On today’s Divekick livestream, Iron Galaxy revealed their newest fighter: MarkMan.
MarkMan is based on Mark “MarkMan” Julio, community and sponsorship manager at Mad Catz. Prior to getting the product manager position at Mad Catz that lead to his work on their line of Street Fighter products, Markman was well known in the fighting game community as someone obsessed with arcade sticks. Around a year ago, his estimate of the amount of arcade sticks in his possession was over 340. 340 arcade sticks. You know how big these things can get? Where does this man store them all!?
MarkMan’s playstyle pays homage to his love of collecting and modding arcade sticks. Borrowing Phoenix Wright’s evidence-collecting combat mechanics from Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, MarkMan has the ability to build a Divekick arcade stick called “Kickbox”. He’ll scavenge the area searching for a controller frame, a blue button, and a yellow button (much like the actual Divekick controller). He’ll get powered-up when he completes the controller, giving him the ability to kick upwards.
Much like Phoenix Wright in UMvC3, MarkMan won’t always pick up a controller piece. He might pick up random junk which causes various effects in the stage. A bottle of glue will freeze players that come into contact with it, while a giant spring (a reference to UMvC3’s Rocket Racoon) will continuously send players airborne. He certainly appears to be fun character with some complex mechanics.
The actual MarkMan was part of reason Mad Catz shook off the reputation of producing questionable controllers. Without his assistance and work under product manager Chris Carroll, Mad Catz might not have the brand power that it has today within the fighting game community. They produced the absolutely amazing Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition, introducing a high-quality arcade stick to the masses. It was actually the first arcade stick I had ever purchased! I can’t imagine playing a fighting game without my fight stick. Well… I can probably manage playing DiveKick without it…
Last week, Iron Galaxy revealed The Baz. Check out their streams on Mondays for the newest updates and latest additions to DiveKick.
