@@KaminariHouse I do hear from some snotty DBZ nerds from time to time that DBFZ sucks because Yamcha can fight Jiren one to one and the only good DBZ fighting games were the Budokai Tenkaichi series.
Max you literally skipped over the best match of HNK ever. The Kenshiro player washes the Rei player the whole first match then in round two he gets him with the Jigan Ken which starts a timer that auto kills the opponent, BUT then the Rei player lands an infinite that kills the Kenshiro before the timer ends. Then in the final round the Kenshiro player HIT CONFIRMS INTO FATAL KO IMMEDIATELY.
I always loved that aspect of Hokuto no Ken, it’s stupidly meta. You just give up playing the first few seconds into the match because “You’re already dead.”
5:49 As a proud 50 year old gamer that thought he has seen everything, I say here and now... I havent seen SHIT. I was too much of a fan to notice just HOW broken this game was (IS lol) when I played it. I sincerely THANK you for putting this out there. Sharing NOW...
The definition of kusoge has clearly changed because of people growing up in the culture of online patches. These kinds of old kusoge games really cannot exist anymore so it makes sense for the phrase to evolve with the times. But there really is no comparing these old games to anything made today, it is nuts. Kudos to everyone with the patience to play them even still, that's real love.
@@maximini4923 Nah, the thing about kusoge is that they have to be "so bad, it's good." They have to be bad games that nonetheless make you want to master them, and reward you for doing so. You want to get good at Hokuto no Ken because it's a beautiful game with tons of callouts to its source material and some really interesting mechanics; it just happens to also be a game with 9-1 matchups and touch-of-death combos. Most of the games you're talking about are just regular bad.
Wait, did I go through a time warp or something?? Since when did Kusoge become the term to use for "game I don't like" or "weird anime fighter"? To me Kusoge's are like Dong Dong Never Die, or Street Fighter Rainbow, or Mugen featuring El Chapulín Colorado vs SSJ3 Stone Cold Steve Urkel. Like, incredibly broken, nonsensical, hilarious fighting games - how did chat think Strive or DNF Duel a Kusoge??? Weird to think how the term changed so much as newer generations are starting to play fighting games.
From what I heard, I thought it was a term of endearment. I was unaware that people were starting to just use it to describe games that they didn't like.
@@Nick-of-Time this was always my interpretation. I guess im not super in deep in the FGC but its always been "broken as fuck, but still fun despite it". Also tending to be low budget or indie games. Anyone using it in the way max describes has to be a fucking idiot.
@@ember_falls He makes it clear on his loose-vs-tight list that is not about the game being complex, modern or fair. The "loose" aspect he talks about is how much a game lets you crazy stuff, and "tight" games are the ones that railroads you within it's boundaries in order to prevent those. There are kusoge games on both sides of the spectrum.
The Hokuto no Ken game is one that follows a similar logic to non-Kusoge games, in that the game is still fair if every character does some unfair/busted/broken nonsense. Only in the case of Hokuto, the game ratchets that to the extreme via ToD's and infinites.
Still shit. If you look at the cast a few are actually fair and not broken. Or the fact Roh has a bug that prevents him from block switching for 10 frames or 3 meaning you have to know you are gonna get fuzzyed and the second you switch you are fucked. Or Heart IS ONLY VIABLE on the Player 2 side. The list goes on XD. Game is shit...but we love it
@@Creep700 he has access to an infinite. Fun fact in a tier list Player 1 Heart is the worst in the entire game. Player 2 side is the best of trash tier. He is still low tier but actually useable if you play him on the Player 2 side.
3:50 I remember years ago that Woolie said that this was one of the greatest matches in competitive fighting game history. The Ken player just pulls out the ultimate disrespect in the final round lol
Not the footage Max showed though, it's later in the video. The greatest match ever is the round where Dora got hit with Kenshiro's Hokuto Zankai Ken which puts a timer on the game and when it runs out the other guy automatically loses. Dora managed to beat Amiba in time despite it being a very short clock and Kenshiro was at full health. And then Amiba just immediately follows it up in round 3 with a Fatal KO and everyone is laughing.
@@SvarogAristaeusAllen Yes and no. Super Dragon Ball Z didn’t follow that code because it was made by actually experienced fighting game developers (same people that made Street Fighter II). I’d put it up there with FighterZ equally, tbh. Everything else, I agree with. Most Dragon Ball fighting games were either mediocre or terrible.
This might just be me, but as someone who always looked beyond the surface level of what something translates to when it comes to these types of things, I always understood “Kusoge” in relation to fighting games as something that’s super janky and unpolished, but is adored by its people and has fans either in spite of the jank, or because of the jank.
It's the fighting game equivalent of a trashbin movie. It's good BECAUSE it's bad. DNF is not a kusoge. It's just a game with wild mechanics. Hokuto no Ken is absolutely busted, THAT's a kusoge.
Kusoge is SUPPOSED to mean "crap game". A true Kusoge is something like Sonic '06 or Superman 64 where the sheer terribleness of it makes the fact that anyone plays it funny. It's the bad game everyone tunes in to watch. But in the FGC, people generally just don't want to admit that Non-Capcom fighting games can be good so they call it "kusoge" because they don't have the balls to stand behind an unpopular game. Think about a bad fighting game that you'd totally watch a tournament of. I hear there was some kind of legendary Dino Rex tournament that went down which sounds pretty kusoge. A Shaq-Fu tournament could draw some numbers. There was a Street Fighter: The Movie (Arcade) tournament that went down as well and that game has a whole crew diving into it to find its secrets. THOSE are proper kusoge. HnK's basketball combos very likely count it as well.
I loved that Fist of the North Star fighting game. I thought it was just licensing is the reason no one fought to have it ported to this gen consoles. I had no idea it was this super busted.
Fist of the North Star is fun af tbh. Is it considered broken if all the characters have moves like that? Maybe it was intentional and trying not to get hit is what sets you apart from the rest. Like UMVC3.
