【Anarchy Reigns】Needs a Traditional Fighting Game

Anarchy Reigns, better known as “Max Anarchy マックスアナーキー” in Japan, is a Hack n’ Slash/Beat Em’ Up created by Platinum Games and published by SEGA. It was released for Japan in July 2012 while we got a western release in January 2013 (North America and Europe). The game takes place within the same universe as the “MadWorld” game.

Despite Anarchy Reigns being incredibly fun, I still feel like it died prematurely due to the very poor quality its advertising rather than the game’s flaws. In fact, I was looking forward to the game and had no idea it was supposed to be releasing until the day it came out. I knew it was supposed to be getting delayed in the west, but it’s sad when someone who is actively wanting to play the game is told by their friend, “Hey, I think Anarchy Reigns is out”, “What do you mean? IT’S OUT?!“. Tells you everything you need to know.

With this being said, I feel like Anarchy Reigns has everything it needs to become a great traditional fighting game: Varying characters with different looks, playstyles, and personalities; a great soundtrack tailormade for combat; and enough lore surrounding the game to not waste a ton of money on something like story mode to increase the possibility of this game being profitable, and thus a higher chance of it being made.

Official Sites

Platinum Games still has the official website for Anarchy Reigns up. They also have a section on their own website which features an “About”, “History”, and “Blog” for the game. I’ll put them here for anyone that wants can check them out.

TAG BATTLE TRAILER

The Tag Battle Trailer for Anarchy Reigns (featured above) is what first got me interested into the game; this was my introduction to this series. I remember having the song in the trailer, “Here We Go”, by Theory Hazit on repeat (and still rock it within my workout Spotify playlist to this day). I was loving the beat em’ up style action, the chaos, and the fact you could play with friends online in a variety of different modes. It also had a fully fleshed out story mode which I found to possibly be too long, but that’s just me.

CHARACTERS

One of the most, if not the most, important thing when it comes to garnering interest in a fighting game are the characters that make up the roster. Fun to play, aesthetically pleasing, and varied within their playstyles and target audience within the playerbase. I feel like Anarchy Reigns has this in the bag.

The cast of Anarchy Reigns is pretty diverse; 16 combatants with 11 of them considered to be male characters while the other 5 are female (though Bull and Garuda are robots, they technically have male attributes). If you include the DLC character Bayonetta from the series that bares her name, that brings it up to 17 characters. These characters already possess back stories, and fully done movesets (though obviously they would need some tweaking for a traditional fighting game).

Despite being diverse, they have a bunch of different styles to fit into traditional fighting game archetypes. Those who look speedy characters will be right at home with Ai Rin or, those who like bigger characters will definitely love someone like Bull or Oinkie, even more balanced characters exist like Leo or Max. Hell, you like ninjas? We’ve got Ninjas (Zero). I feel everyone will find someone they enjoy.

Character Trailers

I’ve embedded a Youtube playlist which features all the character trailers for Anarchy Reigns so you have a better idea of them.

MUSIC

Included a playlist which has the OST for Anarchy Reigns. This has some great tracks which would fit very well within a fighting game, such as “This is Madness” by Dilated Peoples and “Play My Ass Off” by Josh Clemons. One of the main reasons I got so hype and what made the character/game trailers so great was the music. Of course original music would have to be developed for the game, but they have a LOT of great things to work with already.

IN CONCLUSION

Anarchy Reigns (Max Anarchy マックスアナーキー) is a game that would function well as a fighting game; it has all the elements already in place to where it could be successful. If you give it to a company (preferably Arc System Works) to implement it, I think it would be absolutely AMAZING. The music, character, and world is already established with the possibility of guest characters like Bayonetta (from Bayonetta) and Raiden (Metal Gear).

I think it’s a shame if such a promising series with such amazing characters fade away into obscurity, perhaps shedding a bit of light on it will garner enough attention to make an official fighter for Anarchy Reigns in the future. Here’s hoping.