Houston, we've got some visibility issues

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a...you know I'm not quite sure what it is. Yes, boys and girls today we're examining the pressing and mission critical issue of visibility. Except unlike what the opening sentences may have lead you to believe we're not looking at how the speed of an object can affect peoples perception of it, rather we're going to be looking at how fighting game designers seem intent on including at least one stage in their product where it's damn near impossible to accurately see what the hell is going on. The basic reason that this is an issue is that in almost every fighting game the makers allow (to some degree) for players to chose what color outfit their character is wearing and thus some degree of camouflaging is inevitable. That said when we look at the various stages today there are limits to this sort of crap. You've got to balance style with usability. There's a reason that if you watched tournament footage for any of these games you're almost never going to see any of these stages selected* but if you happen to play these games online you'll see these stages quite frequently as players will try to compound the main issue with online play (lag) with added visibility issues.

Because screw the colorblind.

So this stage is red. Really, really, really red. In earlier versions of the game it used to be even redder and darker. Not sure who thought this was a good idea. It's like someone at Capcom has a vendetta against the colorblind. It should be noted that not only do the characters tend to blend into the background here but so do fireballs (mostly). By my count 'Super Street Fighter IV AE 2012' has six characters with red colored fireballs with two or three of those characters being counted among the most commonly played characters in the game. Fantastic. About the only upside to this is that at least the costume color doesn't affect the characters skin tone (in some games it does) so you can at least see the opponents hands, feet and face. Not that that helps much.

You'd think those explosions would illuminate things better and you'd be wrong.

OK, so believe it or not but the stage above used to be a lot worse as the version pictured is from 'Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3'. In “vanilla” 'MvC3' the stage was a lot darker to the point where it was like playing “Where's Waldo?” where every time you fail to find him you lose a character. It's not much better than that in 'Ultimate'. By my count twenty-one out of thirty-eight character's in “vanilla” had dark brown or black costumes that would significantly obscure them on the above stage and that thirty-nine out of fifty character's in 'Ultimate' have dark brown or black costumes that would obscure them on that same stage. Bonus points go to the X-23 and Storm character's who each have three different color variations to chose from to achieve that effect (most character's only have one dark colored color). We get it Capcom you think that your fans think that black attire is badass. That's fine but please ensure that the character's are actually visible.**

To be fair this is barely even a stage.

So this was included because I heard mention on a tournament stream that this stage posed a problem with certain character's and looking at it one can certainly see why. While it's going to be generally difficult to get one's character(s) to blend into the stage, without using color edit mode, it does seem like some character's have projectiles that would be hard to see against a bright white background.  Thankfully there aren't too many characters in 'King of Fighters XIII' with light colored projectiles.  I'm not sure I'm demoing the move that the commentators on the stream where talking about but hopefully it's enough to give you an idea of how this could be an issue.

Looking at three stages from three different games it does kind of make me wonder whether the artists and/or designers actually play the game (especially “vanilla” 'MvC3') as I can't imagine a game releasing with stages like those above it they had. I know that stage/level design or lack thereof isn't really a deal breaker with these sorts of games but it would have been nice to see a little more thought go into it or at the very least a little consideration given to those who deal with pricks online who'll take every advantage they can get (i.e. all black team on black stage). See you all next week.

*Most tournaments have rules in place where a player can object to a certain stage being selected.

**'UMvC3' actually has a second problem stage that I forgot to take a picture of in a pleasant looking snow covered stage but that stage only affects one color for one character.