I think the difference is that in UMVC3 if the combo lands, you die fast, while in Fist of the North Star it's literally until the clock runs out. One doesn't destroy fun or slow down the rounds, the other does
Maybe it's because it was probably unintended? If it was intended then the damage wouldn't scale and you would be dead in like 10-20 hits instead of just having a combo last the entire round.
@@eCstaTicBomB not defending. Just thought it was fun to play. The whole game isnt shit. It’s got it’s good things going for it too. I think the game looks great. Awesome big characters, Meaty sounding hits and awesome music. Combos look cool too. You see NOW I’m defending it lol.
Too be fair, that's very true to the source material of Hokuto no Ken. Any attack from Ken or Raoh and your immediately dead in less than a minute. The key is not to get touched by them a single time. If anything the game is alot more generous than the source material, as not every stray hit is literally a 100% tod. Love that game btw, been having a blast playing it on fightcade
"Kusoge" has lost meaning, suffering the same fate like "weeb" being used as a positive self-describing word despite coming from a negative connotation and "broken/op" for anything mildly strong but far from busted or unfair.
no one uses kusoge the modern way positively like weeb tho. that isnt even remotely an accurate comparison. weeb also came from a fuckin webcomic and wasnt even about japanese, it was a meaningless term in the comic to make a surreal joke. 4chan just started using it for japanese culture fans because the comic was funny. weeb is positive now to some folks because folks stopped caring about people hating them for being a weeb, and reclaimed the word.
But people who used Kusoge doesn't see it as positive. They know the game is "bad", but they still have fun with the game, but now it's used unrionically "it's kusoge, not because it's bad game, but because people don't like the game"
@@WaluTime idk why you're so tilted over it that you felt the need to give a completely irrelevant history lesson and then contradict yourself in the same comment. It wasn't reclaimed anyway. You completely missed the point and ignored the part about "broken", the point was that the word is so overused now that it has lost its original meaning. That's it. Pretty accurate comparison if you don't try to overthink it.
I first heard the term back when a Japanese player came to EVO I want to say it was to play UMvC3 and completely wrecked shop because nobody knew how to counter things. Everybody was so used to the west's way of playing that when someone came in with a new style of playing it there was no countering it until damn near the end. Guy ended up getting hounded so badly for money matches he decided to never come back.
I play more strategy games than fighting games and I found your explanation of "just don't let it happen" really interesting. Reminds me of when people were complaining about the Goths in AOE2 being broken once they hit imperial age and the real answer actually coming down to just don't let the Goths get to Imperial age since they are super vulnerable in the early game. Same as infinite combos in Magic The Gathering too.
Max sounding like Char with the “how do I block that?” answer. Zeon Grunt: “How do we dodge beam attacks like you did, Char?” Char Aznable: “Simple. Don’t be where it’s aiming.” Lol what
I always took "kusoge" to be the gaming equivalent to "so bad it's good", like the game is objectively bad but it's got charm and weirdness in its badness. Like Altered Beast. Not a particularly good game, but the world would be poorer without it. Just try to play it with a friend without laughing your ass off.
Words used to have definitions and specific use. Now, definitions doesn't mean anything and context is ignored. People use words however they like regardless and it happens with everything not just "Kusoge."
A lot of people think older fighting games where this busted have not seen, Ultra Fight Da! Kyanta 2. No joke, that game is in the true spirit of "kusoge" and came out back in 2019. Stupid and busted fighting games are still coming out, but you have to dig into the indie scene to find them now. I will say I don't think it's just about the game being busted, but also being fun too. There's a lot of broken fighting games you can find in Steam's trash bin, but the ones that are busted AND fun are truly special.
See I would not even call kyanta kosuge bc like max talks about, there has to be situations with no real solutions or method of prevention. Kyanta is wacky and crazy but it's way more balanced than hnk or Jacky Chan fists of fire. Plus it gets patches. I'm gonna put my foot down hard and say no game that has ever been patched is kusoge. Different versions aren't patches I mean real updates.
10:40 An 8-2 matchup doesn't make a game trash. USF4 had TWO 8.5-1.5 matchups (Gouken vs. Hugo and Juri vs. Hugo). A character having 8-2 (or 7-3) against the entire cast is a different story.
"Anything even slightly unbalanced is trash" People are like this about all game genres, but especially the competitive ones. Part of it is the "most common denominator" syndrome. If something is busted, then lots of people feel obligated to do it, then it becomes obnoxious.
I love roy in melee, I wouldn't want him to be balanced either. He's fast and lacks the grace of marth, so it only makes sense that he's the worst fighter. That being said, when you beat someone with roy, especially sheik, it feels awesome. Unfair matchup is not kusoge, they are integral to fighting games as a whole.
Samurai Shodown is a good example of a great and balanced game that's considered "dead" by many due to lame netcode problems, sucks that many might assume it to be trash or would just not want to play due to it's low player count (on Xbox and Playstation at least)
I am happy to hear mention of NES and arcade titles. Some of the crowd playing don’t remember the days before internet giving you access to game strategy guides. Most whom remember Nintendo Power magazines would remember how hard some older games were without its guides. Too bad games like Battletoads were still hard with the guides. Lol
Max, I couldn’t have said it better myself. The question is not “how do you block that” it’s “what can I do to not get myself in this situation”. Hokuto No’ Ken on arcade & PS2 (Japan only btw) is no better lesson to this. I played this once in an arcade and eventually ended up importing the PS2 copy. I got bodied my first attempt because I had not realized how broken the game is. People say MvC2 has bad infinites, oh no! Just play this game with someone who knows what they are doing for about 5 min and you will see firsthand. These were the days where patches were NOT a thing either. Games came as they were broken or not. This game taught me all about the art of “avoiding” vs the art of “blocking”. I guess in a way I can thank Hokuto No’ Ken. I’m a better fighting game player for it. ;)
The difference of fighting games Then vs Now is online. Then we were stuck with whatever broken game they released with no way to patch them, it was one and done. Now we have the luxury of updates and patches, so if HnK were to be released today (please ArcSys), it'd be much more polished game. Problem is if the game is too safe (looking at you GBFVS), it gets boring.
most games are "too safe" these days. SFV, Strive, they all share the same DNA. gimped from older titles. but they look a lot more aesthetically pleasing, so people will buy them
@@weirdo911aw Agreed, some of the best fighting games of all time (MvC2) were broken as well, with guard breaks and infinites, and yet were extremely fun to play. Almost like their own high risk big reward mechanic, which required both skills to avoid and master, plus training and practice, just like real life *shocker*.
