Talking about Guilty Gear The Missing Link

All in-game screenshots come from TheFightersGeneration

So as you may have guessed, I'm a fan of Guilty Gear. Not like a Super Turbo fan or anything but I do enjoy the few games in the series I've played, With one I'm gonna talk about here, the Very first game in the series Guilty Gear The Missing Link. Most people who like GG probably haven't even played this one which is kinda understandable because of how jank this game can be, but that's one of the reason I really like this game so I'm just weird like that I guess.

Development history

All of this information comes from the Guilty Gear Wiki.

This game has a fairly simple development history, with series creator Daisuke Ishiwatari coming up with the ideas for the game before he joined Arc System Works, with inspiration coming from the metal and rock music Ishiwatari liked and from the Shonen Jump manga BASTARD!!(which is actually really good and you should go read it). The game changed alot throughout development, with it originally using pre-rendered 3d graphics like Donkey Kong Country, with the game's story getting a rework with it originally taking place 2000 years in the future and instead of Gears there were "Majin's". All the characters from the first game are still present with their design's changing over the game's development, like May and Potemkin both using giant axe's, and Millia being from Brazil for some reason. There was actually a fully cut character from the game, a space cop character styled after Space Sheriff Gavan but was cut because they were too different from the rest of the game's world, and Johhny was planed to be playable and not just appear in May's ending cutscene, but he was also cut because of the small size of the dev team. The dev team also wanted to remove the instant kills for being unecassery but were to far in development to remove them, yay?. Eventually the game was completed and releaded on May 14th 1998 in Japan and October 31st the same year in the US and would eventually get a PC release in 2019.

The actual game itself

So the main way I've played this game is on my wii via the Wiistation emulator, which plays the game really well with only some small graphical glitches in the Atlus splash screen. Kinda speaking of which, just like with the rest of the series, this game's intro is perfect for getting you into the mood of the game with its metal music, which can be watched here. The game's title screen and hole asthetic is fairly simple but I really like the kinda grunge style the whole game has. I really like the original GG logo, the kinda Ingraved-ness of the two G's and the chain wrapping around are so cool to me, way better than the modern logo for strive (In my opinion). Even the game's manual looks really fucking cool, with the metal surface used for the character bios and the metal spike wheel on a chain being used as the page number. And I Love the character art here, its perfect late 90's amatuer anime art style at its finest with it looking a little weird in some places but being very apealing to me personally, can you see why I like the asthetic's of the older games now?. You got the usuall fighting game modes here, Arcade, Versus 2P, Options and Training mode, I'm really upset that the game dosen't have a VS CPU mode but at least it has a training mode which fair amount of old fighters didn't have for some reason. The training mode is pretty standard and pretty good for practicing combos, the option mode are the has its own music which is really good and is where you save your progress and can listen to the game's entire soundtrack which is pretty nice.

The gameplay

The gameplay for the game is fairly similar to the rest of the series with you having your Punch, Kick, Slash and Heavy Slash inputs. Pressing both S and HS buttons causes you to to a "Dust" attack, an attack that luanches the opponent onto the air for airborne combos. You can run in this game by double tapping foward or backwards and it feels fine, jumping out of it feels pretty nice and the sound you make while running is pretty funny. The air-dash in this games feels really janky with there being like a second of delay before you actually dash, which makes me not want to use them despite how usefull they are. Pulling off combos is pretty semeless and fun with the gatling system and the sound it makes you your hits impact is really satisfying. The characters movesets here are way smaller then they are in later games with most characters only having 4-5 special moves and only two characters, Sol and Axl have more than 1 super move, speaking of. In this game overdrive attacks are called Chaos attacks and just like I stated before, every character only has one beside for Sol and Axl. The way you gain meter is a little different here in that you only gain it by attacking the oponent instead of also just moveing toward the opponent. This game's sole unique mechanic that would also go on the inspire Order Sol's is the charge system, if you do and hold a specific characters special move and press to respect button you charge that move into three levels of power with only Axl, Testament and Justice not having this ability. Its a semi usefull move with it being really overpowered with Sol's move Volcanic Viper and Axl was ment to have it but do to a code oversight he ended up loosing it, its more practical in Order Sol's case since every one of his special moves can be charged up but thats my opinion. And finally by pressing the taunt button in mid-air you character will turn the other way, this is a really weird and obscure feature but kinda usefull for messing with the opponent.

