{"id":44426,"date":"2018-02-20T03:09:37","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T10:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/cerebrawl-the-inside-story-of-seattles-own-hyperkinetic-tag-match-fighting-game\/"},"modified":"2018-02-20T03:09:37","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T10:09:37","slug":"cerebrawl-the-inside-story-of-seattles-own-hyperkinetic-tag-match-fighting-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/cerebrawl-the-inside-story-of-seattles-own-hyperkinetic-tag-match-fighting-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Cerebrawl: The inside story of Seattle\u2019s own hyperkinetic, tag-match fighting game"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An environment concept in \u2018Cerebrawl.\u2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the last twenty years, the Marvel vs. Capcom <\/em>series has been (in)famous among fighting-game fans. It\u2019s a franchise that pits an assortment of characters from Capcom\u2019s various titles\u2014Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Darkstalkers, <\/em>etc.\u2014against Marvel Comics\u2019 stable of superheroes and \u2013 villains. Since 1996\u2019s X-Men vs. Street Fighter<\/em>, the series has been known for being flashy and chaotic, and most of the games tend to have serious balance problems in one way or another. Despite all of that, or maybe because of it, MvC<\/em>\u2019s fans are some of the most raucous and dedicated players out there.<\/p>\n

Cerebrawl <\/em>is, in many ways, a deliberate attempt to create a sort of spiritual, independent sequel to Marvel vs. Capcom. <\/em>In fact, as of this writing, there\u2019s an automatic redirect at marvelvscapcom5.com that brings you to Cerebrawl<\/em>\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The game is an independent production by a six-person team, based in part in Seattle, that calls itself Zero Dimension. Its crew consists of veterans of companies such as Harmonix, Disney, Microsoft, the Indie Megabooth, and 38 Studios, and many of them are also long-time presences on various fighting games\u2019 tournament scenes. Zero Dimension\u2019s members have been working on Cerebrawl <\/em>between other projects for the last three years, during which time they were regular sights on the Seattle indie games circuit. They\u2019re currently working on funding the last big push to get their game finished.<\/p>\n

The ideas was to \u201cmake a more Marvel-type game rather than a \u2018gentleman\u2019s game,\u2019\u201d says the game\u2019s art director, Eliot Min. \u201cI played a lot of Street Fighter 4 <\/em>in tournaments when I lived in Massachusetts [and] there\u2019s something about the Marvel scene\u2026 I\u2019ve always been more attracted to that scene, rather than the game itself. I wanted to build that kind of scene. It\u2019s sensory overload\u2026 it\u2019s like a reflection of the game that they play.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2018Cerebrawl\u2019 co-founders Aaron Oak (left) and Eliot Min.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cerebrawl\u2019s <\/em>producer, Aaron Oak, is a former \u201csemi-pro\u201d player with a background in Counterstrike <\/em>and Starcraft<\/em>. \u201cThe fighting-game community is very far apart from that. It\u2019s way more exciting. In Starcraft<\/em>, no emotion is shown\u2026 that was exciting to me as well, having that bright, vibrant community that\u2019s really excited about what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

I played Cerebrawl <\/em>for a few rounds against Oak. It\u2019s more frantic and fluid than a Street Fighter <\/em>game, with big, screen-filling moves and animations, but doesn\u2019t quite reach the explosive, technicolor heights of a Marvel vs. Capcom. <\/em>In play, it looks like the game adaptation of some \u201890s independent comic or late-night cult cartoon that doesn\u2019t actually exist; most of the characters would look perfectly at home as graffiti on a wall, or as decals you could buy at a skate shop.<\/p>\n

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A character from Cerebrawl.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can play Cerebrawl<\/em> as a typical head-to-head fighter, where both players select two characters and battle it out as a tag match, or as a four-player game, where each character is controlled by a separate player, with two fighting onscreen at a time. Much like Marvel vs. Capcom<\/em>, a big part of Cerebrawl <\/em>is off-screen assist moves, where an inactive character leaps in to help out the active one. Unlike MvC<\/em>, however, if you\u2019re playing with a teammate, that teammate can choose when to use his or her assist, or even tag in to get you out of a bind. (For fighting-game fans, think of the Burst Moves in Guilty Gear<\/em>: it\u2019s a limited-use, high-risk ability that\u2019s designed to break you out of an opponent\u2019s combo.) It\u2019s a common sort of feature in a lot of wrestling video games, but it\u2019s rare to see it in a tournament fighter.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s an ambitious project, particularly for an independent game running on relatively recent software, and it\u2019s been on a slow boil for most of its production so far. At the start of this month, Zero Dimension launched a particularly ambitious Kickstarter<\/a> in order to finally complete Cerebrawl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a team\u2026 of six,\u201d says Oak, regarding Zero Dimension\u2019s funding goal, \u201cand all these people need to be taken care of. Even with the amount that we have, we\u2019ve taken pay cuts in order to arrive at that number. Our combat designer, Wilson [Fermin], has to quit his job so that he can come work with us. \u2026plus the licensing fees, plus the soundtrack, plus all that stuff added up to that number. We spent months getting to that number.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were kind of in a pinch when we came up with that number,\u201d adds Min. \u201cWe could go two routes. We could go the safe route, because we know that [game Kickstarters] usually aim for around 50K, but if we went that route we would have to come back for more funding before the game was\u2026 in a showable state. We decided\u2014this is kind of hard to say\u2014that if we were going to fail, we\u2019d rather fail the Kickstarter rather than fail on delivery.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the event the Kickstarter fails, that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the end of Cerebrawl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a wild three years,\u201d Min says. \u201cWe\u2019ve been able to build up an incredible <\/em>community, and with the Kickstarter happening, we\u2019ve got all these new followers. We still want to be able to use that in some way. We have these people who would support us regardless of what happens, which is incredible. We\u2019re still talking about it, but it\u2019s a tough decision to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Development on Cerebrawl\u00a0<\/em>continues as of this writing, with regular streams on the game\u2019s Twitch channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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An environment concept in \u2018Cerebrawl.\u2019 For the last twenty years, the Marvel vs. Capcom series has been (in)famous among fighting-game fans. It\u2019s a franchise that pits an assortment of characters from Capcom\u2019s various titles\u2014Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Darkstalkers, etc.\u2014against Marvel Comics\u2019 stable of superheroes and \u2013 villains. Since 1996\u2019s X-Men vs. Street… Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":44427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games-media","category-gaming"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t