@@weirdo911aw There's a difference between people buying them and people actually playing the game, the "mainstream audience" these devs try to fellatio so much and that Max defended on Strive's release is that they dont play the game.
Man, older games were so broken af, Guilty Gear used to be like that in previous versions like X and XX-pre Slash... Many doujin-started fighters were also like that in earlier version too, smaller team, no online patches, just new versions once a year or so. Melty and Arcana heart comes to mind, both solid but man some combo oportunities and option selects were so messed up.
Great video! I don't have the community and time to play FGs nearly as often as I'd like, but I'm a lot more involved in card game spaces and I see similar sentiments all the time. Cards with very easy methods of dealing with them are called for bans all the time because the answers and outs aren't commonly run *at the moment* and people say any deck that shows ANY advantage is broken, like, half the time the meta will develop to counter those strategies in due course. Even then, sometimes you don't draw the out and you just have to take the L. I'm pretty sure half of the people who complain about this stuff don't understand that sometimes you just lose games. Sometimes you get unlucky, or guess wrong, or pick the wrong character or card. It happens. Try to have fun and learn from the game either way and you'll be fine.
Wow there's not much cross over between FGC and TCG, I've noticed. Glad to meet another. Competive Yu-Gi-Oh and Competive FGC has always been my thing too.
@@PortCityBalrog Yugioh os the exact game i was thinking of. All my friends play Magic tho, so I end up playing that more XD been following FGC community people like Max for a long time, I hope soon I can get some more time off from work to really get into a fighting game outside of Smash, which I grew up with, and is the only foghting game my friends play XD
@@Aripuni1 When talking about modern Kusoge, if we consider some gacha games to be ACTUAL fighting games (Games with pay to win mechanics), then they easily take the cake as the best modern example of a kusoge. They aren't made by pro-players because they're VERY buggy with the 1v1 mechanics or just designed simply unbalanced to make the experience "more fun" for certain players (AKA the ones who spend a lot of money). Once again, this is if you consider certain gacha games like KOF Allstar to be actual fighting games, hope that answers your question! ;D
the guy dribbling with Rei was my buddy Kain and hes been playing quite a while. I wouldn't necessarily call Hnk kusoge, its faithful to the source and could tell arcsys put love into it. Yes it is broken but it requires hundreds of hours of training mode and practice. Broken stuff doesn't come free you need hands ( execution ) and resources. There's better examples of kusoge , name dropping Hnk has just become a meme at this point.
I have noticed a bunch of games with dlc characters have people say "X character is busted and needs nerfs" on release week. Which isn't really enough time to judge if a character is busted, because nobody has gotten used to playing as them or against them yet. New tech and weaknesses don't just become known by everybody overnight.
I have watched a little bit of HnK and that game is always hilarious to watch. Watching people try to navigate a game as crazy as that is fun. I think the closest mainstream game to Kusoge that I can think of recently is UMvC3. I love the game but I know some Japanese players consider the game kusoge because it is a very volatile game and with some teams, the match can end in one hit if executed correctly.
I genuinely thought “Kusoge” was a type of fighting game where If you were “touched once” you were basically dead. But I saw that a lot in MvC 3 so I called THAT game a Kusoge.
The true tragedy of Hokuto No Ken is that people know it as the game with the stupid ass combo system. I played it with people who were familiar with fighting games, but didn't know or try infinites. It was so goddamn fun and intense. Watching those stars get to 1, as we baited with the unlockables, some people will play the same game and never see that incredible meta. If it got remade today, it'd probably have to keep the jank combos in, which leaves me ambivalent.
I love that game tho. I think it's probably the best video game adaptation we got of the series. Can't care less about the musou games, and that game pretty much LOOKS like the anime, SOUNDS like the anime and PLAYS like the anime. I acknowledge it's broken, but as a single player experience? It's fanservice paradise.
The reason they bounce is most likely caused by an overloaded gravity value. Its at like -100% at the end going to the max hight of the screen with that combo with Rei.
So one of the big reasons why Hokuto is so busted is because of how the games gravity works with respect to heavy knockdowns. When rebounding opponents off the ground their gravity value increases until you roll the numbers after which it becomes negative and causes them to bounce. At that point you can infinitely bounce your opponent.
it funny how Kusoge type of fighting game get well-known by 2 games from the most manly men series "Hokuto no Ken" and the most Girly girl series "Sailor Moon" hahaha
I think "Kusoge Games" have adapted to be "the most boring shit you will ever interact with" like what Final Fantasy 14 has become with the release of Shadowbringers and continues with Endwalker.
8:10 and 10:20 sum it up perfectly. Games used to be jank so learning what is broken and how to avoid/do it was part of the real gameplay. Personally, broken situations in a fighting game seems fair since it really shows where a character can shine or the skill of a player if they can pull it capitalize/negate it.
The popular mindset of "I don't like this thing so it's trash" is one of the biggest things I hate about the world today. It's such a disgusting way to think. Can we please just accept that different people enjoy different things and just move on? *sigh*
Its really interesting hearing history and the way the FGC has transformed over the years. Ive definitely heard the take that these "kusoge" games will never really be made again post SF4 '09 era. And now we're in rollback era. Wonder what other major eras there are.
Hokuto no ken is indeed the ultimate kusoge, I wanted to play it just yesterday and guess what? I didn't get to play it, game straight out refused to load in the first place
It's not really just kusoges or fighting games, everything today has to be either a 11/10 or the worst shit ever. Everyone has become so radically opinionated there's no grey areas or nuance, every opinion is binary. "Back in my day" when a game got a 6/10 then it was considered good enough, jank maybe but playable. Nowadays a 8/10 is a shit game. Like, what the actual...
