From Shoryuken Wiki, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Strategy and More!
Summary
Skullgirls, a combination of the unique art of Alex "o_8" Ahad and gameplay genius of renowned tournament champion Mike "Mike Z" Zaimont, gives players control of fierce female warriors in an extraordinary Dark Deco world. As a fully featured downloadable title, Skullgirls brings back the open ended combo system and fast pace of classic, 2D arcade fighters along with a single player story mode for its all new cast of characters. High resolution hand drawn sprites, unequaled frames of animation per character, the first real time lighting system for a 2D fighter, a comprehensive training mode, and GGPO netcode all challenge set expectations for the genre. The Variable Tag Battle system and the choose-your-own assist custom Ensemble improve upon the older, sometimes forgotten innovations of other games. For high-level players, Skullgirls attempts to solve some common fighting game "features" with an Infinite Prevention System and unblockable protection.[1][2][3]
- Developer: Lab Zero Games (current) Reverge Labs, LLC (defunct)
- Publishers: Autumn Games, Konami
- CEO (Lab Zero): Peter "Ravidath" Bartholow
- Art Team: Alex Ahad (creative/art director), Mariel "Kinuko" Cartwright (lead animator), Jonathan "Persona" Kim (senior animator), Richard Suh (lead clean-up artist), Brain Jun (clean-up assistant/associate art producer), Willy Hwang (enviromnetal artist)
- Design Team: Mike Zaimont (design director, lead programmer), Earl "Render" Gertwagen, Brady Hartel (UI/graphic designer)
- Additional Programming (Reverge Labs): Ian Cox, Ben Moise, Emil Dotchevski
- Sound Design: Vincent Diamante
- Composer: Michiru Yamane
- Voice Director: Cristina Vee
- Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
- Release Date: April 11, 2012 (Xbox 360), April 10, 2012 (Playstation 3), Unknown (PC)
Cast
Main Cast
Confirmed DLC Characters
Before the game was signed to a publisher, Skullgirls had a proposed cast of 8 playable characters. Somewhere along the way Valentine and Double became initial cast members, leaving Squigly and Umbrella as top DLC candidates. Months later, the Evo 2013 8th Game Donation Drive ended with a public reveal of Squigly as the first work in progress DLC character. Later DLC characters would be determined by popularity, with Big Band taking the second slot.
DLC Candidate Characters
The Skullgirls crowdfunding campaign gave the first official list of DLC candidates, stating the characters that actually make it to the playable cast are up to the availability of funding and a popular vote. Lab Zero eventually provided an extremely detailed list of candidate characters, their tentative stories, playstyles, and even specific inspirations from other fighting game characters.
Basics
Game Modes
- Single Player: Select difficulty easy/normal/hard and beat up the computer.
- Story: Play a single character through regular matches, additional cut scenes, boss fights, and an ending.
- Arcade: Play a team of characters through regular matches, boss fights, and an ending.
- Versus: A 1v1 match between two players.
- Local: Versus mode between two players on one console.
- Online: Versus mode with an opponent from the PSN or Xbox Live network.
- Training: Learn to play here!
- Tutorials: Missions, types, difficulty.
- Practice Room: Play with infinite life and meter against a defenselessness practice dummy, adjust it's settings, practice combos with hit stun bars, and check out hit boxes.
Controls and Notation
Skullgirls uses directional inputs and 6 default attack buttons for gameplay. The six buttons are light punch, medium punch, heavy punch, light kick, medium kick, and heavy kick. All characters have standing, crouching, and jumping versions of their normal moves associated with the 6 buttons. Button and directional inputs combine for command normals, special moves, Blockbusters, and all other commands.
In character move lists, this guide will use the Shoryuken.com Wiki's default symbols to represent button commands. For written sections LP, MP, HP, LK, MK, and HK will abbreviate the buttons. Street Fighter series players may know these buttons as jab, strong, fierce, short, forward, and roundhouse, but those terms will not appear in this guide.
For directional inputs, this guide will use the default wiki symbols whenever possible. For written sections, unicode arrows will represent the 8 vertical, horizontal, and diagonal directions. Many Street Fighter, King of Fighters, and Tekken series players use f, b, d, and u to abbreviate forward, back, down, and up directional inputs. Many Guilty Gear, Blaz Blue, and Virtua Fighter players prefer a keypad based notation to represent all 8 directions and neutral. Both are shown here for new Skullgirls players with experience in other fighting games.
This guide will also use the Shoryuken.com Wiki symbols for directional motions required by special moves and Blockbusters. All of these commands are common to 2D fighters.
| Symbol | Motion
|
 | A quarter circle forward (QCF), or a smooth motion between the down and forward directions (↓↘→)
|
 | A quarter circle back (QCB), or a smooth motion between down and back directions (↓↙←)
|
 | The dragon-punch motion (DP), or a tap forward before hitting down and down-forward (→↓↘)
|
 | The reverse dragon-punch motion (RDP), or a tap backward before hitting down and down-back (←↓↙)
|
 | The 360 motion, or a circular motion that hits all four axis directions in sequence (→↓←↑)
|
Universal Commands
The following techniques, allowing basic movement, defense, and offense, are available to all characters.
Game Elements
- Character Select Screen: Team Size, Color Selection, Ensemble Selection, Stage Selection
- Gameplay Screen: Round Start, HUD, Combo Counter, Pause, End of Round, End of Match
- Life and Damage: Team Size, Recoverable Damage, Chip Damage, Damage Scaling
- Dramatic Tension: Gaining Dramatic Tension, Using Dramatic Tension
Fun Stuff