Probably the most infmous thing about this game: the Instant Kills

The way instant kills work in this game is insane, you can do them Anytime you want no mater how much meter you have, by pressing P and K on an opponent you will enter the Sekkai state, in that state you have you input quarter circle foward and any face button to do the IK, but if the opponent does it before you can they'll do the IK instead, and the worse part? It wins the entire game. I think this is pretty self explanetory on why this is crazy, if you wanted to you can win the entire match in the first few seconeds if you reaction times pretty good. I have a really mixed opinion on them because they can be really annoying when the CPU gets one on you but also the really make the game more intense and really followed Daisuke's idea of a game that "should be something difficult" and with some tweking could pissibly work but thats just my opinion.

The meat and bones of the game: the arcade mode

The part of the game you'll spend the most time with is the arcade mode, here called normal mode. Its a fairly nomal arcade mode, you start with 10 characters, Sol, Ky, May, Zato, Millia, Potemkin, Axl, Chip, Baldhead and Kliff, with three unlockable characters, Testament, Justice and Baiken. With Testament and Justice you only have to beat the arcade mode the get them but with Baiken, you have to beat the arcade mode as either Sol or Ky without using any continues. The arcade mode here is standard fair, with you fighting 8 other characters except for some you have to fight thier rival in the 9th stage, then you fight the pre-boss Testament and the actual boss Justice, but if you do the Sol/Ky continuless run you will fight Baiken with infinite continues after the credits. The arcade mode itself isn't to hard, fairly managable with most cahracters, the character specififc rival fight can be pretty hard though, the Testamint fight can go either way honestley. But the final fight with Justice(which the english version of the game calling her a male for some reason) is really difficult, with her being able to stun you and use her Gamma Ray attack to kill you near immediately but with Sol's dash kick and other characters charge moves you can stun lock her to death if you want to. I would reccomend against just spamming instant kills because the more you do them the more the CPU does them too.

Whenever you beat and opponent before going on to the next round you get the character's comment on thier current opponent, these are mostley really funny becasue how weird 90's translations were, my favorites include:

Sol -> Zato: "Die, you pale, emaciated freak."

Sol -> Dr. Baldhead: "Are all doctors this crazy?"

Sol -> Millia: "I'm actually fighting a woman?"

Zato -> Chipp: "At least it was funny watching you fly around."

Chipp -> Millia: "My rule is never to show any mercy to women."

Ky: "So you're the puppet master. Did you really think I'd let you revive Justice? Only a reject like you would make a mistake like this." Testament: "Reject? I'll forget you said that... "

The Endings

Every character except Testament, Justice and Baiken (Who you can't play in the arcade mode by the way) have thier own endings, all of which are still cannon. Most of them are kinda sad in one way or another, with Zato being fully taken over by his shadow monster Eddie, Kliff killing his own adoptive grandson before dying after killing justice, Chipp realising he had never improved or changed his ways after his master had died and Ky having his faith in God be questioned by Justice's last words. Sol's ending if the most iconic with it being revieled that Sol Badguy is The Guilty Gear and one of the creator of the gears themselves and that Justice is his dead girlfriend Aria. Imagine playing this game in the late 90's or early 00's and being fucking confused by the massive lore dump in Sol's ending, that idea is really funny to me I guess.

The music

Just as you'd except from the Guilty Gear series, both rock and heavy metal perfectly fit the vibe of this game. Most characters keep thier themes from later games here, but some like May, Potemkin, Baldhead and Testament have completly original themes here, thier pretty good but not as good as later themes. This game does have my 2nd favorite version of Keep Youself Alive and Holy Orders, and the music and cutscene that plays when Justice gets revived is just perfect. One of the funniest things about this game is how compressed the sound effects are, just like how i mentioned earlier the running, hitting, air-dash and menu effects are all crushed to hell, but there is a reason behind it, it was because the devs wanted the music to be as high quality as possible which is actually really cool in my opinion.

Conclusion

Alot of people would wright off this game as some clunky kusoge from the 90's but I see value in something so jank yet honest, the jank in this game makes it really charming to me. This game can be annoying especially with the instant kills but those don't drag the game down for me that much. I would reccomend this game to any GG fan or to someone intrested in weird old games, it would be cool to see a indie game take inspiration from this game and do thier own spin on it like how Axiom Verge did for Metroid 1. And I would also reccomend to try out other weird GG games like Judgment and Overture to see if you like them or just go out and try wierd games, something will catch you intrest.

Other stuff related to the game

Missing Link's Dustloop page
Guilty Gear The Missing Link (bracket)
The original Guilty Gear game is INSANELY FUN - GUILTY GEAR: MISSING LINK
Guilty Gear - The Missing Link: An In-Depth Overview
The First Guilty Gear