... The way Harada talks about Kusoge is the same way Travis talks about Death Man in NMH3. There's some magic in even the trashiest, most unbalanced games. That's why when they're trashy and buggy but also somehow have amazing gamefeel(Hi Dong Dong Never Die), it can just lead to something amazing. Kusoge is 100% an indie only zone now. Weird foreign gems, M.U.G.E.N., Steam trash games, etc. No big game studio will release something that bad anymore, unless Ubisoft throws its hat into the fighting game ring.
I still think the Sailor Moon game is THE supreme Kusoge because it's INSTANTLY shit and broken in any level of play with the most basic of actions(like the fireball that does more damage when you block), but HnK is a very good choice as well, there's something extremely poetic about it being centered around touches of death
LMFAO that bounce so fast he's gone to plad 144 hit combo. Kids these days have no idea. they want to call a modern game this style, the closest they got is MVC3.
Love this video. My personal favorite Kusoge is KOF03. To a lot of people they'll say it's a bad game but not a kusoge--- honestly its a kusoge. Too many 100% combos, vortexes and unplayable states across the range of characters. 03's Duo Lon, arguably one of the most complete characters SNK ever made, is a nightmare, and you must play him in a competitive environment, or inherently forfeit the game lol
Lordknight has some good clips on the crazy combos and how everyone thought this was the best and hardest game..they where mad at blazeblu for not being like this and making it "easier" that was a long time ago
Why is the fact that a Fist of the North Star fighting game being completely busted not surprising to me in the least lol
Devs: "Hey, so like, what if we made the characters' gameplay and damage match Canon?
It's very on touch with how overkill Fist of the North Star is a whole xD
ASW used that game to test what mechanic they could put in future games.
"Get touched once and you're already dead" is literally the main gimmick of the entire franchise.
Lore accurate, as licensed games should be.
One touch death skill cheese is pretty much as close to HNK source material as is conceptually possible.
It's not kusoge, it's lore accurate.
If you take one single hit from an Hokuto or Nanto master, you're dead.
Either you explode internally, or you get literally ripped apart.
Then there's Mamiya.
@@VileGlory Good point.
At least she have a bike, right?
Still, this game is a great example of why matching gameplay or damage too closely to the source material is a no no.
@@KaminariHouse I do hear from some snotty DBZ nerds from time to time that DBFZ sucks because Yamcha can fight Jiren one to one and the only good DBZ fighting games were the Budokai Tenkaichi series.
Max you literally skipped over the best match of HNK ever. The Kenshiro player washes the Rei player the whole first match then in round two he gets him with the Jigan Ken which starts a timer that auto kills the opponent, BUT then the Rei player lands an infinite that kills the Kenshiro before the timer ends. Then in the final round the Kenshiro player HIT CONFIRMS INTO FATAL KO IMMEDIATELY.
What match is this?
@@nathanhayward7162 the Dora vs Amiba one iirc
It's fucking incredible, I came to comment this
OH SHIT I REMEMBER THAT. Landing the Zankaiken was hard as shit if you didn't corner them
I always loved that aspect of Hokuto no Ken, it’s stupidly meta. You just give up playing the first few seconds into the match because “You’re already dead.”
NANI?!
Ah, the game that says: "if everyone is broken, the game is balanced."
Thouzer isn't broken in the game, which means he's shit-tier.
@@SeruraRenge11 good point. Still though, I think you could use this game to show how a fundamentally broken game can still be fun.
I would say too that Thouzer is broken, but you can tell why you dont think he is
@@MortimerZabi "If everyone is super' no one is" - Syndrome from the Incredibles.
every one isn't broken in Hokuto though... that guy didn't show you the real nonsense of the game but just glazed over it...
So someone could literally get up and get a drink, come back and still be getting bounced like a ping pong ball.
No. You'd have time to make a sandwich too.
@@penismightier9278 and eat it too and probably have like, a few minutes to spare
5:49 As a proud 50 year old gamer that thought he has seen everything, I say here and now... I havent seen SHIT. I was too much of a fan to notice just HOW broken this game was (IS lol) when I played it. I sincerely THANK you for putting this out there. Sharing NOW...
Same. I'm 44, loved the game.
I feel young
@@Shendue Wow you two dudes are older than many JewTuber's dads. Wouldn't expect that with your Pheonix Wright PFP.
@@_Jay_Maker_ Bro, yall oldheads in your 40s are making me feel young.
The definition of kusoge has clearly changed because of people growing up in the culture of online patches. These kinds of old kusoge games really cannot exist anymore so it makes sense for the phrase to evolve with the times. But there really is no comparing these old games to anything made today, it is nuts. Kudos to everyone with the patience to play them even still, that's real love.
Just check the new release on steam and change your mind
Power Rangers: old my beer.
@@maximini4923 Nah, the thing about kusoge is that they have to be "so bad, it's good." They have to be bad games that nonetheless make you want to master them, and reward you for doing so. You want to get good at Hokuto no Ken because it's a beautiful game with tons of callouts to its source material and some really interesting mechanics; it just happens to also be a game with 9-1 matchups and touch-of-death combos. Most of the games you're talking about are just regular bad.
I'm not fond of your comment sir, but I'm not I disagreement with it either. ✊🏾Respect.
😂Thanks for reminding mi, @@AsamiyaMouchou. I need to buy the game. It deserves way more than a little bit of respect.
Like it wasn't....."Already Dead".....I'll see myself out
That was honestly good.
You just blew my mind
Well done sir. Well done
NANI?!!
if anyone got the atmoiswave cart for sale, lmk
Random person: "How do you actually beat kusoge game?"
Max:"That's the neat part, you don't."
