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Guilty Gear

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File:GGXXR-DizVsAxl01.png
The Guilty Gear series is known for its unique graphics.

Guilty Gear is a series of sprite-based fighting games designed by artist Daisuke Ishiwatari and Arc System Works. It is popular with fans for its detailed anime-style graphics, original characters, hard rock/heavy metal soundtrack, unique gameplay, and its numerous references to Rock and Heavy metal music.

The first game in the series, Guilty Gear, was released on the PlayStation home system in 1998. While it did gain some praise from the mainstream video game press such as Gamespot, [1] it didn't make much of an impact on the video game market, but became something of a cult hit with many gamers. However, the release of its sequel Guilty Gear X on the Sega Dreamcast console in 2000 gained much more attention with its gameplay and more detailed graphics. In 2001 Sammy released Guilty Gear Petit and its sequel Guilty Gear Petit 2 later in the same year for Wonderswan, a handheld gaming device in Japan.

In 2002, Guilty Gear XX (known as Guilty Gear X2 in North America) was released, furthering the individual stories while improving on gameplay and visuals. This was soon followed by Guilty Gear XX #Reload (pronounced "Sharp Reload"), which addressed a number of gameplay imbalances in XX and changed both matchplay tier arrangement and the "distance" between the tiers, added a new tournament-legal character, and brought the series online with Xbox Live. In 2004, Guilty Gear Isuka ("Isuka" meaning crossbill in Japanese, and representing the way two swords clash) was released, featuring up to four-player simultaneous gameplay, a side-scrolling mode called "Boost Mode", a customizable version of one of the characters, a new playable character, and various other goodies.

A new installment to the series, Guilty Gear XX Slash, has been released in arcade and on the Japanese PlayStation 2, and features one new character (Holy Order Sol, an alternate version of Sol Badguy) and a "balanced" version of A.B.A from Guilty Gear Isuka, as well as balance changes for the rest of the cast.


As of December 20th, 2006 a new version, Guilty Gear XX: Accent-Core has been released in arcades in Japan. Although very little details on the final version of the game are as of yet known, everything official can be found at the official Japanese website.

Three handheld versions are available on the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. The titles are Guilty Gear XX #Reload (Japanese-only), Guilty Gear Judgment (PSP) and Guilty Gear Dust Strikers (DS). Dust Strikers is more along the lines of Isuka, with four player gameplay being touted as its major draw point. It is also a "multi-platform" fighter, in the vein of games such as Super Smash Bros. Melee. Judgment features two different Guilty Gear titles: The side-scrolling Guilty Gear Judgment that takes place through about 20 levels, similar to Isuka's Boost Mode. While the Japanese version of the game also features Guilty Gear XX Slash, the U.S. version contains Guilty Gear XX #Reload. Guilty Gear XX Slash has no US release yet, the reason why Guilty Gear Judgement (US Release) has only Guilty Gear XX #Reload.

Recently, a port of the original Guilty Gear has made its way onto Japanese mobile phones. Titled Guilty Gear Club, this is an almost exact port of the original Guilty Gear, graphics and audio intact, with mini games, 4koma comic downloads, and new, downloadable characters. They have recently released several Judgment enemies as playable characters.

Games in Series

Story

The Guilty Gear series takes place around the year 2180, in a chaotic, mystical future world. In 2010, mankind discovered an unlimited energy source of incredible power, which was fittingly labeled as Magic. Even with the various energy problems solved, wars still continued. With the power of Magic and science, living weapons known as "Gears" were created. These Gears eventually turned on their masters, beginning a century-long global war known as the Crusades where the Sacred Order of Holy Knights (Seikishidan being the Japanese name), fighting for the human race, was able to defeat Justice, the leader of the Gears. Justice having been locked away in a dimensional prison, all other Gears seemingly ceased to function, bringing an end to the Crusades.

