That's right, folks: the hottest independent release of 2002 that begat a wild and storied legacy is finally back, in rebooted and refreshed form. Type-Moon's visual novel cum French-Bread's fighter adaptation of the same receives a wider push for the first time in its existence, thanks to a higher-profile release on most current platforms and the momentum that's taken Type-Moon from grassroots unknowns to mega-franchise stewards in the past two decades since their inception. If that raises some anxiety over just what kind of tangled web one is stepping into with this game, let the doubts be put to rest; Type Lumina functions as an introduction and blank-slate prequel to all the years of accrued mythology around the lineage as well as a newcomer-friendly fighting game revision to one of the genre's most beloved institutions, if not its most famous.
The game has just come out and I've merely begun sampling it, so there's not much to scrutinize on the basis of how it fares as mechanical competition--and let's face it, I am the last person to make those kinds of assessments and judgment calls, as it's simply not where my interests with the genre lie nor what I'm capable of discussing with any conviction. What I can speak to is my enduring fondness for Melty Blood as a game and what it represents to me, because it was one of the inroads I had long ago into the scene of independent game development and becoming interested in what it could produce. You don't have to have this personal context to have the material connect or matter to you, but I can't remove it from mine, in how integrally, fundamentally teenage it felt at the time and still feels now in retrospect, in ways that feel celebratory of one's development instead of vaguely embarrassed for it. I and others were teenagers with not much money who probably stole the original game simply because it wasn't easily available and that was the only way to interact with it, and what we got with Melty Blood was a similarly unfiltered, adolescent and hopelessly derivative in its expression universe and fighter that was crafted with attention and passion that always surpassed whatever modest context for its existence it was supposed to bear. Type Lumina's strength is in that it has changed not a whit to reassess its past as a mistake to be hidden away and only seeks to preserve what made its blood pump so vivaciously all those years ago, the claws of modernization only affecting the details and not the essence.
In the interest of not recycling the old simply with a new exterior, mechanics like auto-combo strings, simplified inputs for certain moves and powerful counter maneuvers now exist in the game which speak to the intent of catching that unfamiliar audience and letting them have an easy opening to settle into the game's systems and spectacle, while series diehards will have to reconcile their own unease about how the nuances have been shuffled up in the process and whether they're willing to adjust. It's mostly immaterial to me, as I can't weigh the differences on a personal level, so I have only my own priorities to lean on, for which Melty Blood is a fascinating exhibit, then and now. Despite its distant origins in adult-rated nerd media with the exploitative excesses that context conjures up, this has always been a standout series for its representation of women in the genre, which Type Lumina upholds in form and function. As a fighting game roster, its gender ratio falls 10 : 4 in favour of playable women, a majority rule which is practically unheard of in a genre where mere parity is usually a distant dream, and it does not come by it through exceptional circumstances like only featuring women in its cast--a technicality that often speaks to different motives from representation altogether. It's not simply a numbers game either, as the characters who are present end up portrayed with an unadorned simplicity and forthrightness in the aesthetic they embody. That's been the strength of Takashi Takeuchi's designwork, at least in the early days from which these restrained modernizations derive: Type-Moon's stories may deal with violence, and they sometimes broach sexual content (however awkwardly), but they're possessed of a restraint in the surface aesthetics that this fighter branch operates on that doesn't translate to a language of exploitation in either parts of the sex and violence paradigm. I have never been made to feel unwelcome in Melty Blood because for every opportunity that comes along in its iconography that could be twisted to some malicious end, the games consistently refuse to walk down that road, and I'm left with a cast that's held in esteem and respect by the game in ways that only elevate the material.
The fighting game community at large which I recognize but cannot claim to be part of will embrace or reject Type Lumina on basis of competitive depth, the state of its netcode and player options which will gradually manifest in theory and practice, and other such factors that make a fighter in the long-term and which I don't mean to dismiss but simply shrug off for my own context. For me, it's a singular vehicle for personal introspection, possible because of how much has changed and how much hasn't at all with it and me, and that's something I can't mark as a binary success or failure on its part--I'm just happy it's given me the opportunity, and equally as happy to pay it back in continuing to interact with it.
The game has just come out and I've merely begun sampling it, so there's not much to scrutinize on the basis of how it fares as mechanical competition--and let's face it, I am the last person to make those kinds of assessments and judgment calls, as it's simply not where my interests with the genre lie nor what I'm capable of discussing with any conviction. What I can speak to is my enduring fondness for Melty Blood as a game and what it represents to me, because it was one of the inroads I had long ago into the scene of independent game development and becoming interested in what it could produce. You don't have to have this personal context to have the material connect or matter to you, but I can't remove it from mine, in how integrally, fundamentally teenage it felt at the time and still feels now in retrospect, in ways that feel celebratory of one's development instead of vaguely embarrassed for it. I and others were teenagers with not much money who probably stole the original game simply because it wasn't easily available and that was the only way to interact with it, and what we got with Melty Blood was a similarly unfiltered, adolescent and hopelessly derivative in its expression universe and fighter that was crafted with attention and passion that always surpassed whatever modest context for its existence it was supposed to bear. Type Lumina's strength is in that it has changed not a whit to reassess its past as a mistake to be hidden away and only seeks to preserve what made its blood pump so vivaciously all those years ago, the claws of modernization only affecting the details and not the essence.
In the interest of not recycling the old simply with a new exterior, mechanics like auto-combo strings, simplified inputs for certain moves and powerful counter maneuvers now exist in the game which speak to the intent of catching that unfamiliar audience and letting them have an easy opening to settle into the game's systems and spectacle, while series diehards will have to reconcile their own unease about how the nuances have been shuffled up in the process and whether they're willing to adjust. It's mostly immaterial to me, as I can't weigh the differences on a personal level, so I have only my own priorities to lean on, for which Melty Blood is a fascinating exhibit, then and now. Despite its distant origins in adult-rated nerd media with the exploitative excesses that context conjures up, this has always been a standout series for its representation of women in the genre, which Type Lumina upholds in form and function. As a fighting game roster, its gender ratio falls 10 : 4 in favour of playable women, a majority rule which is practically unheard of in a genre where mere parity is usually a distant dream, and it does not come by it through exceptional circumstances like only featuring women in its cast--a technicality that often speaks to different motives from representation altogether. It's not simply a numbers game either, as the characters who are present end up portrayed with an unadorned simplicity and forthrightness in the aesthetic they embody. That's been the strength of Takashi Takeuchi's designwork, at least in the early days from which these restrained modernizations derive: Type-Moon's stories may deal with violence, and they sometimes broach sexual content (however awkwardly), but they're possessed of a restraint in the surface aesthetics that this fighter branch operates on that doesn't translate to a language of exploitation in either parts of the sex and violence paradigm. I have never been made to feel unwelcome in Melty Blood because for every opportunity that comes along in its iconography that could be twisted to some malicious end, the games consistently refuse to walk down that road, and I'm left with a cast that's held in esteem and respect by the game in ways that only elevate the material.
The fighting game community at large which I recognize but cannot claim to be part of will embrace or reject Type Lumina on basis of competitive depth, the state of its netcode and player options which will gradually manifest in theory and practice, and other such factors that make a fighter in the long-term and which I don't mean to dismiss but simply shrug off for my own context. For me, it's a singular vehicle for personal introspection, possible because of how much has changed and how much hasn't at all with it and me, and that's something I can't mark as a binary success or failure on its part--I'm just happy it's given me the opportunity, and equally as happy to pay it back in continuing to interact with it.