DSP syndrome
Wait, did I go through a time warp or something?? Since when did Kusoge become the term to use for "game I don't like" or "weird anime fighter"? To me Kusoge's are like Dong Dong Never Die, or Street Fighter Rainbow, or Mugen featuring El Chapulín Colorado vs SSJ3 Stone Cold Steve Urkel. Like, incredibly broken, nonsensical, hilarious fighting games - how did chat think Strive or DNF Duel a Kusoge??? Weird to think how the term changed so much as newer generations are starting to play fighting games.
From what I heard, I thought it was a term of endearment. I was unaware that people were starting to just use it to describe games that they didn't like.
@@Nick-of-Time this was always my interpretation. I guess im not super in deep in the FGC but its always been "broken as fuck, but still fun despite it". Also tending to be low budget or indie games. Anyone using it in the way max describes has to be a fucking idiot.
@@Nick-of-Time well kusoge is short hand for shitty game in Japanese so that is the most literal meaning.
DNF Duel is a prime example of a kusoge...
that clip of the guy taking a picture while he was being comboed ingame caught me off guard
You should make a "kusoge" tier list
I think he did make a "loose vs tight" tierlist which is sorta close
Are we willing to include non-fighting games? Because if so, the top two spots would be for Bokosuka Wars and Hoshi Wo Miru Hito.
@@ember_falls He makes it clear on his loose-vs-tight list that is not about the game being complex, modern or fair. The "loose" aspect he talks about is how much a game lets you crazy stuff, and "tight" games are the ones that railroads you within it's boundaries in order to prevent those. There are kusoge games on both sides of the spectrum.
@@MrRaposaum yesh I mean it just means "shit game" doesn't it so figures there'd be all kinds of them
I don't care how busted Hokuto No Ken is, I'd kill for this game to be rereleased on PC and current consoles. It's an awesome broken game.🤣
I want a 90s kusoge Baki game
@@Ganmorg No, no, no, no. My games are too awful for consumption. This is coming from ME, BAKI HANMA😅
@@shinbakihanma2749hanayama is more broken than yujiro in fighting fury
It was definitely interesting to hear about the subject. Wasn't what I expected from Harada's video.
The Hokuto no Ken game is one that follows a similar logic to non-Kusoge games, in that the game is still fair if every character does some unfair/busted/broken nonsense. Only in the case of Hokuto, the game ratchets that to the extreme via ToD's and infinites.
Still shit.
If you look at the cast a few are actually fair and not broken.
Or the fact Roh has a bug that prevents him from block switching for 10 frames or 3 meaning you have to know you are gonna get fuzzyed and the second you switch you are fucked.
Or Heart IS ONLY VIABLE on the Player 2 side. The list goes on XD.
Game is shit...but we love it
@@The_WIll_OF_D99 wait why Heart is only viable for Player 2 side? XD
@@Creep700 he has access to an infinite.
Fun fact in a tier list Player 1 Heart is the worst in the entire game.
Player 2 side is the best of trash tier. He is still low tier but actually useable if you play him on the Player 2 side.
Hnk is such a insane game
I love seeing people have fun with it despite getting annulated or turning into a basketball
Those players are having the time of their life while getting absolutely smacked around, and I kinda adore that attitude.
3:50
I remember years ago that Woolie said that this was one of the greatest matches in competitive fighting game history. The Ken player just pulls out the ultimate disrespect in the final round lol
The opponent got OHKO'ed the moment the final round started
Not the footage Max showed though, it's later in the video. The greatest match ever is the round where Dora got hit with Kenshiro's Hokuto Zankai Ken which puts a timer on the game and when it runs out the other guy automatically loses. Dora managed to beat Amiba in time despite it being a very short clock and Kenshiro was at full health. And then Amiba just immediately follows it up in round 3 with a Fatal KO and everyone is laughing.
Logically, Hokuto No ken as a fighting game *_should_* be busted lol
Tbh so many Anime fighters should, as the characters are usually busted in canon😅 Not an excuse for this, but still.
@@KaminariHouse not like HNk 😒 that game is utter trash in terms of it's bugs and shit.
This is the logic old dragon ball games ran on and they were all bad until Fighterz
@@SvarogAristaeusAllen not even lol
@@SvarogAristaeusAllen Yes and no. Super Dragon Ball Z didn’t follow that code because it was made by actually experienced fighting game developers (same people that made Street Fighter II). I’d put it up there with FighterZ equally, tbh.
Everything else, I agree with. Most Dragon Ball fighting games were either mediocre or terrible.
This might just be me, but as someone who always looked beyond the surface level of what something translates to when it comes to these types of things, I always understood “Kusoge” in relation to fighting games as something that’s super janky and unpolished, but is adored by its people and has fans either in spite of the jank, or because of the jank.
It's the fighting game equivalent of a trashbin movie. It's good BECAUSE it's bad.
DNF is not a kusoge. It's just a game with wild mechanics. Hokuto no Ken is absolutely busted, THAT's a kusoge.
Yes this is exactly kusoge is. Max miss half the meaning of the term.
Kusoge is a derisive, but endearing term
Brief Karate Foolish
Kusoge is SUPPOSED to mean "crap game". A true Kusoge is something like Sonic '06 or Superman 64 where the sheer terribleness of it makes the fact that anyone plays it funny. It's the bad game everyone tunes in to watch. But in the FGC, people generally just don't want to admit that Non-Capcom fighting games can be good so they call it "kusoge" because they don't have the balls to stand behind an unpopular game.
Think about a bad fighting game that you'd totally watch a tournament of. I hear there was some kind of legendary Dino Rex tournament that went down which sounds pretty kusoge. A Shaq-Fu tournament could draw some numbers. There was a Street Fighter: The Movie (Arcade) tournament that went down as well and that game has a whole crew diving into it to find its secrets. THOSE are proper kusoge. HnK's basketball combos very likely count it as well.
Maximillian Underscore Dood: Kusoge is dead
Kyanta: *exists*
Peak game
I loved that Fist of the North Star fighting game. I thought it was just licensing is the reason no one fought to have it ported to this gen consoles. I had no idea it was this super busted.
Fist of the North Star is fun af tbh. Is it considered broken if all the characters have moves like that? Maybe it was intentional and trying not to get hit is what sets you apart from the rest. Like UMVC3.
