After living his life as a wrestling street fighter, Mike Haggar turned to politics and won the election to become mayor of Metro City. He swore to rid the city of the terrible crime wave caused by the Mad Gear gang. This made Belger, leader of Mad Gear, royally pissed and arranged for Haggar’s daughter, Jessica, to be kidnapped. Rather than succumbing to Mad Gear’s threats, Haggar enlisted Jessica’s boyfriend, Cody, and his friend Guy to go down to Metro City’s meanest streets and beat the shit out of every single Mad Gear member.
Wasn’t the above paragraph fun? That’s the plot of 1989’s Final Fight, the game where the world was introduced to Haggar. I remember playing it for the first time at the arcade. Cody and Guy looked cool, but Haggar was a fucking shirtless pile-driving mayor with work pants and a huge belt over one shoulder. I had never seen an awesomer game character before. Is that belt supposed to keep his pants from dropping to the floor? Who cares? He’s Haggar, and her can wear whatever the hell he wants.
He was the slowest, but also the strongest. He singlehandedly made the pile-drive famous. Russian bear-wrestler Zangief made the pile-driver even cooler by giving it a spin two years later, and that’s why these two monsters of wrestling despise each other.
Capcom knew they had created an unstoppable muscle machine and decided to include Haggar as a playable character in 1993’s Saturday Night Slam Masters and its sequel, Ring of Destruction, a year later. He also made appearances in the Super Nintendo exclusives Final Fight 2 and 3, rejoining forces with Guy and recruiting help from newcomers Maki, Dean and Carlos. In 1999 Capcom USA released the god-awful Final Fight Revenge, a 3D fighting game with some of the worst polygon models ever. Haggar was a playable character but not even his awesomeness could save this steaming pile of rhinoceros anal discharge. Haggar had a cameo in 2006’s Final Fight Streetwise, teaching Cody’s younger brother, Kyle, some grappling moves. He ran a crummy gym and was no longer the mayor of Metro City. People barely remember him, if they remember him at all. That’s so sad. Why would Capcom do this to poor Haggar? Oh by the way, Final Fight Streetwise sucks the big one.
After beat’em ups died down and Final Fight’s future seemed bleak, a few characters from the series started appearing in Street Fighter Alpha. First there was Guy and Sodom, then Rolento, then Cody. Even Hugo Andore appeared in Street Fighter III, but still no Haggar. What the fuck, Capcom? Namco included Haggar in Namco X Capcom, but that game was never released outside Japan. Again, what the fuck?
You can see I’m passionate about Haggar and can only hope Capcom brings him back soon. If there’s ever a Marvel vs. Capcom 3 every character on Capcom’s side should be Haggar. Raise your hand if you want to be pile-drived by Haggar. *raises hand*
7 Comments:
Yeah, Haggar doesn't get enough respect. He's got a bad-ass moustache and is heavily muscled. What else do you want? Yeah, they should have inserted him into some other game, since they bothered to put other FF characters into other SF games...
I'm really not sure why Namco X Capcom was never released outside Japan; we can only wonder, I guess. I mean, it's an RPG. It's Capcom. It's Namco. Why do they not want to release it here? 9__9 I guess it does sound cheesy, but it also sounds like it might be madness; in the good sense.
He does have a pretty bad-ass moustache. Not enough game characters have manly moustaches. What’s up with that?
A friend of mine played the Namco X Capcom import, well he calls it an import but I call it downloading it from the Internet. Anyway, he downloaded an English translation and had a pretty good time with the game. I saw bits and pieces and it looked interesting enough. I think Namco should consider releasing it, even if it’s on Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network Store.
There's a patch for the game? I...guess I'm not that surprised....
The game does look like madness, but I'm not sure why they won't release it here. There doesn't seem to be any reason why people wouldn't play it. Oh sure, major gaming snobs will probably say it sucks, especially the very idea of it. Yeah, I thoguht the idea of it was...well, again, just plain madness. And I was surprised to see it never made it here. If it's not out by now, it probably won't be, not even on PSN or XBL.
Speaking of unreleased Namco games, I was really hoping for the DS redux of XenoSaga I & II to be released here. But it never was....And at this point, it's doubtful it ever will be. And again, WHY?? So what if the original games are already here? Players clearly don't care if they play the same game in different incarnations. *cough*
I don't know if there's a patch for Namco X Capcom. He downloaded a text file with English translations and directions. That's why I never bothered to play it.
XenoSaga was released for the DS in Japan? I didn't even know the DS could handle it. At least you can pick those games up for the PS2, but it still sucks not to get certain big name games from the land of the rising sun.
Well, what usually happens with games you get on computers is they are, of course, ROMs. To translate a ROM game from Japanese to English, a patch is made for this. It does sound like your friend indeed downloaded a patch.
This is what starmen.net is working on with their Mother 3 Fan Translation; it will be a patch. Although...what's going to be hypocritical about that is they say in many places on their site that they don't deal in ROMs and generally are not discussed. Well, that is still true for now, but it won't be when the translation is finished.
A compilation of the first two XenoSaga games was made for the DS, simply called XenoSaga I & II. You're right to assume the DS can't handle the original games; uh, it can't. :P So what Namco did was re-create the games all over again! :D They basically look more like Xenogears, which, of course, makes sense. Check it out: http://www.rpgamer.com/games/xeno/xenosagads/xenosagadsscreens.html
I really have no idea why Namco decided to do this, but it looks great to me. I just wish it was released here....
Damn, it does look pretty sweet. Why would Namco Bandai tease us like this? Maybe Square Enix could port Xenogears to the DS. Wouldn't that be something?
Well....Squenix can't really, because Namdai (as I call them) owns the Xenosaga series. If they worked out some kind of deal where Squenix published it or something, sure, but Namdai doesn't need to do that because they...publish their own games. It's unlikely that will happen. And sadly, it just seems that this game will never make it out here...
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