I want to make a game, and when i was playing with a software for First Person Shooter games, i had the thought to make a game about a character from a manga that I read and really liked. But the problem was, that the character was not the main character, nor was any one character in the story the center of the story for long. This proposed the idea to make the game about all seven of the main characters. The manga in question is the recently ended manga, Katekyo Hitman Reborn. (I provided the wiki instead of anything else because I felt that you would prefer to just look up information that i don't give you, instead of reading through the entire manga or watching the anime, as you might still get clueless)

The manga in question is about a kid and his six friends who get strung up and pulled into a series of adventures involving the mafia. Laughably, the plots themselves rarely involve anything mafia related, and no controversial topics (Prostitution and/or drug trafficking, money laundering, etc.), instead making it just about assassins and gang related violence. But the story itself is good, and I wanted to make an interactive game that gave the player the choice of playing as any one of the seven main characters.

I have a pretty good idea on what to do for some of them, but a major problem I have is with Kyoya Hibari and Ryohei Sasagawa. Ryohei is a problem because not only is his involvement in the story the shortest, but his skill set is also the shortest. His only skill set is healing and boxing, having no weapons/tools to use except for boxing gloves and booster shoes for flying. He does little to nothing in regards to the plot, compared to the rest of them, but his involvement is too great to just leave out. Plus, i feel like if I use the rest of them, and not Ryohei, I might be being mean to a fictional character.

The other problem is with Hibari. Hibari has the second least amount of screen time in the manga, but his performance in the story is the greatest. He is regarded as one of the biggest bad@$$es (Biased opinion) in manga and it would be impossible not to use him. Unfortunately, his fightng style is a mixture of melee combat, and ranged combat, with no guns ever being used around him. He uses tonfas for close combat, and throws spiked hedgehogs that supersize into giant rampaging bulldozers that mow down his enemies. He also gets access to an assortment of secondary weapons, like a super long chain to attack long range with, handcuffs that he uses for an entire fight, he basically uses unconventional weapons all the time. This makes designing game play around him even harder than around Ryohei.

Now, it might be easier to just make him use a tonfa, and maybe swing a chain if you hit the write number of combo hits, but then he starts to feel like Ryohei, as both would just be basically punching the enemy into submission.

What I'm looking for is help in figuring out how to make game play around these guys. I understand that some corners will need to be cut, but i want to figure out the best way to do this, and I can't figure out how to do this best.

If you haven't played Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, I would highly advise it. It's an excellent game as is, but also shows a possibility of how to split a game between a number of characters without hindering gameplay.

thank you, i will give it a shot

Deathbymanga, you should not make a game based on someone else's characters. You should create your own characters, or you'll have to change your name to Suedbymanga.

http://sloperama.com/advice/faq61.htm

Oh, i was definitely going to try and get the guys opinion. I guess i may have been a little misleading. I am still a student, studying digital media & animation. This means that any idea i want to to, is more an idea i WANT to do. doesn't mean that i have the capabilities of doing it. I am sorry for saying TRYing instead of WANTing, i'll edit that right away.

I felt that the idea of making a game based off of Reborn was perfect because there were so many diverse character fighting styles that game play was sure to stretch to every available one. This means that I would have a chance to explore all the different styles of game play and see were my forte laid and where I needed to study more in.

I'm still very curious about the idea of unconventional fighting styles in games, and continuing this thread will certainly help me with games I legally can try to do, though i think i should be able to try to get the legal permission to make a game based off of a manga. I mean, Naruto and Dragonball have lots of games, though truthfully, they are primarily Mortal Kombat-esque, rather than the explore-able, interactive rpg way I wanted to do

This topic could be applied to a broad spectrum of situations.

In a game that is based around a series of characters and one (or two in this situation) are important but are seen very much. ((Basically restating your OP))

You could do side missions where every time you transition characters you briefly visit one of the characters in question. Depending on the flow of your game, this could be adjusted.

I've never been a fan of the Kindom Heart series but sonicarrow does have point. I like the name pun there Tom haha.

That by be good in an interactive/adventure game, like The Kore (I'm using this as reference because my sister owns it and I don't have many reference material. I'm sorry if it isn't a well known game), where the point of the game is to move from area to area, usually in a 3D platform style, but it doesn't have to. Spyro or Crash Bandicoot are also good examples.

But i guess I'm just getting hung up on the manga still, but it was primarily a fighting game, with many, if not all, of the character's key or only moments are centered around taking down big bosses, I feel that players will get confused if the character all of a sudden has to play as a 3rd/1st person shooter, when previously they were going as a melee beat em up character.

One idea may be to put the game like how Super Smash Brothers Brawl did, by using the interactive story mode as a separate entity from the main purpose of the game. Maybe make it a 3D beat em up game with shooter and flight capabilities as accessible attributes given to individual characters. Players can practice with different game plays by having the story change from one group of characters, letting additional players come around and play, but ad some adventure and 3D exploration that SSBB left out in their sidescroller method (though, admittedly, the game SSBB's game play was made as a reference to the traditional side-scroller game play of Nintendo's earlier products that many of their characters had still mostly been involved in).

Actually, that does sound like a good idea for a multi-character game idea, though it seems unused for some reason. Did Mortal Kombat vs DC have a travel based system like SSBB? Or was it just fight after fight after fight like most beat em up games?

Did you ever play Streets of Rage (or any of its clones)? It's like a cross between a platformer and a fighting game.

Basically you walk down the street punching everyone in the face till you get to the other side. At the end you fight the boss and so on.

The thing about the style is it allows for lot's of different play styles of characters within simple boundries.

Had a thought just now...

Dynasty warriors has a cr*pload of characters and they bounce all over the place. You could definately checkout gameplay and how they do story transitions.

I don't have a Sega Genesis, but I am going on a Retro shopping spree, so I'll try to find Streets of Rage to give it a shot. I'll also go look for Dynasty Warrior, as I've heard a lot about it. thank you

Id go ahead and just wiki SoR (and games of their genre), the concept is super easy to grasp, hell even looking at a youtube clip or two would tell you all you need.

Dynasty Warriors is a simple hack'n'slash but it pretty much shaped the genre plus with the amount of games they released you shouldnt have a hard time finding one for pretty cheap.