I think the difference is that in UMVC3 if the combo lands, you die fast, while in Fist of the North Star it's literally until the clock runs out. One doesn't destroy fun or slow down the rounds, the other does
Lmao unironically trying to defend a broken as shit game
Maybe it's because it was probably unintended? If it was intended then the damage wouldn't scale and you would be dead in like 10-20 hits instead of just having a combo last the entire round.
@@eCstaTicBomB not defending. Just thought it was fun to play. The whole game isnt shit. It’s got it’s good things going for it too. I think the game looks great. Awesome big characters, Meaty sounding hits and awesome music. Combos look cool too. You see NOW I’m defending it lol.
@@High-LordHarza you right
This and Kenshiro's throw where he rips your shirt are some of the most ridiculous things about this game
That's Rei's
Too be fair, that's very true to the source material of Hokuto no Ken. Any attack from Ken or Raoh and your immediately dead in less than a minute. The key is not to get touched by them a single time. If anything the game is alot more generous than the source material, as not every stray hit is literally a 100% tod. Love that game btw, been having a blast playing it on fightcade
"Kusoge" has lost meaning, suffering the same fate like "weeb" being used as a positive self-describing word despite coming from a negative connotation and "broken/op" for anything mildly strong but far from busted or unfair.
no one uses kusoge the modern way positively like weeb tho. that isnt even remotely an accurate comparison. weeb also came from a fuckin webcomic and wasnt even about japanese, it was a meaningless term in the comic to make a surreal joke. 4chan just started using it for japanese culture fans because the comic was funny.
weeb is positive now to some folks because folks stopped caring about people hating them for being a weeb, and reclaimed the word.
@@WaluTime There's some circles that use Kusoge positively, but it's not nearly as common
But people who used Kusoge doesn't see it as positive. They know the game is "bad", but they still have fun with the game, but now it's used unrionically "it's kusoge, not because it's bad game, but because people don't like the game"
@@WaluTime idk why you're so tilted over it that you felt the need to give a completely irrelevant history lesson and then contradict yourself in the same comment. It wasn't reclaimed anyway.
You completely missed the point and ignored the part about "broken", the point was that the word is so overused now that it has lost its original meaning. That's it. Pretty accurate comparison if you don't try to overthink it.
I only heard this term THIS YEAR and now i'm hearing it a lot
I first heard the term back when a Japanese player came to EVO I want to say it was to play UMvC3 and completely wrecked shop because nobody knew how to counter things. Everybody was so used to the west's way of playing that when someone came in with a new style of playing it there was no countering it until damn near the end. Guy ended up getting hounded so badly for money matches he decided to never come back.
I play more strategy games than fighting games and I found your explanation of "just don't let it happen" really interesting. Reminds me of when people were complaining about the Goths in AOE2 being broken once they hit imperial age and the real answer actually coming down to just don't let the Goths get to Imperial age since they are super vulnerable in the early game. Same as infinite combos in Magic The Gathering too.
Harada is as real as it gets lol. He doesn’t sugarcoat.
Harada and Hideaki kamiya are probably the only Japanese devs I've seen that are brutally honest and have a no fucks given mentality.
He's not gonna sugarcoat it ⇨ ★ ⇩ ↘ + 2 | f,N,d~d/f+2
Rollback is 2
Literally wore a shirt that said don't ask me for shit lmao
Except when talking about the netcode in his games lmao
Max sounding like Char with the “how do I block that?” answer.
Zeon Grunt: “How do we dodge beam attacks like you did, Char?”
Char Aznable: “Simple. Don’t be where it’s aiming.”
Lol what
I always took "kusoge" to be the gaming equivalent to "so bad it's good", like the game is objectively bad but it's got charm and weirdness in its badness.
Like Altered Beast. Not a particularly good game, but the world would be poorer without it. Just try to play it with a friend without laughing your ass off.
Words used to have definitions and specific use. Now, definitions doesn't mean anything and context is ignored. People use words however they like regardless and it happens with everything not just "Kusoge."
A lot of people think older fighting games where this busted have not seen, Ultra Fight Da! Kyanta 2. No joke, that game is in the true spirit of "kusoge" and came out back in 2019. Stupid and busted fighting games are still coming out, but you have to dig into the indie scene to find them now.
I will say I don't think it's just about the game being busted, but also being fun too. There's a lot of broken fighting games you can find in Steam's trash bin, but the ones that are busted AND fun are truly special.
See I would not even call kyanta kosuge bc like max talks about, there has to be situations with no real solutions or method of prevention. Kyanta is wacky and crazy but it's way more balanced than hnk or Jacky Chan fists of fire. Plus it gets patches. I'm gonna put my foot down hard and say no game that has ever been patched is kusoge. Different versions aren't patches I mean real updates.
10:40
An 8-2 matchup doesn't make a game trash. USF4 had TWO 8.5-1.5 matchups (Gouken vs. Hugo and Juri vs. Hugo).
A character having 8-2 (or 7-3) against the entire cast is a different story.
"God this game is so Kusoge"
>Has only played DBFZ and/or Guilty Gear Strive
Oh good, the thumbnail made me think Fist of the North Star's creator died. Dodged a bullet there.
Doesn't Spiderman have a 9-1 match up vs every other character in Marvel superheroes?
Been YEARS and never thought I’d see Max talk about Hokuto, amazing
"I can't beat players who have played this 200h more than me after starting the game it's trash."
"Anything even slightly unbalanced is trash"
People are like this about all game genres, but especially the competitive ones. Part of it is the "most common denominator" syndrome. If something is busted, then lots of people feel obligated to do it, then it becomes obnoxious.
Max’s pronunciation of “Hokuto No Ken” is making me wince 😵💫
Play 90% of M.U.G.E.N. fighting games, and you're playing a proper kusoge game.
I love roy in melee, I wouldn't want him to be balanced either. He's fast and lacks the grace of marth, so it only makes sense that he's the worst fighter. That being said, when you beat someone with roy, especially sheik, it feels awesome.
