Fighters Generation

Overall score:

http://www.fightersgeneration.com

Content:
Lots and lots of screen shots, animations and art work from just about every fighting game made. Also there is plenty of character backgound and stories.

Layout:
Simple frame menu with easy-to-understand categories. The games and character sections are listed in alphabetical order with quick links to the beginning of each letter. However, everything is on one page and sometimes it takes a while to load.

Load Time: This is a graphics intense site and the site has a tendency to slow down due to the high bandwith. Expect some long load times during peek hours.

Frequency: Usually one big update a month.

Category: Database. This site is mostly a collection of artwork taken from different games and ads.

Coolness Factor:
Oh yeah, this site's got attitude (which Frankie, the webmaster, probably bottles and sells to pay for the site's bandwith). The site gets a PG rating.


Three reasons to visit Fighters Generation:
1) You love fighting games.
2) Great place to find cool artwork and inspirations for your own.
3) You can download an animation and view it frame by frame in some programs. Great for people studying animation.

Three Reasons not to visit:
1) You have a 14k modem. It'll take quite a while to load a character page.
2) You hate fighting games, art and everything else cool.
3) You have know idea why people would go to the Cammie or Chun-Li page to drool. [editor's note: that counts me out.]


This is one of my favorite sites to visit; for any of you who frequent the forums, this is where I get my avatar animations. Honestly, I don't think there is any other place on the net where you can go to find all this stuff in one place. There are basically four main sections to this site: Characters, Games, Art, and Features/Extras. The most updated and viewed are the Characters and Games. There are over 650 characters featured on this site and 126 games. The main page for each game lists all the contents alphabetically with quick links for each letter. With 650+ characters listed in that section, sometimes it can take a while to load. The biggest problem here is that once Frankie does an update you have no idea what has been done. He doesn't mark or list which entries have been created or added to.

All character discription pages are laid out the same way. General Info has any background about that character. Origin tells you which game they first appeared in, and Other Appearances lists all additional games. Last is Frankie's comment and ranking of the character. Here he rates the character and tells you what he thinks of the character design; if it really sucks he'll make fun of it. After that you get to the really fun stuff: all the artwork and animatons. The amount of info depends on how long the character has been around, how popular the character is, what game system it was on and other such things. For example if your a Ryu fan then there are multiple pages of things. But for any character from Soul Calibur there is very little since it's hard to make character animations of 3D fighing games.

The Games secion is laid out much like the Characters section with a discription of the game, what year it was released, which characters are in it (with links to their pages if there is one) and rating/comments. The ratings aren't very detailed here, usually a few quick thoughts. Any screenshots or ads that he has are placed here as well.

The art gallery is where Frankie has amassed a huge selection of posters, artist depictions, and pictures of what the orignal cabinets looked like as well as character selection screenshots. Most of this stuff has multiple characters in it so they were placed here instead of in the characters/games sections. There are some cool things here that are hard to find. Like one of my favorites from Street Fighter Alpha 2 that has Ryu and Akuma.

The last section actually consists of several sections that I've placed into one group: Features, Strategy, Polls, Funnies, and Feedback. These are updated whenever Frankie has something to put there. Features and Funnies both contain articles (like a fighting game timeline), fun little things (like worst excuses for losing), and a "separated at birth" section where you can see the fighting game charcters that look/play the same. The strategy section has links to various FAQs on different games, all done in rich text format. Polls lists previous polls that have been on the site, and the Feedback section is where Frankie responds to e-mails.

I'll admit it: I'm a fighting game geek. I'm still undefeated in Street Fighter Alpha 2 (of course I don't play it anymore these days, but no one at college or in the arcade could beat me). This is a great site, and everyone who enjoys fighing games should visit it.

Written by Spriggan on May 15th, 2003