Battle On

Probably the toughest part of this project was figuring out how to arrange the cast of characters. My original plan many years ago was to have specific character match ups from Capcom characters versus SNK characters (i.e. Ryu vs. Kyo or M. Bison vs. Geese Howard). Even back then, the SNK characters easily outnumbered Capcom. Taken strictly from fighting games, SNK still outnumbers Capcom to this day. I also didn’t want to make one side look stronger. That logistical issue quickly put a halt to my first attempt at the illustration.

When I decided to retry the project, I realized that including other game franchises from both companies would create some interesting juxtapositions. It won’t seem so strange considering that the various crossover games like Marvel vs. Capcom and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom set the standard of including characters outside of the fighting game genre. And so I added more characters to the roster. After doing a headcount of both sides, their numbers are now closer to even.

The next factor to consider was the size range of characters. Mega Man is shorter than the average person while Geon is the size of a skyscraper. That size disparity can make the perspective angles problematic. I decided to keep things simple by having the larger characters located towards the back and the shorter characters closer to the front.

So then how will the characters be arranged? Will the Capcom side be one half and the SNK side on the other? Do I group characters together based on the game franchise they came from? Should the heroes fight the villains?

The idea came to me one night to just create some type of systemic arrangement similar to a Venn diagram. I realized that plenty of characters would be unknown to the casual observer and I wanted them to be identifiable. Characters would be grouped in such a way that analyzing the juxtaposition across various directions would form some type of pattern. For example, the characters from feudal Japan would be in one area while modern soldier types would be in another. Boss characters, like Orochi, would be surrounded by subordinates, like Goenitz and Vice. After that, things started to fall into place. I feel that the categorizations I came up with will make for an interesting image for both casual viewers and hardcore game aficionados. Here’s an early draft of the character groupings I created. The final illustration should make things much more clear.