Unfair matchup is not kusoge, they are integral to fighting games as a whole.
Kusoge never dies.
Samurai Shodown is a good example of a great and balanced game that's considered "dead" by many due to lame netcode problems, sucks that many might assume it to be trash or would just not want to play due to it's low player count (on Xbox and Playstation at least)
We call infinite bounce combos "Beef Combos". Why?
Because the most famous Beef to come out of Japan... is Kobe.
I am happy to hear mention of NES and arcade titles. Some of the crowd playing don’t remember the days before internet giving you access to game strategy guides. Most whom remember Nintendo Power magazines would remember how hard some older games were without its guides. Too bad games like Battletoads were still hard with the guides. Lol
i am so old - what max just said is literally 90 arcade - "don't get hit" legit defense.
From the videos Fist of the North Star seems to have a great community. Should be an entertaining event TBH.
Everytime I hear "Hokuto no Ken", I think of the first Famicom game, which is probably the more traditional definition of a kusoge.
I thought of Atlantis no Nazo.
@@penismightier9278 Or that transformers game for famicom, now THAT was a kusoge
@@SeruraRenge11 Exactly.
Max, I couldn’t have said it better myself. The question is not “how do you block that” it’s “what can I do to not get myself in this situation”. Hokuto No’ Ken on arcade & PS2 (Japan only btw) is no better lesson to this. I played this once in an arcade and eventually ended up importing the PS2 copy. I got bodied my first attempt because I had not realized how broken the game is. People say MvC2 has bad infinites, oh no! Just play this game with someone who knows what they are doing for about 5 min and you will see firsthand. These were the days where patches were NOT a thing either. Games came as they were broken or not. This game taught me all about the art of “avoiding” vs the art of “blocking”. I guess in a way I can thank Hokuto No’ Ken. I’m a better fighting game player for it. ;)
4:23 literally the most defining match in the games history looooool people only knew about HNK because of that match.
The difference of fighting games Then vs Now is online. Then we were stuck with whatever broken game they released with no way to patch them, it was one and done. Now we have the luxury of updates and patches, so if HnK were to be released today (please ArcSys), it'd be much more polished game. Problem is if the game is too safe (looking at you GBFVS), it gets boring.
most games are "too safe" these days. SFV, Strive, they all share the same DNA. gimped from older titles. but they look a lot more aesthetically pleasing, so people will buy them
@@weirdo911aw Agreed, some of the best fighting games of all time (MvC2) were broken as well, with guard breaks and infinites, and yet were extremely fun to play. Almost like their own high risk big reward mechanic, which required both skills to avoid and master, plus training and practice, just like real life *shocker*.
@@weirdo911aw There's a difference between people buying them and people actually playing the game, the "mainstream audience" these devs try to fellatio so much and that Max defended on Strive's release is that they dont play the game.
Man, older games were so broken af, Guilty Gear used to be like that in previous versions like X and XX-pre Slash...
Many doujin-started fighters were also like that in earlier version too, smaller team, no online patches, just new versions once a year or so. Melty and Arcana heart comes to mind, both solid but man some combo oportunities and option selects were so messed up.
It's weird that this game and the Sailor Moon game are completely BUSTED. It's hilarious how some games were beyond broken.
This is more like kids learning the term Kusoge and now you hear it almost everywhere, being attributed to any game.
Great video! I don't have the community and time to play FGs nearly as often as I'd like, but I'm a lot more involved in card game spaces and I see similar sentiments all the time. Cards with very easy methods of dealing with them are called for bans all the time because the answers and outs aren't commonly run *at the moment* and people say any deck that shows ANY advantage is broken, like, half the time the meta will develop to counter those strategies in due course. Even then, sometimes you don't draw the out and you just have to take the L. I'm pretty sure half of the people who complain about this stuff don't understand that sometimes you just lose games. Sometimes you get unlucky, or guess wrong, or pick the wrong character or card. It happens. Try to have fun and learn from the game either way and you'll be fine.
Wow there's not much cross over between FGC and TCG, I've noticed. Glad to meet another. Competive Yu-Gi-Oh and Competive FGC has always been my thing too.
@@PortCityBalrog Yugioh os the exact game i was thinking of. All my friends play Magic tho, so I end up playing that more XD been following FGC community people like Max for a long time, I hope soon I can get some more time off from work to really get into a fighting game outside of Smash, which I grew up with, and is the only foghting game my friends play XD
Max: "games are now designed by a lot of pro players"
Kof Allstar and other gacha fighting game devs: "BURP...HOLD OUR BEERS!"
Ik its just a joke bro, but what the correlation? max talking about real fighting game not gacha with fighting game skin
@@Aripuni1 When talking about modern Kusoge, if we consider some gacha games to be ACTUAL fighting games (Games with pay to win mechanics), then they easily take the cake as the best modern example of a kusoge. They aren't made by pro-players because they're VERY buggy with the 1v1 mechanics or just designed simply unbalanced to make the experience "more fun" for certain players (AKA the ones who spend a lot of money). Once again, this is if you consider certain gacha games like KOF Allstar to be actual fighting games, hope that answers your question! ;D
Kof all-star brutal you to learn against perfect character against unperfect character. No wonder I love it.
@@50.1percent kusoge, p2w vs paytowin... That best win.
Of course "kusoge" lost meaning we live in a world where "literally" means "literally" and "figuratively"
Literally this^
That usage is literally centuries old.
Sengoku Basara X also has comboable insta-kills and it could be argued is more busted than Fist of the North Star.
shoulda used that Sailor Moon S fighting game as the polar opposite end of the Kusoge spectrum
Those clips at the start are basically what every fighting game since 2011-ish looks like to me LOL
I wonder if anyone has ever ordered a pizza while getting combo´d in Fist of the North Star.