Guilty Gear

Five years after the war's end a Gear named Testament began a plan to free Justice. In response to this threat the United Nations began a fighting tournament in order to find fighters who would be able to defeat Testament and Justice. Ultimately, the bounty hunter Sol Badguy brought down Justice again, and an uneasy peace began.

File:Guilty Gear x advance screenshot.png
Game Boy Advance version of Guilty Gear X.

Guilty Gear X

Less than a year later there were reports of a newly discovered commander Gear. Fearing the start of another war once again, the United Nations held another tournament, offering a prize of 500,000 World Dollars for the destruction of this new Gear.

The Gear in question turned out to be a girl named Dizzy, who, while very powerful, had no desire to wage war or needlessly hurt others. She was defeated but spared by Sol Badguy; soon after, she was found by Ky Kiske, the charismatic police chief of the United Nations and ex-chief of the Sacred Order of Holy Knights. He soon entrusted care of Dizzy to Johnny, the leader of the Jellyfish air pirates, who then welcomed her as one of their own. Meanwhile, the bounty hunter and struggling chef Jam Kuradoberi arranged to take credit for Dizzy's disappearance and collected the reward in order to finance her restaurant.

Guilty Gear XX: The Midnight Carnival

In the time following Dizzy's disappearance, the mysterious Post War Administration Bureau began to secretly investigate the Gears and the various fighters of the previous tournaments for their own needs and ambitions. Various powers began to work in the shadows to fight for control of the world, with many leads pointing to the creator of the Gears, a mysterious figure known only as "That Man" ("Ano Otoko" in Japanese). Again, the fighters from before find themselves in events beyond their control, most notably at the manipulative hands of a mysterious villainess by the name of I-No, who is revealed to be a servant of That Man for reasons yet unknown.

Characters

Guilty Gear is known for its varied and bizarre cast of characters. For more information, see Characters in Guilty Gear.

Music references

The Guilty Gear series is known for containing numerous rock and metal music references, both in the game's music and in the names of characters, special attacks and so forth. For example, the character Axl Low is likely named after Axl Rose, or quite possibly Alixie Louea, who shares Axl's "pretty-boy" appearance, while Millia Rage's special attack Iron Maiden is named for the band of the same name. In particular, the game includes numerous references to Queen, Guilty Gear creator Daisuke Ishiwatari's favourite band. Ishiwatari originally voiced Sol Badguy[2], a leading character in the game named for a Queen album and who the game's manual describes as an avid fan of Queen.

See the character articles for specific references.

Other references

  • The original Guilty Gear was subtitled "The Missing Link", a name shared by a Rage album.
  • Guilty Gear X's title screen shows a subtitle of "[BY YOUR SIDE "G.GEAR"]" - referencing the Black Crowes album, By Your Side.
  • Each fight is announced with the line "Heaven or Hell". This arguably references Black Sabbath's album "Heaven and Hell" or The Who's song of the same name. Although Gamma Ray also released a single with the same title in 2001, the original Guilty Gear precedes this, having been released in 1998.
  • Arguably, the Guilty Gear XX character select music, "D.O.A", makes musical reference to Van Halen's DOA, as well as Dokken's "Kiss of Death" and "Kiss Of Judas" by Stratovarius.
  • I-No's regular GGXX stage shows a placard on the far right side bearing the word "Innuendo," the name of Queen's fourteenth studio album. The lyrics to that album's title track are printed on the inside back cover of the "Guilty Gear X Drafting Artworks" art book published by Enterbrain.
  • Arguably, Eddie's stage in Guilty Gear XX references to the American heavy metal band, Iced Earth.
  • Arguably Holy Order Sol's EX IK attack is named after the Song 'All Guns Blazing'
  • Faust's name comes also from J.W. Goethes play Faust. Main characters name's also Faust, and he's working as a doctor and acquiring some negotiated pact between man and devil.
  • Testament's demo song "Keep the Faith" in Guilty Gear X: By Your Side is an instrumental version of "Flash of the Blade" by Iron Maiden.
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