Skullgirls Gets its First Male Character: Big Band

The Indiegogo campaign to raise money for a DLC character for Skullgirls has been so successful that Lab Zero Games has added a second additional character to the roster. While the base purpose of the fundraising campaign was to make the $150,000 needed to add the already-planned Squigly to the Skullgirls team, the total amount raised has surpassed the stretch goal of $375,000 that means Lab Zero Games will also bring the first male character to the game: Big Band.

Big Band used to be a man called Ben Birdland, who survived through the worst of the Grand War but faced real adversity when he was a beat cop in New Meridian. His unit was crooked, and when he got on the wrong side of its unsavoury members he was “given a violent early retirement” that meant he would forever need to stay in an iron lung to keep him alive.

Ben Birdland became Big Band when the Anti-Skullgirl Labs heard about his plight and asked if he'd let them experiment on him. Without much reason to say no, he agreed, and they rebuilt him by fusing him with both life-support machinery and pneumatic (i.e. operated by air) weaponry. He looks like a walking saxophone, and is apparently capable of “generating powerful blasts of pressurized air” as well as producing “variously-sized horns, flutes and drums for his attacks”. Apparently the team is also considering making his combos musical, which would be pretty cool.

All of the DLC created with the money raised with this Indiegogo campaign will be available for free for three months after launch. If you want to help Lab Zero Games create a third downloadable character, you've still got two weeks to contribute towards the $600,000 stretch goal that will make that happen.