Black History Month ’23, The World Of Guilty Gear

Nagoriyuki, who debuted in Guilty Gear Strive, has the honor of being the first Black character introduced to the franchise.

It’s 1999 and I head to Walmart, though I had a friend drive me there, while we were killing time before our Saturday performance of Grease at our high school. I had been excited about grabbing a copy of Xenogears, which is one of the best games to be created by Squaresoft, but Walmart didn’t have any more copies.

The person at the desk told me that they had a copy of Guilty Gear, a fighting game developed by Arc System Works and published by ATLUS, and I decided to buy a copy with the birthday money I received. I found Guilty Gear to be interesting but I thought the game would fade to obscurity I was wrong when Guilty Gear X was launched on the Sega Dreamcast, which prompted me to get Guilty Gear X2 on my PlayStation 2.

The series is equally intense and wacky, which worked because it cemented the franchise as one that goes against the grain. That means there are no Shotoclones in the game.

I thought Guilty Gear Xrd would have been the last installment of the franchise but I was surprised by the news of Guilty Gear Strive. When I saw one of the trailers, I was all “holy f–k” when…