When most people think "fighting games," the Street Fighter series' iconic 2D character sprites and their modern day renditions come to mind. But long before Street Fighter 4 rendered Ryu and Chun Li in modern 3D models, the Street Fighter EX series brought them to chunky polygonal life. These early 3D titles are often forgotten, but they live on through Fighting EX Layer, a current-gen fighting game and one-time April Fools' joke that uses Street Fighter EX's original characters for an entirely Capcom-und game.
As 3D fighters like Virtua Fighter, Soul Edge, and Tekken gained popularity in the mid-1990s, Capcom leveraged its Street Fighter brand for success in the 3D arena. But rather than developing a 3D Street Fighter in-house, it instead co-produced one with its developer, Arika - a smaller company headed by Street Fighter 2 co-creator Akira Nishitani. The result was Street Fighter EX, released in arcades in 1996 and ported to the original PlayStation a year later.
EX and its sequels, EX2 and EX3, were relatively well-received at the time, but the series never continued beyond EX3's release at the PlayStation 2's launch. None of them were ever rereleased on other consoles, either, which likely contributed to their relative obscurity among Street Fighter's other 1990s classics, such as Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and the Street Fighter Alpha series. Today, Arika is best known for spin-offs of other video game franchises, like Tetris 99 and the newly announced Super Mario Bros. battle royale. But Fighting EX Layer, a ion project for Nishitani, managed to revive the EX franchise after 18 years.
Fighting EX Layer's PlayStation 1 Street Fighter Origins Explained
Speaking to project that would become Street Fighter EX. Although the prototype he pitched was basic and the request bold, Nishitani's past with Capcom meant he had the of the producer he pitched it to. Arika first used two of its characters in a non-Street Fighter game when Street Fighter EX's Allen Snider and Blair Dame appeared in Fighting Layer, a Japanese arcade-only fighter released the same year as Street Fighter EX2.
The entire roster of Arika-designed characters were colorful and interesting enough to rival Capcom's, but none caught on as well as Skullomania, a boisterous Japanese salaryman who dresses up as a skeleton to fight crime. Characters like these earned the EX series a cult following, so a 2017 Arika April Fools' Day trailer featuring updated versions of Garuda, Hokuto, and Kairi triggered enough to spur the company to make it into a full game, out of pocket.
Despite fan theories it was a secret Street Fighter EX4, Fighting EX Layer arrived, Ryu-less, in 2018. Though it lacked the Street Fighter connection that allowed Arika to produce its original characters in the first place, it brought the likes of Skullomania, Darun, Pullum, and Doctrine Dark back from their long absence. In a year when the fighting game community is having to adapt to online play, Fighting EX Layer's recent rollback netcode update makes it suddenly more relevant than ever, and it's entirely possible new players will never realize the game's deep-rooted ties to fighting games' most popular franchise.
Fighting EX Layer was released for PlayStation 4 on June 28, 2018, and for PC on November 29, 2018.
Source: Polygon