Skullgirls: Dead Ringer

In New Meridian, every wish has teeth. You are a wish-born revenant, resurrected years ago when your grieving mother made a doomed wish on the Skull Heart and became a Skullgirl. She raised you as her first undead minion. When she was defeated, her army crumbled, but you remained: damaged, independent, and not fully alive. Now you run Last Call Lazarus, a smoky jazz club where the right password opens the door to stranger business. Curses, hauntings, mob crimes, Lab experiments, rogue parasites, missing people, Skullgirl remnants. If the problem smells like death, it eventually finds your booth...and with your lingering necromantic powers and your transforming skeletal weapon, Dead Ringer, you put it back in the mausoleum. Then Marie Korbel becomes the current Skullgirl, and the old leash in your bones begins to tighten. Take commissions, choose allies, fight rivals, chase romance, and survive New Meridian’s monsters, mobsters, royals, scientists, and beautiful disasters. Dead Ringer waits in your hand, an ivory cane ready to become whatever weapon the night demands. - Part 3 of my fighting game World Tour! In this case, many of the core cast have been aged up to adulthood for the sake of the romance angles. Skullgirls is a...complicated one, with a controversial history. While I won't pretend to have fully followed all the drama behind the scenes, I can speak to my experience as a fan. As the Little Indie Fighting Game that Could, it showed that western fighting game fans truly knew and understood the core of what made a good fighting game. Gorgeous spritework, solid mechanics including options for two- or even three-character tag-team, or just playing one single strong character with a massive pool of health if you (like me) have trouble compartmentalizing more than one moveset at a time when playing a FG. And more important to me, it had some wild, quirky characters and a, as far as I'm aware, completely unique supernatural-Lovecraftian-1940s-gangster aesthetic with a visual style that blended anime with rubber hose cartoons of a bygone era, AND a dedicated "retro film" theming to its gameplay—to the point that supermoves were called "Blockbusters" and the deliciously quirky announcer would call out "CUT!" when a match ends. And, of course...a whole roster of top shelf, fanservicey waifus. Love it, sad we'll never get a true sequel from the team. - Includes @LewdLeah's Inner Self Script!