The guy taking a selfie fucking killed me.
the guy dribbling with Rei was my buddy Kain and hes been playing quite a while. I wouldn't necessarily call Hnk kusoge, its faithful to the source and could tell arcsys put love into it. Yes it is broken but it requires hundreds of hours of training mode and practice. Broken stuff doesn't come free you need hands ( execution ) and resources. There's better examples of kusoge , name dropping Hnk has just become a meme at this point.
I have noticed a bunch of games with dlc characters have people say "X character is busted and needs nerfs" on release week.
Which isn't really enough time to judge if a character is busted, because nobody has gotten used to playing as them or against them yet. New tech and weaknesses don't just become known by everybody overnight.
11:30 Oh Hey, that basically describes Leffen.
4:52 Straight dribbling this dude like basketball
I have watched a little bit of HnK and that game is always hilarious to watch. Watching people try to navigate a game as crazy as that is fun. I think the closest mainstream game to Kusoge that I can think of recently is UMvC3. I love the game but I know some Japanese players consider the game kusoge because it is a very volatile game and with some teams, the match can end in one hit if executed correctly.
I genuinely thought “Kusoge” was a type of fighting game where If you were “touched once” you were basically dead. But I saw that a lot in MvC 3 so I called THAT game a Kusoge.
The true tragedy of Hokuto No Ken is that people know it as the game with the stupid ass combo system.
I played it with people who were familiar with fighting games, but didn't know or try infinites. It was so goddamn fun and intense. Watching those stars get to 1, as we baited with the unlockables, some people will play the same game and never see that incredible meta. If it got remade today, it'd probably have to keep the jank combos in, which leaves me ambivalent.
8:31 in marvel when someone asks what side that hit, the answer is always yes
Also a valid answer: What side were you blocking? The other one.
I love that game tho. I think it's probably the best video game adaptation we got of the series. Can't care less about the musou games, and that game pretty much LOOKS like the anime, SOUNDS like the anime and PLAYS like the anime. I acknowledge it's broken, but as a single player experience? It's fanservice paradise.
The reason they bounce is most likely caused by an overloaded gravity value. Its at like -100% at the end going to the max hight of the screen with that combo with Rei.
11:17. Outstanding point, Max! That's the right way to face a "new game". The game is NOT the problem. Stop blaming others for your own mistakes.
8:35 is the most Mayagi-type answer that he could have given. haha "Don´t be there"
So one of the big reasons why Hokuto is so busted is because of how the games gravity works with respect to heavy knockdowns. When rebounding opponents off the ground their gravity value increases until you roll the numbers after which it becomes negative and causes them to bounce. At that point you can infinitely bounce your opponent.
it funny how Kusoge type of fighting game get well-known by 2 games from the most manly men series "Hokuto no Ken" and the most Girly girl series "Sailor Moon" hahaha
I think "Kusoge Games" have adapted to be "the most boring shit you will ever interact with" like what Final Fantasy 14 has become with the release of Shadowbringers and continues with Endwalker.
8:10 and 10:20 sum it up perfectly.
Games used to be jank so learning what is broken and how to avoid/do it was part of the real gameplay.
Personally, broken situations in a fighting game seems fair since it really shows where a character can shine or the skill of a player if they can pull it capitalize/negate it.
The popular mindset of "I don't like this thing so it's trash" is one of the biggest things I hate about the world today. It's such a disgusting way to think. Can we please just accept that different people enjoy different things and just move on? *sigh*
Its really interesting hearing history and the way the FGC has transformed over the years. Ive definitely heard the take that these "kusoge" games will never really be made again post SF4 '09 era. And now we're in rollback era. Wonder what other major eras there are.
6:33 That is legendary and hella funny LOOOL
4:50 Ah, the evolution (regression?) of the classic fighting game juggle: The Dribble
Hokuto no ken is indeed the ultimate kusoge, I wanted to play it just yesterday and guess what? I didn't get to play it, game straight out refused to load in the first place
It's not really just kusoges or fighting games, everything today has to be either a 11/10 or the worst shit ever. Everyone has become so radically opinionated there's no grey areas or nuance, every opinion is binary. "Back in my day" when a game got a 6/10 then it was considered good enough, jank maybe but playable. Nowadays a 8/10 is a shit game. Like, what the actual...
tfw you get put in a combo so long that you could fold the dishes and walk your fish
... The way Harada talks about Kusoge is the same way Travis talks about Death Man in NMH3. There's some magic in even the trashiest, most unbalanced games. That's why when they're trashy and buggy but also somehow have amazing gamefeel(Hi Dong Dong Never Die), it can just lead to something amazing.
Kusoge is 100% an indie only zone now. Weird foreign gems, M.U.G.E.N., Steam trash games, etc. No big game studio will release something that bad anymore, unless Ubisoft throws its hat into the fighting game ring.
YOU ARE SHOCK!
Round 1- FIGHT!
P1: You’re already dead...
P2: nani?
Some say P2 is still bouncing to this day
I still think the Sailor Moon game is THE supreme Kusoge because it's INSTANTLY shit and broken in any level of play with the most basic of actions(like the fireball that does more damage when you block), but HnK is a very good choice as well, there's something extremely poetic about it being centered around touches of death
4:47 Aw yeah, time for some Hokuto no Ken Basketball! 🎵 _Everyday I'm dribbling..._ 🏀
LMFAO that bounce so fast he's gone to plad 144 hit combo. Kids these days have no idea. they want to call a modern game this style, the closest they got is MVC3.
Love this video. My personal favorite Kusoge is KOF03. To a lot of people they'll say it's a bad game but not a kusoge--- honestly its a kusoge. Too many 100% combos, vortexes and unplayable states across the range of characters. 03's Duo Lon, arguably one of the most complete characters SNK ever made, is a nightmare, and you must play him in a competitive environment, or inherently forfeit the game lol
I just found out what kusoge was 2 days ago it’s crazy he’s doing a video on it now
Lordknight has some good clips on the crazy combos and how everyone thought this was the best and hardest game..they where mad at blazeblu for not being like this and making it "easier" that was a long time ago
"I'll say it again, Hokuto Shinken is invincible!"
Great video and discussion. Ppl now a days will cry over way less. It's a shame.