Timeless Tuesdays: A Look Back at Guilty Gear XX

Understanding old games, the ones that build the most memories.

This will be the first of many "Timeless Tuesday" posts. Every week I will be taking time to talk at length about the fighting games that made me, primarily the ones that came out in a pre-Street Fighter 4 (approx. 2009) era. Many of these games made up my childhood, and while some of the games I cover on here may be lost to time, they still have an active community that is willing to play them above all else.

I figured with this being the first of many posts, I want to start with a bang, and talk about my favorite retro fighting game. Imagine heading over to a friend's house, they boot up their Playstation 2, plug in two controllers, and boot up a game that looks like this:

image from OPRAINFALL

 

And sounds like this. That was the first experience I had with today's Timeless Tuesdays topic: Guilty Gear XX. Released in 2003, this is one of the games that bridged the gap of fighting game drought between Street Fighter III and Street Fighter IV's release. It was made by the up and coming at the time, but today extremely popular, Arc System Works. This is the fighting game that put me onto the genre back when I first played it in 2007, and it has fundamentally shaped what I view as "fun."

image courtesy of STRATEGY WIKI

 

Contrary to what one might think, I never actually owned the game on Playstation, I never even had a Playstation as a kid. My best friend at the time, Jordan, actually did however, and he was my first exposure to this game. Naturally, as kids did, we never went into training mode, him and I would just do straight versus matches for hours, and with how many cool characters Guilty Gear had, we played pretty much everyone. But for some reason, I would always gravitate to one character in particular...

image courtesy of DUSTLOOP

The most boring character in the game, but he's special... 

 

Ky Kiske, the young prodigy of the Holy Orders, wielder of the Thunderseal, was and always will be my favorite character in Guilty Gear. He's probably even my favorite character in the entire genre. The white and blue cloak, the lightning powers, the amazing theme song that played whenever you picked him, the belt buckle with "Hope" engraved into it, Ky had it all. As a result, I picked Ky as my main character in every single Guilty Gear game as a result. To this day, performing or even watching his combos brings me immense joy.

Freedom of expression, in full force.

In fact, with the amount of time the game has been out for, and in the midst of its many updates, the combos players can perform in this game on every character are some of the most insanely cool things people have seen, and the reason for that is the system mechanics that give the game more depth and freedom to allow characters to do wacky things.

It wasn't the first, but Guilty Gear XX revolutionized a system most anime fighters use to this day, this system is known as the Gatling sequence, which allows normal attacks of low strength to be chained immediately into normal attacks of a higher strength, meaning a character's punch could combo directly into their kick, their kick into their slash, and their slash into their heavy slash. This, combined with every characters' plethora of unique special moves, super attacks, and mechanics such as Force Break and Roman Cancel, the game encouraged learning your character to their fullest strength, as well as learning how to effectively manage your tension gauge (basically this game's super meter).

This freedom that this game allows meant that to truly understand everything that every character has to offer, a resource would need to be created to help new players and veterans alike. Thus, this game led to the creation of the Dustloop Wiki, which is basically a Mecca for anyone interested in anime fighters to learn their favorite games, with extensive research on every character, from frame data, to damage, to basic bread-and-butter combos, the game had the exact resource it needed to keep itself alive, as well as continue to draw in new players.

A second chance at life, 18 years in the making...

After a while, the game became fairly niche, with the sequel, Guilty Gear Xrd and Arcsys' own Blazblue series being the primary anime fighting games, XX maintained a small but loyal playerbase. This was until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, causing the world to basically cease all local activity for about a year. During this time, the netcode of fighting games (the quality of the internet connection when playing online) was a hot topic, especially since developers did not see a need to make the netcode of their games good, since the draw of fighting games was local play and tournaments.

But the game was given another chance to make a big hit, as Arcsys would release a "Rollback update" for Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R, the game's final version on Steam, in 2021. This was absolutely huge, as a game with previously awful netcode now had extremely good connection, allowing players to be matched up from across the world without any sort of delay or lag spikes.

A slight personal anecdote.

By that point in time, local tournaments were basically impossible, so I decided to revisit this part of my childhood and purchase the game on Steam. The game went on sale for like $2.49 every couple of weeks, being as old as it was. But I decided to actually grind the game for a while, as one of the biggest fighting game majors for Guilty Gear, Frosty Faustings, hosted a "netplay bracket." As the name implies, this is just lingo for an online tournament.

I practiced for a couple months, and in that time span the tournament amassed over 400 entrants. I hoped to win at least one match... but I ended up losing both of my first sets and was out of the bracket, though it wasn't so bad, watching the rest of the tournament live turned out to be one of the greatest fighting game viewing experiences I've ever seen, and the vods for the tournament are still on Youtube to this day. 

So where is the game now?

image courtesy of STEAM CHARTS

 

While the game's player-base is once again relatively small, there are plenty of fans still looking to play with others. Players hook up using Discord and find matches that way on dedicated servers, allowing the game to thrive in its own way. And to this day, XX is still played at tournaments like Frosty Faustings and CEOTaku to this day, in fact for the sake of the game's legacy I decided to enter it at the next major, Frosty Fausting's XVII.

Overall, Guilty Gear XX is one of the most unforgettable fighting games of all time. With its distinct sprite-based visuals, amazing soundtrack, flashy combos, and excellent character designs, this game stands the test of time, and remains a fighting game that sticks in the minds of those who play and watch it. If you ever want to kill the itch and try the game for yourself, the game goes on sale all the time on Steam, and its age and low graphical fidelity means that it's playable on any hardware, even the cheapest of laptops. Thank you for joining me for the first post of Timeless Tuesdays, I'll be back with another game next week.