Can you tell a game’s date from its character fashion?
Fashion and the fashionable. They are passing things if you ever knew them at all. I can’t say that I did, but I have got eyes and they do see. And what they see is that there exists a spirit of the time in fashion, art and design. The spirit of the age. It shifts but it settles too; you see the times in a Porsche as much as you do a lovely carpet shoe.
With that in mind I recently said to my wife Anna that you could rightly identify the year of a game based on the fashion of the character.
‘What do games have to do with fashion?’ she asked.
‘That’s not the point’ I replied.
‘Well, it is if games don’t have fashion sense in them.’
‘But they will if the spirit of the age is correct, regardless of quality.’
‘I see,’ she said then. ‘I see that this is something that you are going to ask me to play along with.’
‘So we’re agreed?’
‘Well, I can see that it is going to happen. What do you want?’
‘Half an hour of your time?’
‘Deal.’
It turned out that Anna would take more than half an hour over my choices, as it turns out that she had opinions, and the opinions of a dear friend and gal pal Margaret who hastily agreed to take part via e-mail, to go along with her answers, some of which were bob-on as traders like to use.
Simple rules; based on their configuration, from what year do these characters first come? I’ll give a two-year leniency on either side of the answer. One point for each and winner takes all. Now let’s hastily configure a catwalk and get one of those folding chairs at the front. Anna and Margaret, go grab the P.A., because here come Two Crude Dudes…
Dude, where’s my style?
To start us off we are winding the clock back to when platform-gaming style was measured by the biceps and two-toned with denim. My wife certainly approved.
‘I thought you said it wouldn’t be exciting,’ she said. And as well she might, as the Two Crude Dudes are as fine a slab of 1990 macho as any arcade saw. Of course, she did not know that, but could she pick their year correctly? She notes:
‘Thick, spiky skater boy-men. Nice yellow-red-orange combo going on. It’s pretty much colour-blind, fashion-wise but his pixels are as big as his pecks. It looks a bit archaeological and all very random. I’m dating these bad boys at 1983.’
Oh, dear. Some fair observations there but a rippling zero of a start. Let’s check in on the e-mail…
‘Are these cold-looking gentlemen British?’ asks Margaret. ‘Nice to see them out clearing up. Perhaps they could be rewarded with a t-shirt? This is all very Street Fighter 2 so I am going for 1992.’
Oh. Immediate near-enough point there for Margaret, who, although not approving of their appearance does see potential virtue in them. She leads after Round One.
Snakebite
Next up, a possible red herring of throwback style courtesy of Jane from Fighting Vipers. Not Vasquez from Aliens as your eyes might tell you, certainly not, but just as 80s. But then actually from 1995. Sega was attempting to be contemporary. Incredible, and certainly enough to garner a reaction from Anna.
‘A bandana,’ she spots straight away. ‘So functional. Plus woodland-green trousers with storm-trooper accents. She’s not from the seventies,’ she added, as if not sure herself. ‘So angry and macho, and I keep coming back to the seventies and Star Wars. You know I hate Star Wars.’
‘But beyond that, though, at the far distant reaches of your ability to have a reasonable guess, pin the year on the macho.’
‘She is probably on some 20-year fashion cycle, so I’m plumming for 1997.’
Two years out. Close enough and my theory might yet hold water. If Margaret could fight her way through her reaction and pin the year herself.
‘Ah, Jane…’ she begins, or immediately trails off. There is a sense of a sigh coming through the e-mail. ‘When you want your D&D character to be a wood elf with a mysterious goal-keeping past. Or should that be the future?! The neckline is 90s girl power so 1994.’
A score for both girls there, taking us 2-1 in favour of Margaret. Some tension then as our third character presents herself.
Fashionably final
No-one could argue that Final Fantasy VIII didn’t have style when it came to Japan in early 1999. Whether or not it had good style, and whether or not the girls could find the year in Rinoa Heartilly’s loftiness. came to a momentary distraction because,
‘Finally some proper girl fashion,’ Anna says. ‘That corduroy waistcoat is very fetching and much longer than her modesty,’ she continues, somehow approving of the item but denouncing its use. Curious. ‘I like her boots and spiky accessories. I think she is from the new millennia, probably 2003.’
Ooh. Some wandering away for my wife there. Distracted by fashion. And not the only one;
‘A Final Fantasy lady!’ says Margaret. Here we go again. There followed an admittance. ‘I have played this game and absolutely attempted to steal her style.’ There was then some talk with words like wardrobe, still live on and a sweet remembrance that the soundtrack was beautiful, which it was to be fair.
A curiosity though. Margaret finished with an overly tactful guess of 1999. I think she knew very well that it was 1999. She can have the point no questions asked, but she knew. Final Fantasy nerdettes know these things. Regardless, Margaret is 3-1 ahead of Anna. Not brilliant for my assumption overall, and for worse news, another Sega character was on his way.
A lasting impression
Last Bronx came to arcades in Japan in late 1995 and was one of those big-in-Japan titles which reliably came from the Sega stable at the time. Toru Kurosawa is our focus from this fighting line up. Anna isn’t sure about something.
‘I once had a shell suit that colour. Never teamed it with a bandana. Nor the loafers. Off the bat, I am going to swing for 1987.’
Another miss there for her. I begin to tap my fingers together. Then Margaret misses a swing and places him around the Kill Bill days of 2003. Still 3-1. What I needed was an absolute winner to round us off and leave my theory on top. What I needed was a game with such style that you could not help but land the year correctly. We needed SNK. We needed King of Fighters.
K.O.!
King of Fighters surprised everyone in 1994 by being actual competition for Street Fighter. Those faintly cross-stitched visuals and the high-pressure gameplay, with character design from pique nineties Japan. Still good enough to stop my wife almost 30 years on.
‘Now she’s stylish and modest,’ she says of ninja girl, Chizuru Kagura, who enters the series in King of Fighters 96. ‘The colours have sympathy and she has almost a cold-ninja-nurse look.’ Much consideration then, or something that appeared to be. There was an answer coming and it waited on the tension.
‘The year 1996 is coming to into my mind as if waved by her gesture. Yes, she is from 1996.’ Very good. And then there was congruence.
‘So elegant, feminine yet all covered up,’ posits Margaret and something universal about Chizuru appears to be coming through. At least between these two. ‘Strong Sailor Moon vibes, so this graceful lady belongs in 1996.’
The character fashion challenge scores
Bang. 4-2 to Margaret and my theory lives. It may yet thrive.
‘Who’s next?’ Anna asks.
‘There’s no next. You are both freed.’
‘So that was the worst you had?’
‘Goodness, no.’
‘Oh. So does your idea work?’
‘It’s squirrelly, but I think I’m still in.’
‘Well… well done you.’
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