Audacious iOS developer rips off basically every fighting game

Skullgirls 2: A Deadly Adoption

I’m not into fighting games, so I have no experience with Skullgirls. The animation is gorgeous, but that’s about where you lose me. However, I did sit in on a packed Lab Zero Games panel at Anime Expo, and let me tell you from experience — people love Skullgirls. An “enterprising” iOS developer, Nguyen Hiep, has capitalized on this adoration with Skullgirls 2: Deadly Airport — a very bad game designed to trick people into downloading it so they will look at some ads, lining Hiep’s pockets as a result.

Don’t worry about downloading it for a laugh, because I’ve done that for you. The game is ostensibly a mobile fighter, but it’s really so much more than that. It is a Nightmare on Elm Street-esque purgatory. Not just because it’s a horrible game, but because I found myself invested in the outcome for a split second. It got me, and now I count myself among the damned. It features Poison from Final Fight, some other fighting game characters I don’t recognize, the DualShock 4 d-pad & buttons, and the iconic Mortal Kombat ‘finish him’ graphic. I did not make it far enough into the game to see if the MK graphic actually makes an appearance.

A cursory glance at Hiep’s other apps reveal a trend, featuring such gems as a Minecraft platformer that I swear is using Super Mario coins, a practically identical fighting game, a Meat Boy ripoff, and a practically identical fighting game but with Dragon Ball Z sprites.