Apologies if this has already been posted before, but has anyone ever translated Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear's character profiles from the Fighters Megamix Official Guide? I'm particularly curious if Bean's profile says anything about him being the son of Bin from Dynamite Dux, a piece of info that comes up every now and again (and seems to have originated from Japanese sites) but I've never been able to find a source for. (For anyone wondering why they're so TALL in these profiles, remember that this is in the context of Fighters Megamix, where they were taller than the human characters.)
I didn't translate the parts having to do with game mechanics like how to unlock or what characters they can or can't throw, but here you are. Be warned that there is some potentially mind blowing info about Bean: Bean: A woodpecker who appeared in the 1996 arcade game "Sonic the Fighters." He loves sports, and is particularly good at soccer. His special techniques are his spinning uppercut and bomb attack. His blue 2P color is BIN, the main character of the 1988 arcade game "Dynamite Dux", though Bean is his son. Bark: A polar bear who appeared in the 1996 arcade game "Sonic the Fighters." North Island's #1 snowboarder. He is blunt and quiet, but has a gentle and loving heart. He's actually a shy guy.
It's nice that they emphasize the different spelling of both, so that there's no doubts of there being any misromanizations.
Were Bean and Bark ever described as villains in Fighters? Or was that just a comic thing that got adapted in Generations and Mania's wanted posters?
North Island... It really makes me want an entire game set on the island with temperate zones and zone tropes based on European history. We've yet to have a Medieval castle zone in Classic Sonic as far as I can remember, or perhaps a zone where Robotnik is sawing down a fantasy forest with fairy badniks, saws, conveyor belts, magic and mushrooms... Sigh...
Awesome! Thanks! The old Sonic Dimension fan site listed Bean's species as "woodpecker or duck", so I guess this was the source. Bean does have a woodpecker-like attack, so that makes more sense at least. Now I'm wondering if Bin and Pin were ever explicitly called ducks in Japan. I remember the tidbits about Bean being Bin's son and Bark being from a place called North Island from many, many years ago, it's nice to have a properly confirmed source for the information. That originated in the comics, issue 160. I guess Ian Flynn probably felt that there were already a ton of hero characters but not many villains who weren't one-offs. Interestingly, in the comics Bark is almost entirely silent. I wonder if Ian was aware of this established trait or if it was just a coincidence.
Well... there's the title of the game. :v: In any case, seeing the mix of species that Fang the Sniper is, maybe it shouldn't surprise us to see a woodpecker being the son of a duck in the SEGA/Sonic universe...
Well, you'd think so, right?? But it wouldn't be the first Japanese video game to have a title that doesn't quite fit. In the Japanese version of the arcade game all of the text is in English. Bin and Pin are said to be Lucy's pets (Lucy being the human girl you have to rescue), but their species is never mentioned. Here's the Japanese arcade flyer if anyone wants to check whether it sheds any light on the matter. None of the console versions were ever released in Japan. (The Master System version changed the story so that Lucy's human boyfriend, Mickael Bin, was transformed into a duck. No intro text in game, but the back of the box calls him a duck. The credits also call the roller skating wolf enemies "Roller Cat", which is just nuts.) (Also, just out of pure curiosity, what are Bean and Bark's "Fighting Styles" called in the Megamix profiles?)
A human owning anthropomorphs as pets? That has some unnerving implications if you look at it from the context of the Sonic universe...
I don't know if I'd consider them as villains in the modern games either, the same way I wouldn't consider Charmy having his own honey butter or E-123 Avenue being a real street "canon." Sonic Mania kinda gives it a justification with Spoiler its boss though!
The reference to Bean being good at Soccer is an interesting one - as Bean is supposedly in Virtua Striker 2 I say "supposedly" because I started a topic some time ago trying to actually determine if he's in the game or not, despite the code and screenshots in this Sega Saturn Magazine article, I've never seen any proof that he's in the game at all. Inputting codes and playing as the secret teams doesn't have him show up at all.
Bean, Bin and Pin's long tail feathers make a lot more sense if they're all woodpeckers. Long tailed ducks do exist, but whoever had those in mind when designing a cartoon duck? That's quite the mystery. I'm not tech-savvy, but has anyone tried to see if his model exists in the ROM? Technically the description for the cheat code itself doesn't mention Bean at all, it covers all 11 players. But it's weird that they have these Bean screenshots and mention him in the caption if it's not even related to the cheat code they provided. There's no sign of the other "wacky" characters in the Bean screenshots, so maybe it's a different cheat code altogether? He is significantly larger than all the other secret players. Whatever the case, I think it's more likely that the "soccer" detail was a reference to his bomb kicking attack that originated in Sonic the Fighters and that he was chosen to be in VS2 for that reason, rather than vice versa.
It's a comic thing. There's not really any history to speak of for Bean and Bark at all - it was AM2 filling out the character roster with a couple of home-made fighters; one as a nod to Dynamite Dux and the other presumably to fill the spot of a "big" character to bring a bit more variety to the table. Sonic the Fighters was an arcade fighting game released in small numbers - nobody cared about the details. (and this isn't uncommon for fighting games - from what I've read, it looks as if they retroactively gave the original Virtua Fighter a story. Apparently Sarah Bryant was mind controlled - who knew? (spoilers: nobody in 1993, including the developers))
The wanted text for the Bark/Bean poster was written by AAUK when he worked at Sega. It's not clear why he wanted them as villains. It's probably not what AM2 intended (given that Bark is supposed to be a gentle giant and Bean is the son of a hero), but I think it's a good idea, as there's too many heroes in the series. Hmm.. I've got magazines that were published some 3 to 5 months after Virtua Fighter hit the arcades and they all talk about Jackie trying to get his sister back from the evil syndicate's mind control (Plus Pai and Lau being related, among other details. Later magazines mention that the Syndicate appears in Virtua Cop, linking the two games). I think AM2 probably did have a story in mind, but, of course, as the Arcade game didn't come with a manual, it was difficult to release story info. About Sonic the Fighers: In Japan, a Sonic the Fighters players guide video as released on VHS. It contains a detailed segment on each character. I wouldn't be surprised if it had a little bit more character info on it. Although, it's all in Japanese, so there's no way to know for sure.
Not being evil doesn't make them heroes. They can still be neutral like the Chaotix. Anyway, I'm not that surprised that the guy who claimed that Mighty has been missing since 1993 got Bark's character completely wrong TBH.
Eh, Bean and Bark work better as villains anyway. They work well when combined with Fang, and conveniently they were all pretty much only prominent in the same game.
Nah, I prefer Fang on his own. He had already been prominent in Sonic Triple Trouble, where he didn't have any partners, and he worked rather well like that. Plus I've always seen Bean and Bark as neutral, at least until Generations came out.
According to someone on SSMB called VEDJF, we are all totally wrong on this. Someone on SSMB go ask him about it, I can't :v:
