fighting EX Layer. While these additions would eventually be followed by SNK deep-cuts with Miss X, the crossdressing Iori Yagami from SNK Gals Fighters(who now also has a genderbent version), and the World Heroes series' very own Jeanne D'arc, it was too little, too late for many, and the game ultimately failed to take off because of the way SNK mismanaged it, as well as became a prime example on how not to handle a modern fighting game release.
And more importantly, SNK Heroines became an example of how guest characters can become detrimental to a game's appeal. It is clear that the developers knew that game's base roster wasn't strong enough to carry it, but they did very little to change that, and simply used collab guests as a crutch to carry an otherwise disappointing game. I certainly hope they've learned from their mistakes with that game and don't repeat them in the future. But if the fighting game industry relies too much on crossover guests to promote games, it will only serve to hurt the FGC as a whole. If developers go too far with their guest characters, then the games will not be able to stand without them. The bigger the reliance on guest characters becomes, the more dangerous it gets. And once the bubble pops, the fighting game landscape could suffer heavy damage that may be difficult to recover from. It might seem amazing now when the crossover boom is still present, but the industry is over-indulging to an unhealthy extent. Think of it as being like a kid hoarding candy in their room and then stuffing their face with it. You may love the sugary, sweet flavor at first, but eventually, you're going to get sick from it. And no one wants that.
