Arika Took Street Fighter to the EX-treme; Now FLEXing Into The Future

Throughout the early-1990s, the fighting game landscape was dominated by the Street Fighter series. Others came to challenge for the throne, but only one series could truly stake its claim as champion. As the 90s progressed, and technology improved, new challengers started to rise and steal some of Street Fighter’s popularity. Games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter used impressive 3-dimensional models along with tight, 3D gameplay to introduce a new style of gameplay to the fighting game community. Capcom then partnered with Arika, another Japanese developer, to bring Street Fighter to the third dimension. Arika and Capcom brought three EX games to players with the first two having the trademark Capcom updates to add characters and new frame data. The three games were critically well-received, but I, along with the people I spoke to in my general area, never saw many in the community actually playing the games.

In fact, I only vaguely remember the Street Fighter EX series growing up, and for some reason I never quite caught on to what was supposed to be going on. It didn’t quite look right - after all, the only Street Fighter games at the time featured sprite-based graphics on artistic backgrounds. It also played strangely, and had a complicated (for me, at the time) battle system I could never figure out - a mix of “magic-series” (the use of light/medium/heavy attacks in quick succession to perform combos) and “custom combos” (combos that are chained together based on moves the user picks, rather than a predetermined series of attacks.)  So imagine my surprise when I learned there was an entire subset of fighting game fans who loved the EX series of games!

“If It’s a Fighting Game, Spooky Streams It”

Of course, the place to watch high-level Street Fighter EX series play is at the Next Level arcade in Brooklyn, NY during the  2 Old 2 Furious circuit, which features tons of old fighting games. The crew recently added Street Fighter EX 2 to the series and has put out a ton of excellent (pardon the pun) content for fans of the series to check out!

When discussing the game, prominent New York-based FGC member Arturo, “TS|Sabin” Sanchez mentioned the game has been competed in longer than people think. “The New York scene has taken EX seriously for many years now,” he said. “At least ten years.”

This was completely news to me, and so whenever I saw the game being played, I always tuned in. Then, early last year, Arika started rumbling on about a new EX series game that obviously wouldn’t use the Street Fighter license. The fighting game community, myself included, was anxious to see what was going on.

Arika Adds a New “Layer” To Fighting Games

It was on April Fool’s Day, 2017, that Arika showed the first footage of their newest entry in the  beloved EX series with a new game, titled Fighting EX Layer. The game is a passion project of series architect Akira Nishitani, which combines the traditional EX series gameplay with some Street Fighter X Tekken-esque gem system called the “Gougi” system.

The fighting game community was very excited with the initial reveal. Reddit user TemptCiderFan said of the reveal, “There are no words how hype I am to be able to play my main man Skullomania again, nor how excited I am to play the first fighting game [Nishitani’s] done since EX3,” they said. “Between this and Dragon Ball FighterZ, Capcom may find themselves well and truly displaced as the king of fighting games.”

Beta Blues

Once the beta was unleashed to the public in mid-December, players were finally able to play a new EX series game since the Playstation 2 era of games. Players wasted no time breaking the game and developer Arika had to chime in about the turn the beta had taken, issuing one of the coolest lines a developer has ever uttered: “We apologize, we misjudged your power.”

The reaction from the community was also rather lukewarm. One Reddit user said in the beta’s r/salty megathread, “This games a mess. Don't get me wrong there's fun to be had here but it needs a s---ton of work.” The one saving grace is that it was a beta, and gameplay changes can be corrected before the final launch of the game.

One thing’s for sure, more fighting games is never a bad thing, and we can only hope Arika takes the beta feedback to heart in order to deliver another classic fighting game. The returning fan-favorites Jack and Shadowgeist should give the series an added boost, but it remains to be seen if the gameplay will be solid enough to entice more than just the most die-hard fans. 

Guile was a very popular character in the EX series, and his status hasn’t changed much in Street Fighter V. Check out one Guile player’s answer to the oft-maligned Hadouken!