Don't have the basic coordination to pull off a Shoryuken? Do you have the strategy and tactics of a watermelon? You just want to sharpen your competitive edge, maybe? This handy dandy all-in-one is not just a fighting game, but a relative training dojo! Training may be just a feature in some fighters, but here, it's the main focus.

Capcom, Rare, and/or SNK would be ideal for constructing a 2D style of this game, whereas Namco, Tecmo, and/or Sega could take on a 3D version. Plus, a big cast of existing characters would be a synch to put in. Hey, why not team up and mash them onto one mini-DVD?

Basic Features:

• Moves training - Learn to consistently do basic moves and combos through electric shock treatment practice and rewards (see: unlockable stuff). The basic idea is this; being able to do a move isn't as important as doing it every time, or when it matters.

• Strategy training - Learn the finer points of major gameplans - space control, rush downs, keep-away, "turtling," and more.

• Tactics training - Learn to predict opponents and control matches - the pyschological stuff.

• Tournament planner - Create and manage different tournaments - single and double elimination, round robin, "pooled", etc.

• Basic fighter requisites - a single player ladder, 2 player versus, team, survival, "world tour", and whatnot.

• Adapting AI - In place of a kid sister, a terribly expensive arcade, or brain-dead AI patterns, AI that adjusts to your tactics would finally be implemented.

• Online play - You're not honing those skills for nothing...

• Save/replay matches - So you can figure out what went wrong (or right)

Extra Goodies:

• Perhaps a fully playable fighter or several previously released from the developer

• Gallery! Music test! Fun extras like wacky options!

• Creating custom AI scripts or preferences for the advanced players

Ty says: This would be ideal for any sort of player, I think - players without any serious competition, skill-less scrubs, or hardened pros. Being a fully functional fighter in itself would ensure that the basic "fun game" element stays and it need not be dull exercises. It's marketable in that it's something new. If it's largely sucessful, it could revitalize the fighter genre (and reduce the scrub population).

Creating custom fighters might be a bit much, but customizing existing ones, like, say, in Alpha 3's world tour mode, is do-able...