The other Super Smashing game Sony published

I'm going to start this blog pure and simple; 'Playstation Allstar Battle Royale' is a blatant clone of Super Smash Brothers. Not such a bad thing...but, everyone's pretending that Sony haven't experimented with SSB style gameplay before. Actually they did and you can find this game on PSN, I'm talking 'Ragdoll Kung Fu; Fists of Plastic' and there's a pretty good time to be had with friends if you give it the time.

Ragdoll Kung Fu Fists of Plastic is basically a spinoff of the original indie game for PC which is what got the future head honchos of Media Molecule the reputation to develop Little Big Planet. The main difference being RKF:FoP being handled by a different team, Tarsier, who also made later LBP DLC and the game was developed around the Sixaxis controller.
For a short period after release in 2009, Ragdoll Kung Fu: FoP was given away for free on the US PSN and if you were lucky enough (and sly) enough to set up a US account for free content, basically you could download the game. Which is what I did.

Ragdoll Kung Fu: FoP does seem like more of an experiment for Sony and to be honest, it's graphical artstyle is, basically ugly as heck but perfectly suited for plastic looking oriental combatants. But, if you gave a bit of time and find another willing player, it's actually a pretty decent 2D arena brawler.
Because the controls were rather complicated and some attacks responded to the controller being thrust in a particular direction, the game had a very in depth selection of training missions and to be honest, you'd be useless if you didn't take these tutorials.

To add onto the SSB comparisons, Fists of Plastic also had items you could pick up such as nun chucks and batons, health pick ups and items which you could throw to generally cause damage to the other player.
To attack, you had to press the corresponding attack button and thrust the controller in that motion or throw energy balls using 'chi' which you charge up out of combat by turning the controller upside down and meditating leaving yourself open to hit. It was quite easy to fall off the stages a lot by generally attempting to hit the other player. Luckily, if you had the power stored from gaining 'chi' you could also rescue yourself from falling down, by blasting up in the air like a character from Dragonball Z and pull off a masterful uppercut on the opponent at the same time.

Fists of Plastic also had some nice touches taken from Little Big Planet, such as waving your arms around by using the mostly unused shoulder buttons whilst moving the relevant analogue stick. So there was opportunities to pose after wins, kills or generally to slap your opponent in the face.

Lastly, Fists of Plastic had a mode which revolved around being hit by a ball with stored energy, not much different from Tekken 3's Tekken Ball and personally, this was a great alternative than just knocking each other off the stage or hitting each other with fireballs as half of the gameplay was decided by physics.

Either way, if you like the look of Playstation Allstars Battle Royale, have a gander at Ragdoll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic and stop reading this because I'm running out of different ways to abbreviate these game with stupidly large titles. It's a decent game and it's probably cheap now. Perhaps Sony should give it for free to all regions for a limited time in the build up to PABR. See I told you I was running out of ways to shorten the amount of typing these game names. But anyway, that's my blog about the precursor of the battle royale which shall be fought with Playstation allstars, hopefully a nice little history lesson and a lesson not to name brawlers such stupid large names.